A 28-year-old Lake Stevens man has been charged with two counts of first-degree child rape for alleged sexual contact with young children at his mother’s day care facility in Snohomish.
Charging papers filed by deputy prosecutor Janice Albert accuse Jeremy Blair Estep of having sex with 4- and 5-year-old children in the early 1990s. At the time, Estep was 16 or 17, Albert said.
He is being charged as an adult because he’s now an adult, Albert said. There is a long statute of limitations for sex crimes against children, she said.
The victims were a girl and a boy, Albert said.
When Snohomish police first talked to him, Estep said he had sexually abused two 5-year-old children in the early 1990s, but gave different names than those involved in these charges. Albert said police are now talking with other children besides the boy and girl.
"He said that although he is developmentally disabled, he knew what he did was wrong," Albert said.
Estep was being held on $50,000 bail.
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