PHILADELPHIA - A homeless man who tried to rape an 8-year-old girl and left her for dead in the bathroom of a Center City library has been sentenced to 35 to 70 years in prison.

Brian McCutchen, pleaded guilty last year to attempted murder, attempted rape and related crimes for the Feb. 7, 2004 attack at the Independence Branch of the Free Library.

The girl was found unconscious and partially undressed, wedged between a toilet and a wall. She was hospitalized in critical condition.

"The violence of this crime is unspeakable. No words can describe what this little girl went through ... It was an unfinished murder," Assistant District Attorney Deborah Harley told the judge.

"As soon as this little girl screamed, he grabbed her neck and squeezed what he thought was the life out of her. And then, when she was limp, he pulled down his pants, and pulled down her pants, and tried to rape her," Harley said.

Harley said the girl, now 9, continues to be unable to dress and feed herself and is afraid to be alone.

McCutchen cried as he addressed Common Pleas Court Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe, apologizing for his crime and asking for treatment.

Dembe ordered McCutchen into sex-offender treatment in prison, and to spend 10 years on probation after his release.

"He is horrifyingly dangerous to small, female children," Dembe said. "I need to make sure he can never do this again."

McCutchen had served six months for a July 2000 attack on a 9-year-old girl in a public restroom, and he had been repeatedly kicked out of libraries for viewing pornography on the Internet and exposing himself.