A mother learned the relative charged with raping her then-teenage daughter years ago had been found in Mexico in a message posted on the Facebook page she had set up in hopes of finding him.
The message was written by someone who said he was in Kazakhstan. The message said Kenneth Dustin Grant had been captured in Guadalajara, working under an assumed name and teaching English.
Grant is now in a jail in Los Angeles with an extradition hearing scheduled for Tuesday to determine if he is to be returned to Forsyth County to stand trial on at least 23 felony charges stemming from a November 2008 alleged attack on a then 15-year-old girl. Grant cut off his ankle monitor, tossed it into Lake Lanier and disappeared in September 2010, two days before he was to go on trial for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting the girl.
“We had back burnered this,” the mother said about the search for the man accused of attacking her daughter. “We kind of figured he would (be captured) one day, but we tried to move on and not dwell on it. We were doing a pretty good job of it until it popped up.”
Grant was arrested Thursday and Mexican officials expelled him from the country on Friday because "he was undesirable," according to Jim Joyner with the U.S. Marshal's Service in Atlanta. Grant was taken to Los Angeles, where he is being held until he can be returned to Georgia.
Joyner said Grant’s arrest came after his case was featured on the crime show “America’s Most Wanted.”
Grant is charged with four counts each of aggravated sexual battery and child molestation, three counts of sexual exploitation of children involving the girl, and 12 counts of sexual exploitation of children after a forensic examination of the computer by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation allegedly turned up child porn involving young girls who are not identified. One of those images was of the woman’s older daughter being attacked, an assault she did not recall, the mother said.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault so their names are not included in this article.
The assault of her younger daughter was on the night before Thanksgiving in 2008. The divorced Grant had asked the girl to babysit his 2- and 4-year-old sons and to stay all night because he expected to be out late. While the boys slept, Grant allegedly drugged the girl and assaulted her. Two weeks later, she told her best friend and the friend told the mother.
The mother said her daughter is now 21 and “doing OK. But we don’t really want her to testify,” she said.
Joyner said Grant moved frequently while in Mexico and “a lot of times they (investigators) ended up being a step behind him.”
An investigator from the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office and a U.S. Marshal from Georgia were dispatched to Mexico to help with the search for Grant.
Forsyth County Deputy Robin Regan said more charges could be brought against Grant "as well as anybody who might have aided him."
”We’re looking into anybody either in the U.S. or elsewhere who may have helped him” Regan said.
It is not known how Grant got out of the United States undetected. Regan said Mexican authorities are also trying to determine if there are any other victims in that country.
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