Grove sentenced to 100+ years

CELINA - A 44-year-old Columbus man convicted of first-degree felony rape, along with 40 other child sex crimes against a preteen girl from Fort Recovery, was sentenced to over a century in prison on Thursday in Mercer County Common Pleas Court.

Johnathon H.L. Grove was sentenced to between 1041/2 years and 108 years in prison with 589 days credit for time served on 29 counts of illegal use of a minor or impaired person in nudity-oriented material or performance, a second-degree felony; one count of importuning, a third-degree felony; one count of importuning, a fifth-degree felony; four counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, a third-degree felony; one count of rape, a first-degree felony; four counts of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, a fourth-degree felony; and one count of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, a fifth-degree felony.

He is also required to register as a tier III sex offender every 90 days, if released, for life.

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 video chats, sometimes lasting as long as two hours, also commonly involved nudity and masturbation at Grove's request. 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 father found their messages a couple of months later in 2020, and the relationship slowed because he began monitoring her online activity more closely.

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. 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 briefly following the meeting, again sharing sexually explicit messages and video chats that involved nudity and masturbation, on a phone Grove gave the girl and told her to keep hidden.

Prosecutors maintain that due to circumstances out of the child's control, including a father that suffered from addiction, and an estranged mother that eventually 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."

His sentence was more than double the 50 years that prosecutors asked for, which common pleas judge Matthew K. Fox attributed to Grove's consistent lack of remorse.

"I have remorse for a lot of things I've done in my life, but normally there's some arguments, things I shouldn't have said to people … so I have remorse for things, but to and after my dying day, I have no remorse for being accused of rape because I didn't rape her," Grove said prior to his sentencing. "I know what the words, 'Stop,' 'No,' or 'Don't do that,' mean. And I've had friends who've been raped."

Grove again asserted that he only kept up with the girl and "played along" with her alleged sexual advances because he said she was reportedly being physically abused by her father and he wanted to be someone she could trust.

Authorities investigated Grove's claims of her dad being physically abusive and found no evidence to support it.

"Her father lost custody of her for reasons that I came out here to check on her for," Grove continued on Wednesday. "I've called Fort Recovery Police. They said that she was old enough that she can press charges on her dad without any help. So yes, I have remorse because I believed her. I cared for her deeply. I didn't want to see her hurt more than she was already. You don't hurt people you love and care about, that's how I grew up, is to help people not to hurt them, but to respect them. I'm not the monster prosecutors made me out to be."

Despite his continuous use of the word remorse, Fox said Grove showed no genuine signs of it throughout the case.

"You have made statements in the pre-sentence investigation. You have made statements today. You have made statements throughout this case that shift blame to the victim and that demonstrate a complete lack of remorse," Fox said. "And the court does not find that you lack intelligence. Your victim blaming has been continuous and inappropriate. Your lack of remorse has been continuous and inappropriate."

The significant prison term was imposed as a direct result of Grove's continued refusal to assume any culpability in his crimes, Fox reiterated.

"You have made statements like 'I am not a monster. I am not a rapist, I am not … whatever.'" Fox said. "When someone says, 'I am not a monster' or what you have said, it often means that they are indeed that thing, or at least don't want to be seen that way. That form of denial and avoidance of responsibility compels the court today to issue this significant prison sentence."

Following the hearing, county prosecutor Erin Minor said that she and Galyardt were both satisfied with the court's sentence.

"We were pleased. We didn't think he'd go that high … (but) we firmly believe that the sentence was warranted," she said, adding that Grove is either unwilling or unable to recognize what he did was wrong, which suggests he would do it again.

Grove, through his attorney, Andrea Henning of Lima, indicated that he plans to appeal his conviction, which he has the right to do within 30 days of final judgment.

However, Minor is not worried.

"I don't have any concerns about an appeal," she said. "The evidence was solid. The court's rulings were solid throughout the case."