Lillian Manning's abuser gets life in prison, plus 36 years

A young woman tortured by her parents thanked her adoptive mother in court today and said that because of the ordeal, "I'm stronger than ever."

"I'm not scared any more," Lillian Manning, 19, said to her convicted tormentor, Lillian Manning-Horvath, at the defendant's sentencing in Sacramento Superior Court. "You thought you won the war. But no you didn't. I did. It took awhile, but I did it. Me. Lillian Kate Manning, aka Rachel Cornist."

Manning-Horvath, 72, ducked into the corner of the holding cell in front of Judge Lawrence G. Brown and behind her lawyer, Ken Rosenfeld, to avoid a newspaper photographer in the courtroom. But she couldn't hide from her sentence -- consecutive life terms with no chance of parole for her no-contest pleas to charges of torture and mayhem.

The judge ordered that the first six years of Manning-Horvath's term be spent in a state mental hospital.

"Frankly, no sentence is adequate to right the wrong done to Lillian" and her older sister, Briana, who also addressed the court, Brown said.

The judge added another 32 years and eight months to Manning-Horvath's sentence for additional convictions on charges such as assault, child endangerment and false imprisonment.

Manning-Horvath's husband, Joseph Horvath, 54, was convicted by a jury in September 2009 and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The younger Lillian Manning and her siblings were placed in the custody of Lillian Manning-Horvath, her great aunt, sometime in the 1990s. According to Manning-Horvath's probation report, she married Joseph Horvath in 2001 and it was then that the abuse of the now-19-year-old Lillian began. It included locking her in a closet, burning her with boiling water, pulling her fingers and toes with pliers, kicking her in the mouth with a steel-toed boot and body-slamming her and breaking her arm, the probation report said.

It was Lillian Manning's escape from her parents' house in November 2007 that led to the couple's arrest.

Although Briana Manning did not talk to probation officials, she read a statement in court today in which she said she also had been beaten with "two-by-fours, pots and pans, high-heel shoes" and hammers by Lillian Manning-Horvath.

"I don't know what you deserve because it's not my place to tell you what you deserve," Briana Manning said in court. "All I can say is what goes around comes back around."