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A Mercer County jury found Johnathon H.L. Grove, Columbus, guilty of first-degree felony rape and 40 other felony sex crimes.
CELINA - A jury of 12 in Mercer County Common Pleas Court Thursday found a 44-year-old Columbus man guilty of first-degree felony rape and 40 other felony sex crimes for grooming, raping and taking sexually explicit images of a Fort Recovery girl over a two-year period beginning when she was 12.
It took the jury less than two hours to reach the verdicts after a four-day trial. Specifically, they found Johnathon H.L. Grove guilty of 29 counts of illegal use of a minor or impaired person in nudity-oriented material or performance, a second-degree felony; guilty of one count of importuning, a third-degree felony; guilty of one count of importuning, a fifth-degree felony; guilty of four counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, a third-degree felony; guilty of one count of rape, a first-degree felony; guilty of four counts of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, a fourth-degree felony; and guilty of one count of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, a fifth-degree felony.
He now faces at most life in prison and a fine of $510,000.
Mercer County prosecutors over the course of the trial explained that due to circumstances out of the child's control, including her father that suffered from alcoholism and drug addiction, and her estranged mother that later died by suicide, she was left vulnerable and starved of attention. Assistant county prosecutor Peter Galyardt said Grove knew this, and took advantage of it for "his own sexual desires."
Grove met the then 12-year-old girl in late 2020 through his daughter, also 12, and quickly began a correspondence with her via Facebook direct messages and video chats.
The messages quickly became sexually inappropriate, with Grove encouraging the minor to look up various pornography websites, sending her images with text alluding to the act of rape and soliciting sex from her multiple times, the girl testified during the trial.
As well, the video chats, sometimes lasting as long as two hours, commonly involved nudity and masturbation at Grove's request, the girl told the jury. Unbeknownst to her at the time, Grove took 32 sexually explicit screenshots of their video calls and saved them on two hard drives.
The girl's dad found their messages a couple of months later in 2020, and the relationship slowed because he began monitoring her online activity closer, Galyardt told the jury.
However, the messages and calls between the two continued, and on Dec. 1, 2022, the pair eventually met in person at the girl's home in Fort Recovery, she testified. The meeting involved multiple sexual encounters between the two. During one of the encounters, the girl testified that she, then 14 years old, told Grove to stop several times and physically tried to push him away, but he did not.
The two continued to communicate for about five days following the meeting, again sharing sexually explicit messages and video chats that involved nudity and masturbation. The minor contacted Grove on a phone he gave her while in Fort Recovery, which he had told her to keep hidden.
A year later, in 2023, the girl and her dad were made aware of and provided the two hard drives containing sexually explicit images of her at 12-14 years old by two of Grove's former roommates.
They promptly handed them over to law enforcement, and Grove was arrested on one count of first-degree felony rape by Columbus police on Dec. 24, 2023. He was then transported to the Mercer County Adult Detention Facility on Jan. 4, 2024, where he has been held on a $500,000 bond since.
Following further investigation, a superseding indictment was filed against Grove for the 41 charges in June 2024. A superseding indictment is a criminal complaint brought by a grand jury that changes, adds to or replaces an original indictment.
Grove was represented in court by his appointed counsel Andrea Henning of Lima. She was his third attorney during the duration of the case, as he was briefly represented by public defender Thomas Lucente Jr., then public defender Kirk McVay.
In her defense, Henning did not challenge the basic facts of the case. Her cross-examinations were brief and mainly focused on the girl being a willful participant of the pair's correspondence and sexual encounters.
Both in her opening statement and closing argument, Henning underscored that the trial was about the facts of what happened and not about "emotion or moral outrage."
"We do not believe the evidence supports a conviction on the charge of rape, and urge you to instead consider the lesser included charge of sexual battery," Henning said in her closing statement.
Just before the jury left to deliberate, county prosecutor Erin Minor said that whether or not the minor was a willing participant has no relevance or bearing under law.
"I want you to take a look at the exhibits when you're back in the jury room, because Mr. Grove gave it as much as he got it in this relationship," she said.
She also called the jury's attention back to Grove's two recorded interviews with county sheriff's office detective Doug Wuebker, in which he made the minor out to be the aggressor.
"(To him), he was the victim, and (she) was the perpetrator," Minor said. "In fact, in his interview he said numerous times that he was used, he was manipulated, he got played, he was preyed upon. Having sex with (the girl) was a traumatic experience for him, and that he was made to feel like a notch on her belt. Well, Mr. Grove is living in a fantasy land of his own creation. A fantasy land where young girls throw themselves at him."
Grove's sentencing hearing is set for Aug. 14.
