A former firefighter supervisor who sexually abused and surreptitiously recorded a girl beginning when she was elementary-school age was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in state prison.

Washington County prosecutors described Steven Klaus as a “charming and successful” predator who hid in plain sight while rising to the rank of lieutenant at Hillsboro Fire & Rescue, where he had worked since 1995.

Klaus, now 52, sexually abused the girl in Forest Grove, where he lived, and later at a California hotel, court records show. The abuse began in approximately 2010 and lasted until the girl was a teenager, prosecutors wrote in legal memos.

“I will forever be robbed of my girlhood, but I won’t give up my right to joy,” the victim said during the sentencing hearing.

The case took a significant turn after Klaus was arrested in July 2020 and another person turned over a laptop to detectives that showed Klaus had been searching for thousands of sexually explicit images of children online and also recorded images and videos of the girl in a state of undress.

The files were labeled “a serious man” and “monitoring my pet,” prosecutors wrote.

Defense attorney Gabriel Biello argued the search of the laptop was unlawful because Klaus hadn’t surrendered ownership of it, but a judge disagreed. The case then proceeded as a stipulated facts trial, a time-saving tactic where the defense does not dispute parts of the state’s case but can challenge it on appeal.

Washington County Circuit Judge Erik Bucher found Klaus guilty of multiple counts of first-degree unlawful sexual penetration, using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct and invasion of privacy at the end of the trial last Friday.