Editor’s note: This article is updated from the printed article in the March 29 edition.

Enumclaw resident Kenneth Ray Bishop has pled guilty to sexual assault of a child nearly three years after being charged in Lewis County.

Bishop was originally charged with two counts of first-degree child molestation in July 2020 and pled not guilty.

He officially changed his plea to guilty on Feb. 28; charges were dropped from child molestation to one count third degree assault of a child and one count assault in the fourth degree with sexual motivation.

His sentence of two months incarceration and a year of community custody (parole) was handed down March 29

The court case focused on an incident in 2010, though it was only revealed three years later when the grandmother of the child involved found and read her diary, which contained entries about Bishop.

When interviewed by law enforcement, the child described at least three occasions when Bishop touched her inappropriately while he was dating the child’s mother, from being kissed on the lips, “dry humping”, and other non-penetrative sexual contact.

However, the child “refused to disclose details and the investigation was suspended,” court documents read — that is, until a detective interviewed three other potential young victims of Bishop’s in 2019, prompting the case to be re-opened. According to the prosecuting attorney, these other alleged victims have no connection to the child involved in this case.

Bishop “denied any inappropriate touching,” court documents continued, but “admitted there may have been a time when [the child] was straddling him, playing on the floor.”

Two of the other incidents that prompted Lewis County officials to re-open the case were allegations from 1992; Bishop was charged in ‘93 with two counts of child molestation and rape, but charges were later dropped sometime later in part because one of the women recanted her story.

The woman told detectives in 2019 that she recanted “to make it all go away”.

A third complaint came from Enumclaw in June 2016, when an out-of-state visitor at the Guesthouse Inn reported to local police that Bishop was acting inappropriately with a young girl. It was later revealed that the girl in question was one of his young daughters, and Bishop and his family were staying at the inn due to a house fire.

No charges were filed in this incident.