OROVILLE, Calif. -- A man who sexually tortured and burned a woman he kept drugged in his motor home for more than a week in 2005 has been sentenced to 16 years in prison. Joseph Robert Hendrix, 43, of Oroville, burned the woman's flesh with cigarettes and cigars and burned her cervix with a homemade electrical device, prosecutors said. When the woman woke and discovered her wounds were infected, he choked her unconscious, prosecutors say. He allowed a relative to drive her to a clinic only when he feared she might die. By then, the woman, who is in her 30s, had gone into septic shock. The victim sobbed as Hendrix was sentenced Wednesday. Prosecutor Elizabeth Norton called Hendrix a "sexual sadist" and said it was the worst case of cruelty to another human being she had seen, short of murder. Hendrix's attorney, Jesus Rodriguez, said his client had a long history of drug abuse.
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