A 48-year-old Upper Keys man will serve a mandatory life sentence after being convicted Friday of sexually abusing two juvenile family members during the summer of 2007.

It took a Plantation Key jury three hours of deliberations to find Genaro Ferro guilty of two counts of molestation and two counts of sexual battery against the two girls, who were 6 and 8 when the incidents took place.

Courtroom witnesses said Ferro bowed his head as the guilty sentence was read. Moments later, as he was about to be handcuffed, Assistant State Attorney Angie Torrents heard him say, "May God forgive you all," she told The Citizen.

Chief Assistant Public Defender Michael Strickland said Ferro will appeal but declined to comment further on the trial or verdict, which came at the end of a five-day trial.

The state's star witnesses were the girls, who testified via closed circuit camera that Ferro molested them during the summer of 2007. The younger girl testified about one specific incident during a Labor Day weekend visit to Harry Harris Park.

Jurors also heard testimony from Ferro's now grown stepdaughter, who said he sexually abused her, too, while she was in elementary and middle school.

"I guess I thought he was just doing it to me," the stepdaughter said. "I never would have thought he was doing it to someone else."

Ferro still must face a felony charge stemming from her allegations.

Prosecutors relied heavily on the testimony of the two girls and Ferro's stepdaughter, in part because they had no physical evidence to fall back on.

Strickland seized on the apparent weakness in the state's case.

"The only thing that exists are bare allegations," he said.

Strickland called two witnesses to testify on behalf of Ferro. But his star witness was the accused himself. Dressed in a three-piece navy blue suit on Wednesday afternoon, Ferro repeatedly told jurors he never touched the girls in an inappropriate manner.

Asked about recorded September 2007 phone calls in which the older girl accused him of doing just that, Ferro said he was taken aback.

"I was at a loss, because I didn't know why they were saying that," he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

Ferro also denied perpetrating any sexual abuse on his stepdaughter. He said he was shocked by her charges, and said his best guess was that she was making them in retaliation for his decision to kick her out of the house after she married a black man while away on military duty.

Ferro acknowledged that on one occasion his mouth came in contact with the chest of the older girl. But it was an accident, he explained, and happened when the girl turned in his direction while he was using his tongue to playfully tickle her under her armpit.

Assistant State Attorney Colleen Dunne seized upon that admission during closing comments, and as Ferro repeatedly shook his head, she sought to connect the girls' testimony back to that of his stepdaughter.

"As the defendant stated himself, 'I loved these girls as if they were my daughters,' " she said. "He certainly did."

After the trial, Dunne credited the conviction to the believability of the girls' testimony.

"When you consider the tender ages of these girls, 6 and 8, what they described was very graphic," she said. "These girls had never been exposed to activity such that they described."

rsilk@keysnews.com