A church janitor in Minnesota who pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct of a teenage girl over a two-year span was sentenced on Thursday to 365 days in the Freeborn County jail and supervised probation for up to 15 years.
35-year-old Matthew Ryan Estes was sentenced June 30 on two counts of felony 3rd-degree criminal sexual conduct. A third count of the same was dropped as part of a plea deal.
Estes will serve one year in the Freeborn County Jail with credit for six days already served. A four-year prison sentence was stayed for 15 years. Estes will remain on probation supervised by the Minnesota Department of Corrections for 5 to 15 years. He has also been ordered to undergo a complete psychosexual evaluation and is not allowed contact with the victim and her family. Estes must also have no contact with minors, except for supervised contact with his children or relatives.
Court documents say the 13-year-old victim met Estes at the church where her mother worked. The girl offered to babysit for Estes and his wife, who was pregnant. Investigators say Estes sexually assaulted the victim more than 100 times over the course of two years.
According to the court complaint, the victim told police their relationship started as a father-figure type relationship, but after a while things became sexual. The victim said Estes would not pay for her babysitting other than with nicotine or sex and that he would tell her that when she was 18, he would leave his wife and they would get married.
As part of the sentence, Judge Ross Leuning ordered Estes to register as a predatory offender and that he have no unsupervised contact with minor or vulnerable adults, among other conditions.
Tell us your thoughts...