Brad Holbrook's 19-year ordeal appears over.

Holbrook lost his law license and served more than six years in prison for a child sex abuse conviction based on questionable evidence, featured in an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

In December, the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned Holbrook's first-degree sexual abuse conviction. The Oregon Department of Justice has since decided not to appeal the ruling, and the prosecutor won't retry the case.

In a court motion filed two weeks ago, Yamhill County District Attorney Brad Berry said Holbrook has served a full prison term "and the interests of justice do not favor a new trial." A judge immediately dismissed Holbrook's criminal case.

That means Holbrook, 51, can start the process of reinstating his law license and can apply to expunge his 1999 arrest.

"It’s still kind of a shock that it’s over," Holbrook said Thursday. "It’s going to take a while to sink in.”

Holbrook's attorney, Matt McHenry, added: "He's overjoyed in some sense. He's also guarded. I think after fighting the same thing for almost 20 years, there's a sense 'Is it really over? What else can they do now?'"

In 1999, Holbrook was 32 when police arrested him after a 10-year-old girl reported that he had brushed up against her vaginal area and buttocks while she was clothed in her Yamhill County home. There were no witnesses -- and it was the girl's account versus his.

Problems with her story soon surfaced. In her only taped interview, she told investigators that it could have been an accident, that Holbrook "probably didn't mean to" and that she "couldn't, like, feel it."

After Holbrook was tried for the first time in 2001 and the jury deadlocked, four of the jurors were so troubled by the pursuit of charges against Holbrook that they filed sworn statements complaining about the prosecutor. They also did something virtually unheard of: They helped Holbrook's defense lawyer prepare for the second trial.

A second jury, however, convicted him in 2002 of touching an intimate part of the girl. Holbrook subsequently was disbarred.

Last year, the Appeals Court ruled that Holbrook's defense attorney at the time, Kent Gubrud, inadequately performed by failing to do enough to stop then-prosecutor Cal Tichenor from asking a specific line of questions of Holbrook's character witnesses.

The questions were based on unconfirmed rumors, dug up by the prosecutor, that Holbrook was suspected of having a relationship with "a little girl" and secretly was writing her letters. No witness could substantiate those rumors.

But by the time the Appeals Court ruled, Holbrook had long finished serving his sentence. After prison, he worked in manual labor -- painting houses and helping people move. Then he set up his own business working as a paralegal, a job he could do even with his felony conviction.

He married in 2012 and has two young children. He now lives in Newberg.

Holbrook said part of him has wanted his case retried, so he could feel the vindication of a jury exonerating him. But he said he thinks the facts that have come out about his case have cleared his name.

He said he's still astonished he was accused of the crime.

"It seems so unbelievable," Holbrook said. "I look back and say 'How could that happen to me?' It’s so shocking.”

But he said he has had to consciously put his past behind him, and focus on the present. He said he's a runner, and the daily exercise has helped clear his mind.

“If you try to go back and think about things that happened, it’s painful," Holbrook said. "The key is to move forward and not live in yesterday."

-- Aimee Green