FARMINGTON, Utah, May 4, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — The wife of a Davis County man facing 13 felony child sex abuse charges has been arrested for allegedly sharing confidential information that led her husband to his alleged pre-teen victim.
Natalie Stokes, 39, was charged Monday with a misdemeanor count of unauthorized collecting and sharing of a student’s personal data when she was a counselor to the alleged victim, now age 11, at her Davis County elementary school.
Stokes’ husband, 41-year-old Phillip Brandon Stokes, was charged last fall with nine first-degree felony counts of child sex abuse, and four third-degree felony charges of sharing material harmful to a minor. Investigators say he pursued the child on the social media site TikTok before ultimately raping her.
According to her charging documents in 2nd District Court in Farmington, Natalie Stokes told police she first pointed out the child to her husband while the couple was on a walk in their neighborhood and the child rode by on her bicycle.
The child had been in trouble at school for inappropriate contacts with other students, and Natalie Stokes, a psychologist, had been counseling her since November of 2020, and on a weekly basis since February of 2021.
Natalie Stokes said she had mentioned the girl’s troubles to her husband over time, along with the fact the girl posted on TikTok. According to the charges against Philip Stokes, he first befriended the girl on TikTok by March of 2021.
Natalie Stokes told officers the child had “a lot of issues that I have work with her with … and I would tell him.” When asked if she had shown her husband the videos the child had been posting on TikTok Natalie Stokes said said, “No I didn’t show it to him, but I’d just told him how sad it made me that a 10-year-old would be wondering like where she has been and what she has seen.”
When asked “if Phillip Stokes knew specifically (the child) was using the TikTok app because she told him about it, she said, ‘Yeah.'”
