Crime & Safety
Court Date Set for Copithorne
Charged with molesting a teenage girl, the former teacher and professional athlete is set to be arraigned Dec. 12, according to a newspaper report. We fill in some of the details from court records.
A former teacher at a Seventh-day Adventist school in Napa is scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 12 on charges of sexually molesting a 15-year-old girl, according to a report in the .
was arrested in June on three counts of lewd acts on a child and one count of oral copulation. The victim in all four counts is under 16, according to court records.
Copithorne had been teaching for nine years at the private K-12 school , which is operated by the Seventh-day Adventist church, court records show.
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The court record states one of the alleged molestations happened when Copithorne picked up the alleged victim from her home and drove to the Lucky’s parking lot in Napa where he touched, kissed and orally copulated her.
The other accusations allegedly took place in a classroom and involved kissing the alleged victim.
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During a pretext phone call by the alleged victim to Copithorne, which was recorded by police investigators, Copithorne made incriminating statements to the female victim, court records said.
Copithorne has lived at least 10 years in Napa, according to the court records, is married and has a son.
He is also owns and operates Off the Hook Fly Fishing Travel, Inc. in Napa. A biography on the company's website describes him as a professional athlete who grew up in Northern California.
In 2000, he suffered a snowboarding accident which left him paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair, according to an article in Orvis News.
