LONGVIEW — A former fourth-grade teacher from central Washington — arrested as part of the local Net Nanny operation that captured 14 other men — was sentenced Monday to nearly five years in state prison over an attempted rape charge in Cowlitz County.
Theodore Edward Dodge, 53, of Brewster, pleaded guilty last month to second-degree attempted rape of a child, with the second charge of communication with a minor for immoral purposes dismissed as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
Dodge — a married man of more than 30 years with adult children, according to court records — was also sentenced to a lifetime of community custody upon his release from prison.
Dodge has been working as a fourth-grade teacher at Brewster since 2015 and says he plans to reskill himself while in prison, as he is aware returning to teaching is no longer in his future, court records show.
Dodge explained in a written statement to authorities he intended to meet an 18- to 25-year-old online, but a fictitious 13-year-old girl from Longview — who was actually an undercover officer — gave him her number and said she’d engage in sexual activity with an older man. He drove six hours to meet her, first heading to the Longview WinCo and then the parking lot of a kidney center, where he was detained.
Dodge expressed gratitude for his arrest and that the child he was attempting to meet was fake.
“I’m thankful that it happened this way, so I didn’t go through with it,” he writes.
Another Net Nanny sentence
Oleem Tipkin, 31, of Molalla, Oregon, who was also captured in the Net Nanny police operation, received a sentence of over six years in state prison Monday plus a lifetime of community custody. He must register as a sex offender for a second-degree attempted rape of a child.
The remaining charges of communication with a minor for immoral purposes and a second attempted rape of a child were dismissed. He must take a psycho-sexual evaluation and have no contact with anyone under the age of 16.
As stated in court documents, Tipkin was tricked by an undercover police officer posing as a 46-year-old mother, who was offering her fake underage daughters for sex on a dating site called Badoo.
Tipkin, like Dodge, was requested by an undercover officer to go to WinCo Foods in Longview and was later apprehended by law enforcement at a different location.
