LR man draws 30 years for girl’s rape

A 35-year-old Little Rock man has accepted a 30-year prison sentence for raping and impregnating a 14-yearold girl who said he had been sexually abusing her for years.

Sentencing papers filed on Monday show Fredrick Ray Knight dropped his legal challenges to two counts of rape with a no-contest plea to the charges in exchange for the sentence imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson. Rape is a Class Y felony that carries a potential life sentence. Knight will have to serve 21 years before he can apply for parole.

Under the conditions of his plea agreement, negotiated by deputy prosecutor Beth Kanopsic and public defender Harrison Tome, a charge of sexually grooming a child was dropped.

According to police reports and court files, the girl’s parents, who are divorced, went to police in December 2022 after learning their 14-year-old daughter was pregnant during a hospital exam. She later terminated her pregnancy.

The girl told her parents that Knight, whom she was acquainted with through her mother, was the father of her unborn child and that the last time Knight had raped her was at most three weeks earlier.

The girl told authorities he had been sexually abusing her since she was 8 years old, initially by forcing her to watch pornographic movies with him on his phone. She said the abuse became physical when she was 9 and he began to regularly rape her.

She said she told him to stop, complaining that he was hurting her and questioning why Knight was abusing her when he was married with a wife. He told her not to tell anybody, she said, describing how she tried to avoid him.

Knight later began providing her with marijuana and alcohol, she said, saying he would sometimes give her a little money between $10 and $20.

Knight, who has never been in serious trouble with the law before, was arrested in January 2023, about six weeks after the girl’s parents went to police. Knight declined a police interview. He’s been jailed ever since.