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LOGAN — New child sexual abuse charges were filed Tuesday against a Smithfield man who is waiting to be sentenced for the rape and sexual abuse of two other children.
Police say Joshua Coti Lippold, 41, made at least one child sign a book claiming he owned her soul before sexually abusing her.
Police reopened an old case after a child at the Ogden Children's Justice Center told interviewers she was forced to sleep in the same bed as Lippold, where he sexually abused her during a sleepover at his house in August of 2019. The girl's father told police he remembered her coming home and telling him she "felt really weird" and "something wasn't right," but shut down when pressed for more details.
Lippold was charged Tuesday with aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony. According to investigators, he denied the allegations, and said the girl had never slept over at his house.
In November, Lippold pleaded guilty to rape of a child and aggravated sexual abuse of a child, first-degree felonies, as part of a plea deal. Lippold was originally charged with five counts of rape of a child, five counts of sodomy on a child, and 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, all first-degree felonies. The other 18 counts were dismissed in exchange for his guilty pleas.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in that case on April 8.
In that 2022 case, two young girls told investigators that Lippold had been touching them. One of the girls said he had abused her for four years, that she trusted him because he was a "grown-up," and she was raised to trust "grown-ups," according to a court documents.
The same girl told police that the first night Lippold touched her, he had her sign a blank page in an old-fashioned red book, telling her he had collected her soul, the documents say.
Officers went to Lippold's house to conduct a search warrant and reported finding a large marijuana growing operation, as well as the red book.
In June 2023, he pleaded guilty to producing a controlled substance, a class A misdemeanor, and endangerment of a child, a third-degree felony, for growing the marijuana plants. He was sentenced to a year in jail for those crimes.
