Before a life sentence was handed down to Jerry Salter Jr., Judge William Sites voiced some of his thoughts regarding the trial and conviction.

At Salter’s sentencing hearing on May 17, Sites told Salter that while he was polite and handled himself well throughout the proceedings, it didn’t make him “any less of a monster.”

Sites added that he could not imagine what the victim went through.

Salter groomed the boy to perform sexual acts with food, beginning when the child was 5-years-old. On DATE, a jury convicted Salter of three counts of capital sexual battery on a victim less than 12.

At trial, Assistant State Attorney Lauren Randall told jurors how Salter repeatedly bribed the boy with food to get him to perform sexual acts.

“This became his normal,” she said, “and it continued for over a decade.”

After every act, Randall said, Salter told the boy not to tell his mother. But in May of 2017, the victim came forward and provided powerful details to law enforcement about how Salter had been abusing him for years.

On a controlled phone call, Salter told the child the reason he liked having sex with him was because he was “like milk chocolate.”