19-Year-Old Charged After Allegedly Having a Sexual Relationship with a 15-Year-Old Girl

(KNSI) — A 19-year-old from Roscoe is charged with two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct after allegedly having sex with a teenage girl.

According to the criminal complaint, investigators took a report in June of 2021 of a 14-year-old girl who was in an alleged sexual relationship with then 18-year-old Cayden Kohnen. She said the two had been in a relationship for almost a year and had been having sex for the last six months. She said Kohnen knew her age because she told him how old she was.

Court records show Kohnen spoke with investigators, and when directly asked if he was in a physical relationship with the teen, he said, “Not no. Like, partially, but not really no.” The criminal complaint says the investigator explained to Kohnen that the girl had already told police that the two had been having sex. The investigator asked Kohnen again if he had been having sex with the girl, and he allegedly said yes. Kohnen was then asked if he understood that a 14-year-old can’t have sex, to which he replied he “thought it was as long as it was consensual by the parents.”

In a separate criminal complaint, filed Wednesday, it says on January 8th, 2022, the Stearns County Sheriff’s Department responded to a call of a 15-year-old runaway in Paynesville Township. The girl’s mother said her daughter had returned home before deputies arrived. When questioned, the criminal complaint says the girl said she had been picked up at 12:30 that morning by Kohnen, who dropped her off at 9:00 a.m., but she denied that the two of them had had sex.

An investigator with the Central Minnesota Human Trafficking Task Force said they spoke with the girl on January 14th. She told them that she was in a relationship with Kohnen and sent him nude pictures on Snapchat. When Kohnen was questioned, he allegedly told police the two did have sex at his apartment and that he knew she was 15 and he was 19 and that it was illegal.

The criminal complaint says that the investigation is open and ongoing and that additional charges could be filed.

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