A man was sentenced to 120 years in prison Monday for a 2005 attack in Wheaton in which he sexually assaulted a young mother and her infant daughter, "an act the devil himself would be loath to commit, " according to the DuPage judge who handed down the sentence.



Judge Daniel Guerin gave the maximum possible prison term to James P. Murphy, who was found guilty in May of home invasion and a raft of sex charges for the break-in and assault at the woman's apartment.



Murphy, 37, formerly of Oak Forest, is already serving a 30-year sentence for a rape in the DePaul University neighborhood in Chicago, committed the year after the Wheaton incident. Similarities between the crimes and incriminating letters that Murphy sent to a woman friend from Cook County Jail tied him to the DuPage crime, authorities said.



At his sentencing hearing, several police officers testified to sex crimes Murphy has committed dating back to the early 1990s when he was a teenager. He had been convicted of assaulting a 12-year-old girl at a Moline hotel in 1991, and in 1993, he was arrested for assaulting a student at Naperville Central High School during school hours.



Despite attempts at counseling and the support of family, the judge said, Murphy had spent his life terrorizing, degrading and assaulting women and children.



"That life is over," Guerin told Murphy. "That you are morally and sexually depraved is crystal clear to the court."



The Wheaton mother, whose husband was out of town the night of the attack, said in her victim impact statement that her faith had helped guide her back from a dark place following the attack.



"Mister Murphy, as you sit in your prison cell for the rest of your life, you, too, can know that the God who healed me and comforted me can do the same for you," she said.



Murphy's sentence will be served at 85 percent. His minimum actual sentence is 102 years.