Aug 14, 2008 - 03:08 PM
By Kristen Billing
PETERBOROUGH -- The family of the 12-year-old victim of a recent kidnapping and sexual assault spoke out Thursday in hopes of reminding people who the real victim is in the case.
Members of the young girl’s family -- who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the victim -- were in court Thursday to watch as the man accused of the abduction, 32-year-old Stanley Tippett, made a brief appearance. His case was suspended until Aug. 18.
Family members, who have been quiet until now, say the 12-year-old girl can’t remember what happened the night she was abducted. However, her mother says, the girl’s face and body are covered in scrapes and blisters.
Mr. Tippett is charged with kidnapping and sexual assault after the 12-year-old girl was abducted in Peterborough, driven to Courtice and sexually assaulted on Aug. 6. More charges are expected to be filed against him later today (Thursday).
“She’s usually home by 10 p.m.,” the victim’s grandmother says.
“They (people) are saying that she is a bad mother, it isn’t the truth. She’s a concerned mother. It’s out of character for (the 12-year-old girl) to be out that late,” she adds.
Choking back tears, she points out her granddaughter asked to go to a friend’s birthday party that night and, although they didn’t know where the party was, her granddaughter would always call from her cellphone to let her mother or ‘nana’ know where she was.
But on that night no call came.
After she drove around Peterborough looking for her granddaughter or friends who might know her whereabouts, the phone finally rang.
“At 12:30 a.m. I got a call from her friend saying that she was missing,” the grandmother says, adding at this point she checked the hospital and went to police.
“I told them (police) she was only 12 years old and this was weird for her.
“Some several hours later, police said she had been found in Oshawa,” she said, bursting into tears.
According to police, the girls left the party and were on the street when a red mini-van pulled up. Although details are still unknown at this time, police say only the 12-year-old girl ended up inside the van, which then drove out of Peterborough and eventually parked behind Courtice High School, just east of Oshawa.
“I don’t know if she was lured into the van,” says the grandmother.
At about 2:20 a.m., Durham Regional Police received a report of screams coming from behind the school. Durham police say when officers arrived, the attacker fled in a red minivan, leaving the girl behind.
Mr. Tippett was arrested after he was found in a car near Porter Road in Manvers Township at 8:40 a.m. on Aug. 6.
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