After nearly a decade of telling no one that she’d been raped repeatedly for five years, a former Butler County girl disclosed the allegations to her mother.

And her mother, at first, did not believe her.

The mother’s first reaction was to think the girl was lying to keep her from entering a romantic relationship with Christopher M. Stanford, 38, of Portersville, a convicted bank robber whose interaction with the family had caused financial woes, tears and embarrassment in the past.

The mother changed her mind, choosing to believe her daughter, after confronting her 11-year-old son and hearing his similar accusations against Stanford.

Now, it’s up to a Butler County jury to decide if Stanford raped and sexually assaulted both children between 2004 to 2011.

Defense attorney Joseph Smith gave the jury an alternative to consider.

“Children lie. Mr. Stanford is innocent,” Smith said in his opening statement to the jury.

Stanford is charged with two counts each of rape, statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, aggravated indecent assault, child endangerment and corruption of minors.

The girl, now 15 and living in Allegheny County, was the first witness Tuesday in a projected two-day jury trial.

The children are not being identified due to the nature of the circumstances. Stanford is not their father. He met their mother in an Internet chat room and was trusted to supervise them while the mother was working and attending college.

The girl told the jury that the assaults began in the living room of a Butler Township home when she was a 5-year-old kindergartner.

Describing numerous forms of sexual assault, the girl told the jury that she was confused and concerned about the behavior, but was too young to realize the gravity.

“I didn’t know it was abnormal,” the girl testified, telling the jury the assaults sometimes would occur on consecutive days. But sometimes there would be a gap.

The girl denied that Stanford ever threatened her, but claimed Stanford told her the activity was a secret and not to tell anyone. In one case, the girl alleges Stanford videotaped an assault.

The girl acknowledged her relationship with Stanford was tumultuous and she did not like him. He’d misused her mother’s credit cards to gamble, yelled a lot and made her mother cry, she said.

The girl’s brother, now 11, also testified, describing ways in which he alleges Stanford assaulted him, particularly describing an instance when he was a second grader.

The girl said the assaults continued until 2011, when her mother nearly walked in on the encounter at the girl’s then-home in northern Butler County.

The jury was told that Stanford was arrested in 2011, and that he appeared on television and was in jail.

They were not told his crime: Stanford pleaded guilty to the armed robbery of First National Bank in Portersville on April 29, 2011. He was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison.

The girl’s mother, the last person to testify Tuesday, told the jury that she’d had no communication with Stanford during much of the time that he was in prison. But after her mother died in 2013, she reached out to him because she was looking for something familiar and he filled that void.

She testified that she kept the calls and e-mails a secret from her daughter because she did not want to fight with her. The girl learned about the contact by overhearing a telephone conversation.

Initially, the mother said she thought the girl lied about the assault in reaction to discovering the communication “because I knew she didn’t like him and that’s what I told her.” However, the mother said she believes her daughter now.

Butler County Judge William Shaffer is presiding over the trial, which is expected to finish today.