FARMINGTON — Roy Police Officer Ryan A. Estes has been found guilty of sexually abusing a girl in Clinton in 2015 and still faces four similar charges in Weber County.

At the conclusion of a two-day 2nd District Court bench trial in Farmington on Monday, Judge Michael DiReda found Estes, 39, guilty of first-degree felony aggravated sexual abuse of a child, which could carry a sentence of six, 10 or 15 years to life in prison.

In October 2021, the Davis County Attorney’s Office charged Estes with two counts of rape of a child and three counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child. He was accused of abusing a girl younger than 14 in Clinton in 2015, and further acts against that girl and a second girl, also younger than 14, in Roy from 2016 to 2019. Charging documents said Estes held a position of trust over both girls.

Estes was out on bail this year when DiReda, on Sept. 2, dismissed the charges related to the incidents in Roy. Defense attorney Rich Gallegos had filed a motion arguing that the Farmington court was an improper venue for those charges because they involved events in Weber County.

After the dismissal, four similar charges based on the same allegations were filed against Estes on Sept. 28 in the Ogden court of Judge Joseph Bean. A warrant for his arrest was issued and Estes was arrested again and booked into jail, ordered held without bail. The Weber County case is now in a pretrial phase.

The Davis County case continued with the lone charge there, resulting in Monday’s verdict.

Estes’ status with the Roy Police Department was unknown. Officer Stuart Hackworth, department spokesperson, said Thursday afternoon that officials were addressing his status and would have a statement within a day or two.

When Estes was arrested in 2021, he was put on leave. A Roy spokesperson said Estes had been with the department for five years.

In a prepared statement at that time, Roy Police Chief Matthew Gwynn said the allegations against Estes were outside his official capacity as a police officer. He said Estes’ employment would be reviewed as the department followed the criminal case.

Gallegos, Estes’ attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The cases were investigated by the Clinton Police Department. The prosecutor on both is Matthew Janzen of the Davis County Attorney’s Office. He is handling the Roy case on behalf of the Weber County Attorney’s Office, which stepped aside due to potential conflicts because it had worked with Estes on Roy police cases.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story mischaracterized a Roy police spokesperson’s remarks about Estes’s employment status.

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