The prosecution yesterday called four witnesses, including the alleged 13-year-old victim, during the start of the jury trial in Superior Court of Hank Kenney Peredo Taitano, a man accused of raping the girl, causing her to become pregnant.<\/p>\n
Assistant public defender Matthew Meyer, counsel for Taitano, is expected to continue his cross-examination on the girl when the trial resumes today, Tuesday, at 8:15am.<\/p>\n
Assistant attorney general Shannon Folley presented the government\u2019s opening statements. Assistant attorney general Barbara Cepeda is assisting Folley at the trial.<\/p>\n
The government called to the witness stand the mother of the girl, the girl\u2019s stepfather, police detective Therese Kintoki, and the alleged victim.<\/p>\n
Last week, Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho issued an order that allows a North Carolina-based laboratory technician at a paternity testing facility, to testify via Skype on the paternity test results of the baby.<\/p>\n
According to court records, samples were secured from the infant soon after the birth, for use in a paternity test. The samples were then sent to LabCorp., the paternity testing facility in Burlington, North Carolina.<\/p>\n
The CNMI government received the test results on May 26, 2015.<\/p>\n
In December 2014, police arrested then-35-year-old tour bus driver Taitano, for allegedly raping the 13-year-old girl.<\/p>\n
The girl\u2019s parents learned about the rape when they noticed that the girl\u2019s stomach was getting bigger.<\/p>\n
During a checkup on Nov. 28, 2014, the doctor told the mother and her husband that the girl at that time was four months pregnant.<\/p>\n
Taitano was charged with sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The prosecution yesterday called four witnesses, including the alleged 13-year-old victim, during the start of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5249,3026,492,3393],"class_list":["post-204325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-north-carolina-based","tag-shannon-folley","tag-test","tag-therese-kintoki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}