A man who worked as a child entertaining clown in the 1990s and early 2000s has been sentenced to prison for sexually abusing a little girl.
Bobbie Arthur Owen, 64, performed as Boo Boo the clown from 1994 until 2002 in Springfield and Eugene, Oregon, which are about 100 miles south of Portland.
After working as a child entertainer, he moved to Citrus Heights in Sacramento County.
There, he began sexually abusing a girl ‘on a regular basis,’ beginning when she was just 11 years old, according to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office.
That girl, who is now an adult woman, reported the crimes to Citrus Heights police in 2024 when she was 32.
She estimated that the total encounters of abuse numbered in the hundreds.
On March 23, Owen was convicted of 22 countsof child sexual assault. The charges included lewd acts on a child, oral copulation and digital penetration with a foreign object, according to the district attorney’s office.
On May 8, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Deborah Lobre sentenced the former clown to 39 years and four months in prison, which was the maximum penalty available.
He abused his victim for years, escalating into ‘oral copulation of Owen and attempted sexual intercourse with the victim when she was 15 years old,’ the district attorney’s office said.
The abuse continued until the girl was 18, periodically stopping when Owen moved out of state for work, according to court records reviewed by the Sacramento Bee.
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Owen was arrested in Meridian, Idaho, a city about five miles west of Boise, where he had been living since 2008, according to public records.
A Citrus Heights detective confronted Owen at his home in November 2024, where he admitted to molesting the girl for years and discussed recent phone calls he had with her about the abuse, according to court records.
Boise police immediately arrested him on a fugitive warrant, which is visible in public records. He was extradited to the Sacramento County Jail in February 2025, according to the jail’s records, so he could be tried.
Owen was held without bond until his recent conviction and sentencing. He will now be transferred to a state prison, where he will likely remain until he dies, unless he lives to be 103.
The convicted pedophile began molesting his victim after he stopped working as a clown. According to his LinkedIn, Owen was working as a contractor when the abuse began.
His profile says that he then worked as a truck driver since 2009 and also had a stint as an insurance sales agent.
The abuser’s sentencing trial was swift, taking just three days for a Sacramento jury to convict him on all 22 felony counts he was charged with.
