Bradley Kowalczyk pleaded guilty this year to multiple felonies, admitting a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl. He took pornographic pictures of her and stored them on his computer alongside child pornography downloaded from the Internet.

Allen County prosecutors offered the 39-year-old Huntertown man a plea deal with a prison sentence of 20 years. But Kowalczyk rejected it, choosing to plead guilty to all nine charges without the benefit of a sentencing agreement and to let a judge decide how much time he should serve.

The gamble paid off Friday afternoon when a reluctant Allen Superior Court judge sentenced Kowalczyk to 10 years total on the charges.

Judge Fran Gull said it pained her to sentence Kowalczyk to nine concurrent sentences on multiple charges of sexual misconduct with a minor, child exploitation and possession of child pornography.

The judge blamed a state appellate court that had recently overturned consecutive sentences by saying they should be reserved for the worst of the worst.

Gull was also bothered by the penalties available to her for the crimes, saying the state legislature has not placed severe enough penalties on the crimes Kowalczyk admitted to committing.

Gull’s comments came after hours of testimony Friday afternoon, including the presentation of the photos showing Kowalczyk and the girl in various sexual poses.

Some of the explicit photos of the victim were taken at a rural cemetery in Hudson.

The photos Kowalczyk took were nearly identical in style to the child porn police found on his computer, of which he denied any knowledge.

Related to Kowalczyk by marriage, the girl lives in Florida but met him at various family functions. In the summer of 2008, Kowalczyk drove to Florida to bring her to Fort Wayne, saying he wanted to help her out of a difficult family situation, according to court documents and testimony.

Kowalczyk’s wife, Anna, testified on his behalf. She said she married him in December having known him about a year, weeks before he admitted to the charges.

She said he was a good father to her three young children and to his own daughter and had not shown any tendencies toward violence or “perversion.”

“I know it is the prosecutor’s job to make him look the way he does,” Anna Kowalczyk said. “But she doesn’t know him.”

Allen County Deputy Prosecutor Stacey Speith asked Anna Kowalczyk whether she knew he was facing the charges when she met him and about the thousands of pornographic images of children found on his computer and a portable hard drive.

“Does it concern you?” Speith asked.

“No, he’s not the one that downloaded them,” Anna Kowalczyk said.

No one offered evidence or testimony Friday about where the photos could have come from.

Kowalczyk’s mother also spoke on his behalf, reading a prepared statement that went into depth about the victim’s home life and calling the teen the aggressor in a consensual relationship.

Gull was troubled, not only by similarities between the photos taken of the victim and the collection of child porn, but also by the way it appeared Kowalczyk took advantage of the victim’s situation and knew she had been a prior victim of sexual abuse.

“You knew what a horrible life this child had, that she came from dysfunction, that she came from chaos,” Gull said.

“You felt sorry for her horrible life but brought her up to Fort Wayne to expose her to more horror.”

The girl has since run away from home.

“What bothers me most is the ease with which you did this, knowing she had a crummy life,” Gull said to Kowalczyk.

“Who knows where she is now. … You got from her what you wanted.”

rgreen@jg.net