A girl dressed in a flowered skirt and black shoes with little bows left the Butler County Courtroom in tears Tuesday.

But those delicate details were deceptive: This is one tough girl.

After being sexually assaulted in her own bed at age 12, the girl stood guard on a dresser with a bottle of hairspray prepared to fight off the assaulter if he returned to touch her twin sister.

Then, she braved numerous embarrassing and uncomfortable medical and court proceedings.

And she faced her attacker in court Tuesday.

Manuel Robert Moreno, 36, of Mechanicsburg pleaded no contest to statutory sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault. Butler County Judge William Shaffer on Tuesday sentenced him to 5 to 15 years in state prison.

Although a no contest plea does not acknowledge guilt, Moreno apologized during his sentencing hearing and promised to never revisit the family.

But the now 13-year-old victim and her family took no stock in Moreno’s sincerity.

“He’s only sorry because this little girl was brave enough to stand up to him,” said the girl’s aunt, whose own 14-year-old daughter killed herself in 2009 while waiting to testify that she’d been sexually assaulted. That girl’s assaulter is serving a 5-to-10 year prison sentence.

“That’s one of the reasons I was so worried when this happened,” said the girl’s mother, who acknowledged that she broke her own hand trying to get into Moreno’s car to confront him when she found out he was the suspect.

Initially, the family didn’t know who assaulted the girl on Dec. 5, 2012. She had been asleep in her bed. She held her eyes closed and pretended she was sleeping.

Afterward, she stood guard outside her sister’s room with the hairspray until an alarm went off in her mother’s bedroom.

“I was on the dresser so I was right at the height his eyes would be,” she said of the attack she planned. “I just knew he would come back.”

Ironically, Moreno did return and the girl squirted him. But at that time, she still believed he was a trusted family friend and then confided to her mother what had happened. Together, they went to Butler Memorial Hospital where the attacker’s DNA was collected from a rape kit.

Moreno, who spent the night at the family’s house to care for the girl’s mother who had the flu, denied being the attacker. And the family initially had no reason to doubt him.

He’d been a close family friend for more than two decades and was dating the victim’s mother at the time this happened. Moreno had spent a lot of time with her family, living with the victim’s grandparents at one time earlier.

He had a good job as a pipe fitter. And he was always fun hunting, camping and organizing sporting events, like volleyball matches, among friends. He coached his own daughter’s soccer team, and entwined his children as part of the girl’s family.

“I trusted him more than any man I’d ever trusted in my life,” the girl’s mother said.

The mother said when her daughter disclosed the assault, investigators right away said the attacker was probably someone in the house at the time, either Moreno or one of her teenaged sons.

But she had a hard time believing that, and cast suspicious glances at different males who visited her home.

That was until DNA on a cigarette Moreno smoked matched the DNA in the rape kit. The results were enough for police to get a search warrant that allowed them to collect a DNA sample from Moreno, who had left the area. Moreno’s DNA matched the DNA found on the girl.

The girl’s mother said it took months to arrest Moreno, and in that time all of her children lived in fear of not knowing who the attacker was.

“The 5 to 15 year sentence is nowhere near long enough for the lifetime of scars he caused,” said the mother, who promised to personally notify adults who live near Moreno when he is paroled.

Although Moreno must register his whereabouts with state police when he is paroled, a member of the state’s Sexual Offender Assessment Board determined he does not meet the criteria to be deemed a sexually violent predator.

The victim’s father, aunt and other family members attended the court hearing in her support.

“I feel foolish, tricked, ashamed embarrassed and completely disgusted and gross inside for ever loving him,” the mother said in a statement to the judge.

“If he tricked this family into thinking he was a great respectable loving fun man only to deceive us to sexually assault my precious daughter, he can fool anyone.”