LACOMBE, La. — At turns evasive and combative during his first week in office, new St. Tammany Parish Coroner Christopher Tape finally sat down for a one-on-one interview with WWL Louisiana and answered questions about the station’s exclusive investigation that first exposed Tape’s 2002 indictment on child sexual abuse charges.
Those charges were dismissed when New Mexico courts ruled, over Albuquerque prosecutors’ objections, that the state took too long to bring an indictment and violated Tape’s constitutional right to a speedy trial.
“I've been charged, but not convicted. I maintain my innocence,” Tape said Monday. “What am I supposed to do the rest of my life? It's been 23 years” since the initial arrest.
But the WWL investigation led to near-universal calls for Tape’s resignation – and, after he took office, for his removal – from elected officials in St. Tammany.
In Monday’s interview, WWL asked Tape if it was appropriate for him to whip his girlfriend’s 7-year-old daughter with her pants and underwear down and then rub her bare bottom, as he admitted to police at the time. At first, he said the interview wasn’t the time or place to discuss it; it has already been adjudicated in court.
We pressed him for answers in this exchange.
David Hammer: But you don't think that you owe the people who elected you – without having an option to vote for you (because he ran unopposed) – an explanation of what you did?
Dr. Christopher Tape: People could have run against me. I expected it to come out in the campaign. I didn't expect it to be unearthed by an investigative reporter.
Hammer: OK, but now that it is, you don't think that you owe an explanation to the electors of St. Tammany Parish as to what happened in that case?
Dr. Tape: I don't; because that is in the past. It's already … gone through the legal system. This is not the legal system.
The girl who came forward, Victoria Lobato, is now 30. She didn’t seek any attention but WWL tracked her down earlier this year. She agreed to an interview and to use her name and face on camera.
Court records show she told police detectives at a safe house that Tape had made her stand in provocative poses in her mother’s clothes. Tape said Monday he disputes that.
“That is made up,” he said. “I didn’t dress her. I didn’t do any of that stuff.”
Lobato told WWL the experience scarred her and continues to affect her relationships as an adult.
“You can go to therapy, you can talk to people about it, you can write things about it, but it's still something I'm always going to have to carry, because I didn't get to walk away free,” she said.
We asked Tape if he was now claiming Lobato made up the allegations. He blamed her mother – his girlfriend at the time, Bernadette Finley.
Dr. Tape: When a mother tells a child that something has happened, that affects the child. That's all I'm going to say. She said that she didn't remember it, actually. That's what she says.
Hammer: But you admitted to the police what you did. So it's not that she's making something up, is it?
Dr. Tape: No, but how it affects her is up to her and her mother and her people, her support group. I'm sorry for anybody who feels wronged, but I don't think I wronged her.
He also said Finley lied when she told us in February that she didn't spank her daughter at that time.
He said Finley was spanking her daughter at the time, “with the same belt I used.” He said she expressly gave him the authority to whip her daughter while she was gone.
Tape was also accused in 2022 of harassing a young female assistant at his private pathology lab near Lafayette. He told us Monday that he didn’t even know what the allegations were, even though he agreed to pay the 26-year-old woman a settlement.
Given his history, it was another shock when Tape's very first act as coroner was to end the sexual assault nurse examiner program in his office. He said it was a financial decision so St. Tammany taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay for rape kit services in four surrounding parishes.
Tape apologized if the change was made too abruptly, but he said he found the anger over it – especially from those who felt it was a conflict for someone accused of sexual assault to oversee sexual assault exams – confusing.
“I'm a little confused because they were angry that I was in control of it, and now they're angry that I'm not going to be in control of it,” he said. “It's the right thing to do. Has nothing to do with my past. People will believe that or not believe that. I probably never will convince them. But I'm telling you now, it has nothing to do with that.”