A former Battle Ground business owner has received close to 22 years in prison after pleading guilty to child sex crimes.
On Jan. 14, Timothy Rowe, 40 was sentenced to 260 months after pleading guilty in Clark County Superior Court to charges of first-degree rape of a child, first and third-degree child molestation and one other felony charge.
Rowe pleaded guilty on Dec. 3. He faced a minimum 20-year sentence and up to life in prison, according to court documents.
Rowe first appeared in court for the charges in October 2019. He initially faced more than a dozen charges including commercial sex abuse of a minor along with rape, molestation and other charges.
Rowe agreed to a plea agreement for the four charges on Oct. 25, according to court records.
Court documents indicate there were three victims among the charges to which Rowe pleaded guilty. The abuse went back potentially as far as 2011, documents stated.
According to a probable cause affidavit for Rowe’s arrest, a friend of one of the victims had alerted a school counselor of the alleged abuse. According to the document, the victim had sexual contact with Rowe for the past several years. Following the friend’s alert, Child Protective Services and law enforcement got involved. Rowe was arrested on Oct. 22, 2019.
According to the affidavit, the victim estimated the abuse happened about once or twice a month for five years, beginning when the victim was between 9 and 11 years old.
Alleged abuse included oral sex and sexual intercourse, with some of the details listed in the affidavit describing incidents where the victim received money in return for the abuse.
In one instance, Rowe and the victim feared she had become pregnant as a result of the incidents, though a pregnancy test turned up negative, according to the affidavit. At the time the affidavit was filed, the latest incident happened within the prior week.
Rowe was the owner of Rowe Plumbing and Drain LLC at the time of his first court appearance.
