A man who photographed his former fiancee's 10-year-old daughter more than 100 times - several times provocatively - was sentenced yesterday to 3½ to 7 years in prison on child endangerment charges.

It was the maximum sentence possible.

Luis Lopez, 31, knew the girl watched the television show America's Next Top Model and coerced her into posing for his cell phone camera, telling her all models started that way, Merrimack County prosecutor Ashlie Hooper told superior court Judge Kenneth Brown yesterday.

Then Lopez warned the girl that if she ever reported him, she'd be taken away from her family and never allowed to see them again, Hooper said. The girl, now 13, kept the secret until her mother discovered the photos on Lopez's phone in September 2007 and called the Concord police.

Lopez and the woman are no longer together. In court yesterday, the girl asked her grandmother to read a statement she'd written.

"Luis took my dignity and some of my personality, and I can't get it back," the statement said. "I have anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. People should get second chances. But when you mess with children, that's a problem."

Brown agreed. "There are certain crimes that in my mind I feel deeply about, and one is taking advantage of a child in your household. Those pictures spoke volumes," he said.

Of the 116 photos discovered, the most serious showed the girl in lingerie, her bra and underwear, and at times with her buttocks and a breast exposed, according to court records.

Lopez was convicted by a Merrimack County jury in July of seven misdemeanor counts of child endangerment and one felony count of child endangerment.

At the time, none of the photos qualified for child pornography charges, Hooper said. But those showing the girl's bare buttocks would qualify now because the law has been rewritten, she said.

Jurors acquitted Lopez of two more serious charges after his July trial: attempted felonious sexual assault and attempted sexual assault. Those charges alleged Lopez asked to touch the girl and asked the girl to touch him. Lopez was never accused of actually touching the girl sexually.

At yesterday's sentencing in Merrimack County Superior Court, Lopez's attorney, Andrew Winters, asked Brown for a two- to five-year prison sentence on the felony, which is just short of the maximum 3½ to seven years possible. He also asked for suspended sentences on the misdemeanor counts.

"I'm not saying he exercised good judgment," Winters said. "Or that his conduct was anything but highly regrettable. But it's out of character for him, according to his family. And while he was on (bail) he had no violation reports."

Winters said the state's request for the maximum sentence seemed to factor in those serious charges for which Lopez was acquitted. After court, Winters said he and Lopez have not decided whether to ask for a sentence review.

Brown did agree to suspend one year of Lopez's 3½- to seven-year minimum if he successfully completes the prison's sex offender treatment program. He also suspended the misdemeanor sentences.

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