PETERBOROUGH, Ont. — The wife of an eastern Ontario man charged with abducting and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl said Monday that she stands by him and is optimistic as his trial gets underway.
“I think it’s going to go well,” Natalie Tippett said outside court.
She said she’s remained in contact with her husband and is supporting him — despite claims last year that Tippett had been living a double life with his then-pregnant fiancee.
“We’re working on our marriage — put the past in the past,” she said.
Stanley Tippett covered his face and refused to speak to reporters as he was escorted into the courthouse by police on the first day of his trial.
Once inside, he mouthed, Hi” and I love you” to his wife — who sat in the front row along with his mother, Susan Anderson.
The case began in an unusual way with Tippett’s lawyer requesting a better lunchtime meal for his client at the expense of the public” — which the judge granted.
Tippett has pleaded not guilty.
The victim was allegedly abducted by Tippett last year, on a night she was supposed to spend at her grandmother’s after attending a birthday party with friends in Peterborough.
Instead, it’s alleged that the girl, who left the house in the company of two others, aged 16 and 14 at the time, somehow ended up inside a red van that the trio encountered down the street.
She was found by police when they responded to reports of screaming behind a high school in Courtice, just east of Oshawa, Ont.
At the time, her family said she didn’t remember much about the assault.
The trial is expected to last two weeks and hear from 35 witnesses.