Guilty on all counts: Knudsen faces up to 80 years after conviction

“We are here because two children decided to tell. They told again and told again and told again.”
 
Grundy County Attorney Erika Allen uttered these words during her closing statements to the jury in the trial of Paul Ryan Knudsen, a 39-year-old rural Cedar Falls man who was convicted of three counts of Third Degree Sexual Abuse and one count of Lascivious Conduct with a Minor on Monday afternoon after a four day trial in Grundy Center. He now faces up to 80 years in prison.
 
The 12-member jury, comprised of five men and seven women, reached its verdict in less than an hour as Judge Joel Dalrymple oversaw the case, and State Assistant Attorney General Keisha Cretsinger worked with Allen on the prosecution.
 
Attorneys Michael Bandy and Troy Powell represented Knudsen, who remained stone-faced throughout most of the testimony before finally breaking down and embracing his wife, Shelly, when he learned of the conviction.
 
The prosecution called a total of six witnesses to the stand: Grundy County Deputies Ron Tordoff and BJ Jorgenson, Anna Kalkhoff of the Department of Human Services, former Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Rebecca Duffy, and the two victims.
 
The two victims, one male and one female, gave teary-eyed testimony against Knudsen, describing how he engaged in sex acts with them and forced them to engage in sex acts with each other over several years, spanning from 2009 to 2014, while they were both under the age of 18.
 
Read more in this week's Grundy Register.