The director of a mental hospital deliberately adopted a young boy to be his sex slave and subjected him to horrific abuse for nearly a decade.
Claude Foulk, 63, from California, molested his adopted son for eight years as part of a pattern of abuse that spanned four decades and ensnared a dozen young boys.
Today he was described by the judge as a 'sick, sick man' as he was given the maximum possible sentence - a total of 248 years in jail.
'Sick, sick man': Claude Foulk, 63, speaks with his attorney before being sentenced to 248 years in jail for abusing his adopted son. The judge said his crimes were 'beyond the comprehension of most human beings'
Superior Court Judge James B. Pierce told Foulk that he should have been the No 1 patient at the mental hospital he oversaw.
Judge Pierce said: 'Someone was selected out of an adoption book, totally selected at a very young age, and made a sex slave.
'I don't think the word father or dad belongs in the same sentence with Mr Foulk. A father or dad couldn't do these things.'
The judge added: 'It's beyond the comprehension of most human beings.
'It's not unlike slavery of old, to go through the (foster) system and obtain a human being and attempt to mold that individual to satisfy one's own sexual desires.
'Disgusting. This one has got to be the worst. It's the worst of the worst.'
Foulk was fired from his position as head of Napa State Hospital last year when he was arrested after the sexual abuse was reported to police.
Prosecutor Danette Gomez said Foulk used the foster care system to acquire boys to meet his insatiable sexual appetite, knowing they had no parents to turn to.
Abuse: Foulk used the foster care system to acquire boys to meet his insatiable sexual appetite, knowing they had no parents to turn to (posed by model)
He was convicted of 20 counts of forcible oral copulation, nine counts of sodomy and two counts of lewd acts for abuse between 1992 and 2001.
The judge drew applause from the courtroom after giving Foulk the maximum sentence of eight years for each offence.
He was acquitted of two counts each of sodomy and oral copulation for charged acts that occurred after the victim was 18.
His victim is now 27 and living in Atlanta. He will remain anonymous.
Foulk repeatedly denied the allegations, saying that that his adopted son had a history of lying.
But prosecutors said another 11 men came forward to claim Foulk molested them as children dating back to 1965, but only the son's case could be prosecuted because of the statute of limitations.
During a week-long trial, five adult men testified that Foulk had abused them for years.
They claimed the man they knew as an uncle and foster father bought them pizza and took them to a mountain cabin before forcing them to engage in sex acts.
One of Foulk's two adopted sons told jurors Foulk abused him from the time he was nine until he was 21, telling him it was 'how a man shows love'.
Foulk worked as a nurse, obtained a master's degree in business administration and held previous state jobs before working at Napa. He was a foster parent to two boys and adopted two sons.
Miss Gomez said the years of horrific abuse led the boys to turn to alcohol and drugs and to have trouble forming lasting relationships.
