Despite Rape Charges, Grove Man Allowed Around Children

Associated Press

GROVE, OK -- A 50-year-old northeastern Oklahoma man who faces charges of second-degree rape and child sexual abuse is being allowed be around children.

Tim Mountford has a preliminary hearing set for March and is free on $150,000 bail. A paternity test has indicated there is a 99.9% chance he is the father of the teenager who prosecutors have said was raped.

Mountford's attorney, Winston Connor II, says that under conditions of the bail, Mountford cannot be near the 14-year-old girl, but that there are no limitations keeping him from being around other children.

The girl was placed into the home of distant relatives, Tim and Vicky Mountford, after giving birth to her first child, who was fathered by another relative.

But she became pregnant again and a DNA test implicated Tim Mountford as the father.

Special Judge Alicia Littlefield has ordered Tim Mountford to pay child support for the baby, which was born May 28 and lives with Vicki Mountford's daughter, Matina Gardner.

The teenager also has been temporarily placed with Gardner.