A 26-year-old man was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Monday after having been found guilty of sexually abusing a child.

The ruling was handed down at the Larnaca Criminal Court, which in its behind-closed-doors ruling stated that “regarding sexual crimes, a deterrent punishment must be imposed to suppress them in view of their particular seriousness as crimes.”

The court added that such crimes “destroy human dignity by degrading the victim’s human existence.”

It specified that the man had been found guilty on two counts – abusing a child for sexual purposes and sexually abusing a minor – and that he would face consecutive sentences of five and seven years for those two crimes.

The sentences will run concurrently with a 10-year-sentence he received in January 2021 for rape.