Trial begins against Newport News police officer, daycare provider charged with sexual assault of girl

The sexual assault trial for a Newport News police officer and a daycare provider began Monday with testimony from the woman who said the pair abused her repeatedly as a child for more than a year.

The woman said she was 12 when Officer Robert Francis Jones came by the Denbigh home of her then-daycare provider, Kristi Lynn Cline, in his police uniform. She testified that more than 100 times between early 2009 and mid-2010, she, Jones and Cline would go to Cline’s upstairs bedroom and have sex.

Many times, she said, other daycare children were left unattended downstairs.

“It felt like part of a daily routine,” the now 25-year-old woman said. “I would go to school, then go to her house and deal with it.”

A four-day trial began in Newport News Circuit Court Monday against Jones and Cline, with the accuser the first to take the witness stand. The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press generally do not identify accusers in sexual assault cases without their permission.

Jones’ attorney, Timothy Clancy, and Cline’s attorney, Ron Smith, both strongly denied the accusations, saying the woman made them up. They contend the accuser suffers from mental illness and didn’t take the medications she was prescribed.

“She doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not real,” Smith said. “These people are not guilty. This is a frightening trial to be charged like this.”

The defense lawyers contend the woman was involuntarily committed four times for mental health treatment before she filed a report with Williamsburg police in 2018. During court testimony Monday, she acknowledged she had previously accused several other men of rape at about the same time but said those initial statements were not always accurate.

Chesapeake Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Pass, the outside prosecutor brought in to handle the case because it involves a Newport News police officer, said it wouldn’t make sense for the woman to make up a story in this case because she has nothing to gain from it.

“She has been committed and steadfast in her accusations,” Pass said.

The woman testified for the prosecution that she moved with her family to the area when her mother got stationed at Fort Eustis, and that she began going to Cline’s daycare after school beginning in September 2008. She immediately took to Cline, she said, seeing her as kind of an older sister. Cline had tattoos and body piercings, wore hip clothing and was “young and cool and trendy.”

“She was everything my mother was not,” the woman said, describing her mother as “strict and rigid and plain.” She and Cline would “gossip” about her mother, she said.

She testified that Jones would come by the home often and was introduced to her as “a coach who was helping (Cline) lose weight.” Both Cline and Jones were married to others.

But within weeks of beginning daycare, the woman said Cline began “grooming” her sexually. The woman said it started out with Cline taking nude pictures and videos of her and sending them to Jones, with Jones voicing his approval. She said the physical activity began with Cline using a sex toy on her, transitioning to oral sex between them, and to oral sex on Jones. Eventually, that transitioned to intercourse with Jones — which continued for about a year and a half.

“I was a kid,” she said. “I did what I was told.”

She said sometimes Jones would get calls on his police radio and he would need to get dressed quickly and “run out the door.” Other times, she said, he would tell dispatchers he was “taking a lunch break” or that he had just stopped off at a nearby gas station near Cline’s home.

Jones and Cline are on trial together. Charges were filed against them after the woman came forward with the allegations in 2018, saying she did so after having her own baby daughter and realizing the seriousness of sexual assault on a child.

Jones is charged with forcible sodomy, carnal knowledge of a minor, two counts of rape, four counts of taking indecent liberties with a child, and one count of solicitation. Jones began with the Newport News Police in 2007 and is on unpaid leave. Cline ran the home daycare on Springwell Place for 11 years. She is charged with two counts each of aggravated sexual battery and object sexual penetration, one count of carnal knowledge and three counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor.

The accuser testified that Cline and Jones said they would kill her if she ever told anyone about the sex.

“They said they would cover it up and they make it look like you killed yourself,” she said. “They told me you can’t tell anyone or you’ll die.”

The assaults only stopped, she testified, when another man raped her — an earlier accusation she stood by Monday. Cline and Jones, she said, stopped having sex with her for fear of getting a sexually transmitted disease.

The defense attorneys called the accuser’s story into question, saying police records will prove that Jones wouldn’t have had time to commit the crimes while on duty with the police.

“We did the homework,” Clancy said, pulling out several binders of police activity logs and placing them loudly on the table for the jury.

For example, for much of the time in question, Smith said the girl would get off the school bus daily at 2:22 p.m., then walk to the house by 2:30 p.m. But Jones had to be at a lineup in a different part of the city at 3 p.m., not leaving enough time for the incidents to take place.

Though the woman previously testified that Jones was always in his patrol officer uniform and driving marked police car when he came by, the attorneys pointed out that Jones was promoted to detective in 2009, after which he wore plainclothes and drove an unmarked car. Jones said it just hit her on the stand Monday that Jones was in fact in plainclothes during some of the sexual assaults and that he sometimes drove an unmarked car to the home.

The defense attorneys also questioned the woman about other rape accusations she made in the past.

On the stand, the woman said she was incorrect about the story about being raped by a neighbor because of memory issues during her hospitalizations. She also acknowledged making up a “cover story” about being raped by several people in Maryland who had plied her with heroin as a way of dealing with being raped by Jones and Cline.

Clancy and Smith also called the accuser’s credibility into question for what they contended was a far-fetched assertion to police that her own mother could have profited from the sexual assaults.

“I didn’t trust her,” the woman said. “People profit (from child porn) every day. I think it’s a possibility.”

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com

©2022 Daily Press. Visit dailypress.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.