Hutchinson ? A Hutchinson man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for putting his girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son in a hot clothes dryer as punishment.

Reno County District Judge Richard Rome called it “one of the heinous crimes I’ve seen committed” before giving Aron Pritchard the maximum possible sentence Friday.

The boy suffered second-degree burns on his back and buttocks during the Nov. 28, 2006, incident.

The children’s father, who now has custody, and his wife told the judge they were disappointed with the judicial system, Pritchard and the children’s mother.

“Both of the children are traumatized and emotionally scarred for the rest of their lives,” the stepmother said. “We felt sickened that the children had no safety and stability.”

The children’s biological parents were married at the time of incident, but the mother began living with Pritchard while the father was serving in Iraq with the Army Reserves.

“While my husband was serving his country in Iraq, they were supposed to protect the children while he was gone,” the stepmother said.

The children’s paternal grandfather began to read a written statement but had to have his wife take over when he was overcome with emotion.

“You, Aron Pritchard, made the choice to deliver terror and horror into their lives,” she said. “No amount of time that you spend repaying your debt to society will repay the damage.”

A jury convicted Pritchard on March 7 of one count each of child abuse and aggravated child endangerment. The 124-month sentence was the maximum, including 55 months for child abuse to run consecutively with seven months for endangerment and then doubled.

Pritchard’s public defender, Sarah McKinnon, asked Rome for a lighter sentence, saying Pritchard had been “exemplary” in his cooperation with detectives.

“I would remind the court there were mitigating circumstances in this case and not let those circumstances get buried in the emotional content,” she said.

Pritchard apologized in a brief statement to the court.

McKinnon asked that the case be set for appeal, which would normally allow Pritchard to stay out of jail. But Rome also imposed a $1 million bond, double what Reno County District Attorney Keith Schroeder requested.

Prosecutors claimed Pritchard put the children in the dryer as punishment after the boy wet his pants. But defense attorneys claimed it was a game that got out of hand and that Pritchard remembered playing in dryers with his siblings growing up.

Pritchard fled after being found guilty and was found a couple days later at a Stafford County hospital. He had shaved his head and his eyebrows.