'4 going on 40': Day care owner, 72, convicted of sexually abusing toddler says he did it because she was 'promiscuous'

The 72-year-old owner of a day care center in Missoula, Montana, told police he sexually abused a 1-year-old girl he was looking after because she was 'promiscuous.'

After he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the girl for a year and a half, Albert Gaub was sentenced to 15 years in prison and classified as a moderate risk to abuse children again.



But Gaub's lawyer appealed the classification and said his client is a low-risk sex offender. He argued the state's designation was a 'substantial injustice' to Gaub.



'Low risk': Albert Gaub appealed a state ruling that classified him as having a 'moderate risk' of abusing children again

The Montana Supreme Court disagreed and unanimously struck down the legal challenge last week.



When he was arrested in 2010, Gaub - who owned Cuddles and More day care - told police his victim was '4 going on 40,' the Attorney General's Office said.



'Gaub claimed that she knew what she was doing and what was going on, suggesting that if the little girl had not been so promiscuous he would not have abused her,' the Attorney General's Office wrote in its response to Gaub's legal appeal.

He described the victim was 'very smart, an honest child.'



Gaub also said: 'I only touched the young girl in a wrong way and did not physically, hurt, abuse or harm her at all.'

The attorney general argued Gaub never admitted doing anything wrong, despite pleading guilty.



Police arrested Gaub after the little girl, who was 4 at the time, told her parents that he had abused her several times, starting when she was 1-year-old.



Gaub assaulted the girl in the bathroom and the office of the daycare he ran out of his house with his wife, KTVQ in Missoula reported.



The wife, who has since divorced Gaub, told detectives she had no clue that her husband had been assaulting a child at their home.