Adoptive father guilty of rape; His stepdaughters echo accusations

By Mandy Locke, Staff Writer

SMITHFIELD - In the mid-1990s, Johnston County social workers searched for a safe home for a girl orphaned as a toddler when cancer killed her mother.

What was supposed to be the loving home of adoptive relatives turned out to be dangerous.

On Tuesday, a jury convicted the man who became her father on charges of repeatedly raping her from the age of 10 until she was rescued from the home in 2007.

James Spellman will spend at least 24 years in prison for rape of a child. Spellman, a 57-year-old with a sure strut, swore to jurors he never touched the girl.

The victim, now 15, testified against Spellman during the trial last week. The News & Observer is not naming her; the newspaper does not typically disclose the names of those who report being sexually abused.

The girl was placed in Spellman's home before state law required fingerprinting that would have showed that Spellman had been accused of raping a stepdaughter years before. It's not clear how many children like her were placed in homes with parents predisposed to abuse.

"We have no idea how many children ended up in the care of child abusers because we didn't check these things," said Dr. Sharon Cooper, a forensic pediatrician and child development specialist who testified during Spellman's trial. "There is no way now that she would have been put into that home."

National criminal background checks became mandatory for adoptive parents only in 1998; similar checks for foster parents were required starting in 1996. Before these rules went into effect, social workers generally checked their local county court system for previous charges and asked the adoptive parents about their history.

"There are some folks that have a criminal record and don't tell us about it," said Joanne Caye, a professor at the University of North Carolina's School of Social Work who trains social workers on best practices.

"People don't always tell the truth; that's why we adopted these policies."

In the case of Spellman, a charge of "sex offense-parental role" in 1990 either didn't surface or didn't alarm social workers. Earl Marrett, the current director of Johnston County Social Services, said he could not comment on the case.

"How that one fell through the cracks, we're not sure," said Brad Deen, a spokesman for the state Department of Social Services, which supervises and establishes protocol for county departments of social services.

Before the girl came to live with him, Spellman helped raise three stepdaughters. Long grown and gone, those women appeared before jurors over the past week to tell of their own abuse, dark-of-night visits from the man their mother married. One of the daughters finally called police in 1990 to report that Spellman raped her. She told jurors that she later asked police to drop the charge when her mother complained they couldn't pay their bills with Spellman not working and in jail.

Delois Spellman, James Spellman's wife of 28 years, stood by him this week, even as her daughters sat across the courtroom, gasping as, during his testimony, he denied that he ever hurt them. Delois Spellman told jurors she doesn't know why her girls would say such things.

James Spellman offered another theory to the jury: "They've been trying to split me and my wife up for years. They never wanted me to marry their mama."

Prison will finally separate the two.

Delois Spellman's daughters also accused her of harsh discipline, beatings with electric cords and metal rulers. It was the scars riddling her adoptive daughter's back that led social workers to remove her from the Spellman home in 2007. She was never criminally charged with abuse, but has lost custody of her adoptive daughter.

A spokeswoman for the Johnston County Sheriff's Office said she couldn't comment on whether it will now investigate the physical abuse allegations against Delois Spellman.

mandy.locke@newsobserver.com or 919-829-8927