ST. LOUIS — A federal appeals court threw out the 10-year prison sentence of a woman who rented her nine-year-old daughter to a paedophile more than 200 times, saying the punishment was too lenient.The woman often held the girl down in their home while Joe J. Champion of Granite City, Illinois, molested her, according to court documents. Champion typically paid the mother $20.

The Associated Press is not naming the woman to protect her daughter’s identity.

“The factors of this case are no less than horrifying,” Judge William Jay Riley wrote in the unanimous opinion released Monday by a three-judge panel of the 8th US Court of Appeals.

Champion pleaded guilty in 2003 and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The woman, convicted in 2003 of aggravated sexual abuse and conspiring with Champion to help him molest the girl, was initially sentenced to 17 [1/2] years in prison — the minimum provided under federal sentencing guidelines.

She appealed, and an 8th Circuit panel of judges sent the case back to US District Judge Charles A. Shaw, saying he might have given her a lighter sentence if he had known he wasn’t bound by the guidelines.

A January 2005 decision by the US Supreme Court loosened the nearly 20-year-old mandatory guideline system, making it merely advisory.

Shaw then sentenced the woman to 10 years, saying mental problems and drug addiction had influenced her behaviour.

The judge also noted that she’d taken parenting classes, had vocational training and gotten her GED while in prison.