A Sandy Lake Township man will spend 1èto 3 years in prison for trespassing into a woman’s barn and having sex with her sheep.

James Alan Stiver, 46, formerly of 11 Booher Road, accepted a plea deal July 20 for felony trespassing and sex with an animal, and was sentenced Friday by Mercer County Common Pleas Judge Christopher J. St. John. Charges of animal cruelty were dropped.

The victim, who owned the sheep and whose barn Stiver entered at 9 or 10 p.m. Jan. 11, attended the hearing but did not speak. She did provide a statement, which described the emotional toll on her and her daughter.

Assistant District Attorney Brian Farrone said people in the community talked about it, embarrassing the victims, and they’re concerned because Stiver does not live far away.

“If he could have done this to animals, what could he have done to us?” the victim said in the statement.

Stiver said that he was walking home from a Stoneboro bar and had drunk about 30 cans of beer between the bar and the walk home. He claimed no memory of the crime, so he entered an Alford plea, which does not require him to admit details of the crime.

Apologetic in court, Stiver said, “I’d like to make my most sincerest apologies to the victim and her daughter.” He said his time in jail has reaffirmed his religious beliefs and he has been reading the Bible.

“Ecclesiastes says that evil loves the darkness and that it has to be brought out into the light,” Stiver said. He said with his crimes in the light, he can work on his problems with alcohol.

St. John questioned Stiver on whether the incident with the lamb was his first time having sex with animals.

“This was not your first time in the barn with the animals, is it?” St. John asked.

In the victim’s impact statement, she said other sheep had been found dead or injured and clothing had been found in the lamb’s pen in months prior to the crime.

Stiver denied any other encounters with the sheep. He said that intoxication would be the only way he could have had sex with the sheep, and denied having done it in the past.

The victim, whom police said had put a baby monitor in the barn because she suspected someone was staying there, described hearing the monitor the night of Jan. 11. “I heart a lamb crying like it was in pain. I will never forget that cry.”

She found Stiver in the barn with the lamb. “He insisted that the lambs where his friends and were keeping him warm,” she said. He also allegedly told her he was homeless and if she turned out the lights and left, he would be gone in five minutes.

The victim called police, who picked up Stiver walking home. They said his pants were undone and he had blood on his pants, underwear and genitals.