A North Shelby firefighter was sentenced Wednesday to seven consecutive life sentences plus 20 years in prison for raping and sodomizing young girls.

John Allen Knight, 39, said nothing as he was taken away in handcuffs.

In September, a jury convicted Knight of producing child pornography, three counts of first-degree rape, three counts of sodomy and one count of sexual torture.

The jury returned the verdict after deliberating for two and a half hours. The judge in the case, Circuit Judge Teresa Petelos, was forced to cover the windows of her courtroom because evidence presented by the prosecution was so graphic in nature.

According to information presented during the trial, investigators were able to recover thousands of pornographic images involving children from a number of computers Knight had access to.

The charges brought against him stem from incidents that occured between Jan. 1996 and Sept. 2004 involving a number of girls in Jefferson County.

After the sentence, the victims and their families hugged one another.

The incidents in question are believed to have taken place in Bessemer from Jan. 1996 to Sept. 2004. The victims are now 15 and 17