NORTHAMPTON — Jurors sat through opening arguments on Monday as the trial of Mathieu J. Tebo, a Southampton man and former mortgage loan officer who faces more than two dozen charges including rape, kidnapping and assault with a dangerous weapon over a series of incidents that occurred between 2016 and 2022.
Inside Hampshire Superior Court, Assistant District Attorney Sandra Staub presented for the prosecution a narrative to the jury that the accusations, made against Tebo by three different women, followed a similar pattern: All were single mothers at the time they met Tebo, all found him initially “charming” before he later became controlling and abusive toward them. All described how, in addition to demanding access to their phone and social media accounts, Tebo would perform degrading sex acts on them and become physically violent, even after they told him to stop.
“After they started an intimate consensual sexual relationship and started to sleep together, the defendant began to show another side,” Staub said, repeating the phrasing for all three women involved in the case.
Tebo’s defense attorney, Aliki Recklitis, presented a different narrative to the jury. Recklitis didn’t deny that Tebo was a lousy lover — even referring to him as “the world’s worst boyfriend” — but that the sexual acts described by the women had been consensual, and the charges were a result of coordinated revenge by the women due to Tebo’s repeated infidelity.
“Mr. Tebo lied to them and cheated on them outrageously, and when they realized what he had done, they were hurt, they were embarrassed, they felt angry,” Recklitis said, noting that all three women are familiar with each other. “They regretted their relationship with him, and certainly they would want to get even.”
Tebo’s trial had been delayed when his previous attorney, Judith Knight of Great Barrington, had her license to practice law suspended after she had misused clients. Tebo has been free on bail before the start of the trial, although has had to comply with several conditions such as wearing a GPS monitoring bracelet and staying away from the three women.
The jury on Monday also began hearing from the first witness, who is also the first woman of the three in the case Tebo had been in a relationship with starting in 2016. As a matter of policy, the Gazette does not identify victims or alleged victims of sexual assaults or rape.
The woman appeared nervous on the stand as she recounted many of the details of her and Tebo’s relationship. She described him as very charming at first, appreciating his “old school” approach and soon began a consensual sexual relationship with him.
But he soon became angry with her when she refused to sleep in the same bed with him when her daughter was around. She said Tebo had asked her if she wanted to try “rough sex,” which she initially agreed to, but asked him to stop when it began to hurt. But Tebo continued, she said, and slapped her in the temple so hard she said she saw a flash.
Despite the incident and the increasingly controlling behavior he exhibited, the woman said she tried to make it work with Tebo, attending couples therapy together, but that lasted only a few sessions. She also said that Tebo took control of her phone, deleting their text history at one point, and at another point began monitoring who was texting her.
“I wanted to have a healthy relationship with him,” she said. “I was in love with a disturbed man.”
The trial will resume on Tuesday, where the defense will have an opportunity to cross-examine the first witness and further evidence is expected to be presented to the jury.