A former California teacher is spending the first nights of what will be rest of his life in federal prison after being sentenced for travelling overseas to have sex with young girls.

Robert Ruben Ornelas, a 66-year-old Santa Ana, Calif. man prosecutors say has a history dating back to the 1960s of abusing children, was sentenced on Monday to 190 years in prison -- the maximum sentence allowed by law. Federal prosecutors had asked U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney for the maximum sentence, and the judge agreed. In sending Ornelas away for the rest of his life the judge noted that he had molested children in a “cruel manner” and that he had demonstrated a complete disregard for his victims’ humanity.

“This sentence should serve as a powerful deterrent to child predators who mistakenly believe the internet and a plane ticket will enable them to indulge their perverse desires with impunity,” Joseph Macias, Homeland Security special agent in Los Angeles said in a statement after Ornelas was sentenced.

Ornelas recorded his assaults on video

The sentencing comes after Ornelas was convicted in November of producing child pornography and other counts. During his trial prosecutors told jurors and produced evidence that showed that Ornelas had traveled to the Philippines at least three times where he sexually assaulted two girls who were as young as eight-years-old. Prosecutors say Ornelas recorded the assaults on video and brought the videos back with him when he returned the U.S.

The two girls who were victimized by Ornelas travelled from the Philippines to testify during his trial. They also appeared at his sentencing where, according to prosecutors, one of the girls told the judge, “Why did I meet this person? He destroyed my dreams.”

Ornelas had also worked in a daycare center

Ornelas was a teacher in the Santa Ana Unified School District, a district about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles and one of the largest school districts in California, from 1992 to 2003.

Authorities say he also coached a local girls’ softball team while he was a teacher and also worked at a daycare facility for about a decade.

The FBI and Homeland Security agents began investigating Ornelas in 2013 when they received a tip from his relatives that he had large amounts of child pornography. When investigators served a search warrant they found images and videos of child pornography on his computer and other digital devices.

The Los Angeles Times reports that some of the images resulted in charges that he had molested a young relative.

Though the actions of Ornelas are particularly shocking and egregious, especially because they involve young children, his sentencing comes as charges and convictions against teachers seem to be making the news every few months. In February, a 35-year-old male teacher at a Washington, D.C. charter school was arrested for allegedly having sex with with two female students and one male student over a period between August through February. Though authorities did not release the ages of the students involved, the school where the teacher worked teaches students between pre-school and the fifth grade.

Also in January, a former Texas teacher, 24-year-old Alexandria Vera was sentenced to ten years in prison after being convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old boy who attended the Houston middle school where she taught.