BANGOR – A Patten man described by friends and family as kind, considerate, caring and generous was sentenced Monday in Penobscot County Superior Court to 15 years in prison with all but 11 years suspended for sexually assaulting a female family member for a decade.

Kirby G. Williams Sr., 54, also was sentenced to six years of probation and ordered to undergo sex offender treatment and to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Pending charges involving a second family victim are expected to be dropped.

Williams did not address the court and showed no emotion when his sentence was handed down by Superior Court Justice Thomas D. Warren.

The victim, who is now 31 and lives in the South, did not attend the sentencing. She testified at the trial that the abuse began when she was 5 or 6 in 1986 and continued until she was 15 or 16, Deputy District Attorney Michael Roberts said Monday.

The abuse began with fondling and escalated over the years to sexual intercourse that began when she was about 12.

The case had the oldest beginning date of abuse that has ever been prosecuted in Penobscot County, Roberts said.

Williams maintains his innocence and will appeal the conviction and sentence to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, his attorney, Walter McKee of Augusta, said after the 90-minute sentencing hearing.

“Obviously this is a very significant sentence,” McKee said. “We intend to appeal the conviction and the sentence and will seek a retrial.”

McKee did not become involved in the case until after the verdict was announced. He was hired after Williams dismissed the Bangor attorney who defended him during the trial.

The judge ordered that Williams be held without bail pending the outcome of the appeal.

About half a dozen people spoke in support of Williams, a former millworker who owned a pawn shop in Patten for many years and was active in his church and licensed as a foster parent.

Gretchen O’Hara of Sheridan said that she was one of those foster children.

“I met them when I was 17 years old and it was like a ‘Leave It to Beaver’ family,” she said. “I was a troubled foster kid. I was saved in their living room and they showed me the ways of the Lord. My children think of him as a grandfather.”

The defendant broke down and wept as O’Hara, now married and the mother of three, described how Williams had helped her turn her life around.

Williams was found guilty in January on eight counts of gross sexual misconduct and two counts of gross sexual assault after a jury trial in Penobscot County Superior Court in Bangor. He was found not guilty on two counts of gross sexual assault.

The jury deliberated for about 51/2 hours over two days after 11/2 days of testimony.

Williams’ son, Kirby G. Williams Jr., 30, of Patten is expected to plead guilty on June 29 in Penobscot County Superior Court to charges of sexual abuse of a minor. The case involves the same victim the elder Williams was charged with molesting in the case that will not go to trial, Roberts said.

The female victim in the second case decided after the trial that she did not want to pursue the charges against the elder Williams.

The abuse in the second case was alleged to have begun after the molestation of the first victim ended, according to the District Attorney’s Office.