A judge reluctantly approved a 13-year term Wednesday for a man who admitted breaking into a pair of Hammond homes looking for money and sexually assaulting one woman.

Jahmal Sanders, now 26, pleaded guilty on June 6 to rape and burglary, both level 3 felonies, according to court records. The deal called for two 13-year sentences to be served consecutively.

Judge Salvador Vasquez asked both sides’ lawyers what happened with the case, since it appeared Sanders had a 20-year plea on deck last fall that was scuttled.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Tara Villarreal said her understanding was that Sanders felt his last lawyer “forced” him to enter the plea agreement, so it never went forward.

Court records show the deal was filed Sept. 15, and defense lawyer Adrian Guzman requested to withdraw from the case the next day, citing a “breakdown” in their attorney-client relationship.

Defense lawyer Lonnie Randolph II, who was subsequently appointed, said he revisited a deal with prosecutors.

There were “evidentiary issues” with the rape case and prosecutors had not been able to reach the victim to personally inform her of the deal, Villarreal said.

Federal prosecutors indicted Sanders on possessing a gun as a felon and marijuana possession, according to court records. He would have to deal with it once the county case was closed, Randolph said.

That was part of the reason Supervisory Deputy Prosecutor Michelle Jatkiewicz approved the shorter plea sentence, Randolph added. It was possibly that a deal with two level 3 felonies — with a 3 to 16-year term — would have came out to about the same if they ran consecutively, the lawyer said.

The prospect of approving a single sentence for two victims was a “difficult one,” Vasquez said.

A “2-for-1″ deal was something he “rarely, rarely” did, he said. The fact that the rape victim would be spared from having to “bare her soul ... in front of a bunch of strangers” made it a little more tolerable, he said.

“What you did was horrible,” he told Sanders.

Randolph said 13 years was a “significant” sentence and Sanders’ four young kids would suffer from his absence. His client also had no substance abuse treatment since he started using drugs and alcohol at age 13, asking the judge if he could get prison services.

Sanders apologized in court for his role.

Vasquez said he knew Sanders since he cycled through the criminal justice system at 18, saying it was “horrible” how he “regressed.”

You “really deserve more,” he said, before accepting the deal.

Hammond Police officers were sent to the 6600 block of California Avenue on Dec. 30, 2019, during a string of robberies that evening. The woman there said she’d been sleeping when she woke up and found a man in her home.

She told police that he sexually battered her before taking her daughter’s piggy bank money, her cellphone and e-reader, court records said.

Detectives on Jan. 6, 2020 took items and evidence from a rape kit taken from the victim to the Indiana State Police Crime lab in Lowell for analysis, according to a probable cause affidavit. A match to Sanders came back Feb. 5, 2020, records said.

Another woman accused Sanders of breaking into her house while she slept on Nov. 5, 2020, according to court documents.

“Where’s the money? Where’s the money,” he demanded, according to court documents.

When she said she didn’t have any, he pulled her by her feet off the bed and punched her in the face at least three times, documents allege. She ran out to a neighbor’s house.