LINDSAY -- Stanley Tippett claims an attempt to act as a Good Samaritan to a 12-year-old girl led him to being arrested, charged with sexually assaulting and kidnapping her and landing him in isolation in a jail cell in Lindsay.

In an exclusive interview with This Week, Mr. Tippett again and again professed his innocence and said not only is he not guilty, but was a victim of crime himself the night he is accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old Peterborough girl.

“I just hope to God the person responsible for this is caught and I hope they experience every moment of what I’ve went through, 10 times over,” Mr. Tippett said.

After lying to his wife, Natalie, and telling her he was going to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto for treatment, Mr. Tippett actually spent the day at the Hospital for Sick Children, helping his mistress as she sought medical treatment for one of her young children. It was after he arrived home in Peterborough, late on the night of Aug. 5, that the trouble began.

Mr. Tippett said he was talking to his wife on his cellphone when he turned onto a south Peterborough street and saw a girl lying on the road. Tired from the day, he said he wasn’t sure what had happened.

“I pulled over,” he said. “I told Natalie I thought I might have hit a young girl on the road.”

He said when he checked on the girl, he believed she was inebriated. A friend was trying to get her off the road.

“Every time the girl on the road tried to get up, she kept falling on her face,” Mr. Tippett said. “I said, ‘Do you want some help?’ ”

At first, Mr. Tippett said he was told the girl was out celebrating her 16th birthday. Another young girl arrived on the scene later and told him the girl was only 12.

“I said we need to take this girl to the hospital or at least take her home,” he said.

Another girl also got into his van, he said, and they headed toward downtown Peterborough. In the downtown area, the older girl asked to get out of the van and he complied.

But when he turned on to Rink Street, Mr. Tippett said he was stopped by two men in another car.

“The guy on the driver’s side got out and said, ‘You got my friend here?” Mr. Tippett recounted.

The two men were armed, one with a knife, one with a gun, Mr. Tippett said, crying as he recounted his version of events.

“I said, ‘I have a family, don’t shoot me,’ ” Mr. Tippett said.

He was forced to lay in the back of the van and was taken on a wild ride, he said.

“We were driving really fast and it looked like we were driving on the highway,” Mr. Tippett said. “I kept thinking, ‘Am I going to see my kids; am I going to see my wife again?’

“I was in there for about a half an hour and I was thinking, ‘Is my life going to end?’ ”

Soon, he said, he felt the van leave the highway in what he believes was Newcastle.

“The guy with the gun told me to give him any money I had,” Mr. Tippett said as he sobbed over the phone from the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay. “I pulled a couple of bills from my left pocket . . . leaving my wallet in my other pocket.”

One of the men pushed him in the ditch, Mr. Tippett said.

“I was begging for my life and they started laughing.”

After the men left, with the girl still in the van with them, Mr. Tippett said he began walking along the railway tracks, speaking intermittently with his wife as he received only sporadic cellphone service.

After a lengthy walk, Mr. Tippett said he finally recognized his surroundings and knew he was just east of Bowmanville. He asked his wife to call him a cab so he could go to his uncle’s house in nearby Manvers Township to get a lift the rest of the way home to Peterborough.

That story varies from one a local cab driver, who said he picked up Mr. Tippett in Bowmanville, said he was told.

“I asked him, did he work at Millwork,” the cabbie told newsdurhamregion.com’s Stefanie Swinson earlier this month. “And he said no, him and a buddy of his commuted back and forth to Toronto in a car pool and the transmission went out on his truck. So, he said they had the truck towed to a garage and he needed a ride home.

“So, I proceeded to drive him home,” he said.

“Home” was actually his uncle’s house, just off Porter Road in Manvers.

Mr Tippett was arrested at about 8:40 a.m., in his uncle’s van, around the corner from his uncle’s house.

Since the arrest, Mr. Tippett’s wife found out he was having an affair -- but that affair is the only thing Mr. Tippett said he is guilty of.

“When I saw my wife in court, I just felt so ashamed,” he said. “I love my wife so much. I told her I loved her and I meant every word of it.”

Mr. Tippett has an extensive history with the police. He was found guilty in 2005 of criminal harassment and breach of a court order, related to what police believed was an attempt to kidnap a 21-year-old woman  with a phoney job offer. For that, he was sentenced to two years in a federal penitentiary. He openly admits to that crime.

“I did do the Peterborough thing and I regret it,” he said of the 2005 case.

At the time of his arrest in that case he was on probation as a result of the criminal harassment of a Barrie-area woman -- a crime for which he continues to profess his innocence. He only pleaded guilty, he said, to make things easier for his mother.

In that case, it was a matter of a jealousy from the woman he is said to have harassed.

“She thought if she can’t have me, she didn’t want my wife to have me, either,” Mr. Tippett said.

He was also considered a suspect in the disappearance and unsolved murder of Toronto resident Sharmini Anandavel, 15. The day before she went missing in 1999, Sharmini, then a neighbour of Mr. Tippett’s, told a classmate she was going to a job arranged by a friend. She told her parents the job had been arranged by Mr. Tippett.

But on Friday, Mr. Tippett said he had nothing to do with that crime.

“I always wondered what happened,” he said. “It really hurts because somebody took an innocent child’s life. I kept wishing someone would come forward with something that would take the focus off me and look at somebody else who was responsible.”

Mr. Tippett is barred by court order from contacting his wife, but he had a message for her.

“I’m sorry and that I love her and that I love our children and I don’t want to lose her,” Mr. Tippett said.

His message to his five children is similar.

“I love them and I miss them and I know they miss me, too,” he said.

Mr. Tippett remains in solitary confinement in the jail and said he knows why.

“I’m safe here where I am because the rest of the population would want to kill me,” he said. “The nature of what they’re accusing me of is really disturbing.”   

But he swears he’s not guilty.

“I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything,” he said. “All I did was try to offer some help and what was I supposed to do? Leave this girl sitting in the middle of the street? I felt obligated.”

But he said he can see why people have their doubts.

“People start wondering, like, why is this person getting into trouble if he’s so innocent,” he said. 

“I’m not a bad person. I just made a lot of mistakes.”