An Anacortes man who was accused of raping an underage girl on North Whidbey and video recording the abuse is also facing 20 other sex crime charges in Skagit County Superior Court, according to court documents.
The Skagit County Prosecutor’s Office charged 28-year-old Matthew Knight with five counts of rape of a child in the second degree, seven counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and eight counts of possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct in the second degree.
All of the crimes allegedly occurred in June of last year with the same victim.
In the Whidbey Island case, prosecutors charged Knight in Island County Superior Court July 2 with a single count of rape of a child in the second degree.
According to a report by an Oak Harbor police officer, the 13-year-old victim called 911 from the McDonald’s on June 29 to report that Knight had stolen her phone and that he was “a pedophile.” The officer had previously handled a runaway case in which the victim’s friend claimed that Knight was having sex with the victim and providing her with meth.
The girl showed an officer videos on her phone of Knight raping her, the report states.
Several days before, on June 26, an officer at the Anacortes Police Department conducted a traffic stop on Knight’s car and found the child was with him. The report states that Burlington Police had contacted the two sleeping together a few weeks earlier. In addition, the girl’s guardians also had reported to police that they were concerned Knight was sexually involved with her and that he may have been giving her methamphetamine, the report states.
The Anacortes police obtained a search warrant on his cell phone and asked a special agent with Homeland Security to help with extracting the videos.
The police report states that the videos showed Knight raping the girl multiple times.