ST. LOUIS - The crime was horrific: A mother rented her 9-year-old daughter to an Illinois pedophile to molest, charging him $20 each time.

But when U.S. District Judge Charles A. Shaw sentenced the St. Louis woman to 17 years in prison, an appeals court worried he hadn't understood he could give her less time behind bars. So he reduced the sentence.

Now the case is back in his hands with a new instruction: 10 years isn't enough.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals on Monday threw out the shorter sentence, saying the crime deserved a longer sentence.

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

The mother allowed Joe J. Champion of Granite City, Ill., to molest her daughter more than 200 times - sometimes holding her daughter down, according to court records.

"The factors of this case are no less than horrifying," Judge William Jay Riley wrote in the appellate panel's unanimous opinion.

The girl was first molested by Champion in the late 1990s, and it was years before she reported the crimes.

Champion, now 58, 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 sentenced to 17 1/2 years in prison - the minimum indicated under federal sentencing guidelines.

She appealed, and an 8th Circuit panel of judges sent the case back to Judge Shaw, saying he might have given her a lighter sentence if he'd known he wasn't bound by the guidelines. A January 2005 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court loosened the nearly 20-year-old mandatory guideline system, making it merely advisory.

But the appellate panel didn't specify a sentence, and Shaw then sentenced the woman to 10 years, saying mental problems and drug addiction had influenced her behavior. The judge also noted that she'd taken parenting classes, had vocational training and gotten her GED while in prison.

Prosecutors appealed that sentence, claiming it was too light and the judge's reasoning was flawed.

The appeals judges agreed, finding the woman's efforts to rehabilitate herself neither "lessen the horrendous treatment" of her daughter, nor indicate that she wouldn't again offer her daughter to an abuser for money.

The girl was molested as often as twice a week, according to court records.

The daughter testified that her mother sometimes sat on the toilet in their home and held the girl against her lap for Champion; on other occasions, her mother lay beside her in bed during the molestation, according to court documents.

Authorities said the girl, who was 16 when Champion pleaded guilty, reported the crimes only after seeing a movie the previous year on the Lifetime cable network about sexual abuse of children.

Champion is expected to be released from prison in 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

Judge Shaw has not yet rescheduled the woman's case, his office said Tuesday.

Kevin Schriener, the mother's attorney, said Tuesday he would ask for a rehearing of the appeal.