For years, a child was sexually abused by a family member in her Louisiana home, and for years she kept quiet about the abuse.

Erlis Chaisson had spent time in prison for two counts of molestation of a juvenile and was a registered sex offender, but no one knew he had struck again, especially not at an 8-year-old relative, after getting out of prison in the '90s.

The victim grew up and became a law enforcement officer in Waco. And in 2014 — more than 15 years after the abuse — she confronted her abuser.

Erlis Joseph Chaisson (Texas Department of Public Safety)

She told McLennan County Sheriff's Detective Brad Bond everything, and they decided she should call Chaisson to see whether they could get him to confess over the phone, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald.

The woman told Chaisson she was in therapy and needed closure, but he insisted they meet in person so he could give her his side of the story.

So in September 2014, the 25-year-old arranged a meeting with Chaisson, the man who had performed oral sex on her as a child and forced her to touch his genitals.

Armed with her gun and a recorder hidden in her bra, she sat down next to him on a park bench in Granbury.

In an interview with the The Daily Beast, the woman, using the pseudonym Hannah, gave the details of the sting operation. She knew she had to get him to talk about what happened, and she had to get it on tape. Nearby, one of her fellow officers was parked in a truck for backup.

She asked him to talk about the abuse he inflicted on her over a span of four years. She asked Chaisson, now 47 years old, whether he was sorry for what he did.

"I mean, I understand you're — you're putting , trying to put all the blame on me," Chaisson is heard saying on the recording. "Lines got crossed. Our emotions got mixed and misread. Didn't mean for none of it to — to go as far as it did."

He told her there's really no explanation for his actions, but "if you had a penis, you would know."

Over the course of their hour and a half talk, Chaisson repeatedly implicated himself and confessed to the abuse six times. But he repeatedly blamed her for what he did.

"It takes two," he said. "I'd be laying on the couch and then you got that look in your eyes. I'd pull the covers up and you'd come run in and jump under there and back up all the way to me."

"I don't think it's fair to blame an 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-year-old for that because it wasn't my fault," she said. "You'd come in my bedroom, though, when I was asleep. That didn't have to happen."

"I kept you a virgin, didn't I?" said Chaisson. "Sweetheart, you was young and curious, and I was old enough to know better but too young to care. That's the only way I can say it."

The recording was more than incriminating.

At Chaisson's trial last month, the woman testified against him and said the years of abuse had become a "deep, dark secret" she hid away for 17 years.

Prosecutor Gabrielle Massey said most people knew what Chaisson had done and what he was capable of when he got out of prison in the '90s, but "nobody protected children from him."

Massey told The Daily Beast that it's unusual, even for a sex offender, to show no remorse and to talk as openly as Chaisson did with his victim.

It was a risky move for her to meet with him, Massey said, but it paid off.

"Obviously, this is not a situation we would put most victims in," she said. "But she felt very compelled to go have that conversation with him. This is very extraordinary."

After the recording was played during the trial, jurors convicted Chaisson of aggravated sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency by contact.

He was sentenced to life in prison and was also given two seven-year sentences.

The Tribune-Herald reports that he won't be eligible for parole for at least 42 years.

Other victims came forward and testified during the trial, but even more came forward to the woman and the prosecutors during the investigation.

"I could spend the rest of my career trying these cases, if I had the jurisdiction," Massey said.

Updated at 7:47 a.m. to correct that she's a law enforcement officer, not a police officer.