Rape charges say man threatened to kill 9-year-old girl's mother to get cooperation

A man from South Carolina is accused of raping a 9-year-old girl in Wake County two years ago after telling her that he would torture and kill her mother in front of her if she did not submit to him.

Wake County sheriff's investigators swore out an arrest warrant for Mitchell Vernon Stapleton, 37, of Aiken, S.C., last month. He turned himself in at the Wake County Detention Center on Tuesday.

Stapleton is accused of two counts of statutory rape, one count of taking indecent liberties with a child and one count of communicating threats.

According to the warrants, everything happened during January 2016.

The girl was 9 at the time, the charges said.

One of the charges says that Stapleton made the threats to the girl "by telling the victim ... that he would torture her mother and then kill her [mother] in front of her."

A magistrate set Stapleton's bail at $1 million pending a first court appearance.

The warrants indicate that the people involved in the case knew each other before the incident.

This story was originally published March 14, 2018 at 11:20 AM with the headline "Rape charges say man threatened to kill 9-year-old girl's mother to get cooperation."