Let down by adults, girl suffers abuse

Author: Oren Dorell; Staff Writer

When a minister and his wife encountered problems with their adopted daughter, they tried therapy, psychiatrists and even an orphanage.

Eventually they turned over custody of the 12-year-old girl to a Fuquay-Varina software developer they believed to be "a real good guy."

About a year later, in January, Wake County Sheriff's deputies charged that man with multiple sex offenses against her, including statutory rape. James Matthew McDaniel-Webb, 46, was released on bond, then rearrested in February by the FBI on child pornography charges. He is now being held without bail at the Wake County jail.

McDaniel-Webb was affluent, generous and persuasive.

And if the allegations are true, he was the latest in a succession of adults who were charged with protecting the girl but either did not or could not. Before him, there was the girl's birth family, which was unable to provide proper care, prompting her removal to foster care at an early age.

There were her adoptive parents, who, finding her a difficult child, first placed her in an orphanage, then allowed McDaniel-Webb to gain custody in August 2001. They acknowledge receiving money from McDaniel-Webb.

There was the Wake County Department of Human Services, which investigated a report in 2001 that McDaniel-Webb had a sexual interest in young girls, according to a lawyer, but did not tell the adoptive parents or a judge who was then reviewing the new custody arrangement.

And there were officials at the orphanage, who welcomed McDaniel-Webb as a volunteer and benefactor, and introduced the girl to him, starting the process that led to his gaining custody.

It is The News & Observer's policy not to identify known or alleged victims of sexual assault.

Friends and acquaintances of the girl say that in many ways she appears to be a typical teenager.

"She's extremely friendly and bubbly, cheerful," said Connie Daniel of Fuquay-Varina, a mother of one of the girl's former classmates.

The girl recently celebrated her 14th birthday at a temporary group home, where she lived briefly after McDaniel-Webb's arrest on Jan. 13. She has been placed with a foster family by the Wake County Department of Human Services.

In the past several weeks, her adoptive parents, Thomas and Susan Denny of Henderson, have been attempting to regain custody in a juvenile court proceeding. Thomas Denny is a United Methodist minister; he and his wife remain the girl's legal guardians.

Authorities are still trying to sort out what happened.

Investigators from the Wake County Sheriff's Office, the FBI, the Wake Department of Human Services and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services are trying to determine who is at fault and whether any other criminal charges are warranted.

Also of interest to investigators are McDaniel-Webb's payments to the Dennys. "We became aware of issues about money changing hands," said Maj. T.S. Matthews of the Wake County Sheriff's Office. "We expressed our concerns to the FBI."

Frank Perry, who heads the FBI's Raleigh field office, added, "I think attempting to follow the money would be prudent in light of the allegations that have surfaced. We do that in all the cases we investigate."

Before his arrest by the FBI, McDaniel-Webb did not respond to messages left at his home. His lawyer, Roger W. Smith, said: "It wouldn't be appropriate for me to make any comment at all."

Little is known about the family into which the girl was born in January 1989. According to sheriff's deputies and court records, she was abused as a young child and removed from her birth family. The Dennys said she was placed in foster care when she was 3 or 4.

The Dennys adopted her in 1997, when she was 8. They said the adjustment was difficult.

The girl could be sweet when things went her way, but at other times she would exhibit "tremendous outbursts of anger," Thomas Denny said.

She had formed a special bond with her foster mother before the Dennys, and "she never really wanted to be part of our family," he said. "She felt that we had separated her from where she needed to be."

After the girl had spent four years with the Dennys, her therapist recommended a more structured environment. In January 2001, the Dennys placed her in the Masonic Home for Children, an orphanage in Oxford, 40 miles north of Raleigh. They thought it would provide the "intensive structured therapy that she needed," Thomas Denny said.

The home, founded in 1873, houses 94 children in several "cottages." Most of its residents are "children from hardship families," according to its mission statement.

At first, the girl seemed to do well. Her attitude improved during weekend visits to their home, and the Dennys talked of bringing her back, Thomas Denny said.

In June 2001, Denny said, when he and his wife were visiting the home, the girl approached them and said, "I want to introduce you to someone."

It was McDaniel-Webb.

McDaniel-Webb had traveled the country and the world marketing an Oracle-based software tool called TOAD, which he created and then sold to Quest Software of Irvine, Calif. His nephew and fellow Quest employee, Michael A. Staszewski, testified at a preliminary hearing for McDaniel-Webb that TOAD is so important to Quest that the company built a satellite office around McDaniel-Webb in Cary.

McDaniel-Webb also owned Charles Ashley's Fine Art at Cary Crossroads, according to court documents. The business closed in August 2001.

He married Jayne D. Webb in 1985. They had no children. The couple volunteered together at the Masonic Home beginning in 1998, according to home administrators. Many weekends they traveled the 70 miles from their home to Oxford, where they participated in arts and crafts with the children, played miniature golf and took children on trips to their home and to the beach.

McDaniel-Webb bought new beds for all the children and made other donations, administrators said.

In October 1999, McDaniel-Webb and his wife separated, but he continued to volunteer.

The recent charges are not McDaniel-Webb's first brush with the law. In 1975, when he was 19, he was convicted of aiding and abetting an escaped prisoner -- his father -- in Virginia. He served three years.

Allen Hughes, interim director of the Masonic Home, said the home made a criminal background check when McDaniel-Webb first offered his volunteer services, but it resulted in "no negative comments."

Had administrators known of his criminal past, McDaniel-Webb would not have been accepted as a volunteer, Hughes said.

The Dennys realized that McDaniel-Webb had made an impression on their adopted daughter.

"She started telling us how much he had done for her and the cottage. How she loved him and wanted to be with him," Thomas Denny said. "She talked of him as a father figure and obviously was attracted to his ability to provide a lot of material things to her."

A month later, the Dennys said, they learned that the girl had broken her leg while roller-skating on a weekend visit to McDaniel-Webb's house and was staying there. They said orphanage officials never informed them of the visit, the injury or the decision to allow the girl to stay with McDaniel-Webb after she was hurt.

David Grissom, the home's director at the time, disputed part of the Dennys' account. He said the Masonic Home retrieved the girl after she was injured.

The Dennys said that incident contributed to their loss of faith in the orphanage. "We were not happy at all with the home," Thomas Denny said. "She was not receiving proper care and supervision."

But they had no problem with McDaniel-Webb. They learned of his volunteer activities and his contributions to the orphanage. "We thought he was a real good guy," Thomas Denny said.

McDaniel-Webb told them he had been trying to adopt a child, but was finding it hard because he was single.

In conversations with the Dennys, McDaniel-Webb said that he saw himself as "Bill Gates Jr." and that if there was anything he could do for them, "to please let him know," Thomas Denny said. The Dennys had filed for bankruptcy only a few months earlier.

They talked to Grissom, the orphanage administrator, about McDaniel-Webb, and the girl's therapist at Vance County Mental Health said she would benefit from "a one-on-one situation," Thomas Denny said.

That language was repeated in a letter dated Aug. 2, 2001, that the Dennys sent to Grissom: "Given the nature of [the girl's] history, as the result of an abusive birth family, we feel that she would do well in a one-on-one family environment."

McDaniel-Webb had been trying to adopt a child, and "we have decided to help him facilitate his dream," they wrote.

Grissom and Hughes said they opposed moving the girl but had no power to intervene. As the girl's legal guardians, the Dennys had the authority to transfer custody.

The Dennys and their lawyer, James E. Hairston Jr. of Durham, said a closed hearing on the girl's custody last month produced new information about McDaniel-Webb.

Wake County social worker Lori Bryant testified at the hearing that she investigated a report in August 2001 from McDaniel-Webb's therapist that he had "sexual thoughts about young girls," Hairston and the Dennys said in an interview.

Hairston said Bryant testified that as part of her investigation, she spoke to Grissom, McDaniel-Webb and the girl. The Dennys said Bryant did not discuss the matter with them.

North Carolina law requires anyone who believes a child is a victim or in danger of sexual abuse to notify police or social services in their county.

The N&O was unable to independently confirm Bryant's testimony at the closed hearing or determine what her investigation found. Bryant did not return phone calls.

Warren Ludwig, director of child welfare and child mental health for Wake County Human Services, said he could not confirm the testimony or discuss the case because of confidentiality rules.

Grissom said he does not remember discussing McDaniel-Webb with the Wake County social worker.

"She may have [called], but I don't recall anything like that coming out," Grissom said. "That would have thrown up a red flag immediately."

Wake Superior Court Judge William C. Lawton approved a consent order giving McDaniel-Webb custody of the girl in November 2001. The order, with notarized signatures by the Dennys and McDaniel-Webb, listed McDaniel-Webb's positive attributes, including his job at Quest and his volunteer work and donations at the orphanage.

Lawton said he does not remember approving the arrangement, but said he has signed hundreds of similar orders. He said he would have read the reference to a "one-on-one family environment" as "magical language" that meant "helpful, intense assistance and mentoring" for the child.

He said that he would have been alarmed to learn that the Dennys had received money from McDaniel-Webb.

Thomas Denny said in an interview that they received money from McDaniel-Webb more than once. Susan Denny has lupus and wanted an alternative therapy that was not covered by insurance, Thomas Denny said. "It was situations like that," he said. "It was nothing more than you or anyone else asking someone else for help financially." They would not say how much money they received.

The girl's new living arrangements did not raise immediate concerns among neighbors and friends. Pam Linke, McDaniel-Webb's next-door neighbor, remembers a pretty, freckle-faced girl who was "always smiling" and had a regular stream of friends over, often for parties in the pool McDaniel-Webb built soon after she moved in.

But Internet newsgroups that McDaniel-Webb belonged to suggest the relationship had rough spots.

In late 2001, his e-mail handle, toadman@@toadsoft.com, sought advice from parenting newsgroups about dealing with "an angry older child." In one of the posts he mentions the girl by name.

"I have recently assumed temporary custody of a 12.5 yr old which should become a permanent arrangement through adoption," he wrote. "She lashes out, slams her door, turns away in the car and stares out the window. ... I can't hardly say anything to her without a barrage."

In later postings, he celebrated getting legal custody of the girl and wrote that they were learning to accept each other. Her room was still "a wreck," but "who cares," he wrote. He described her as defensive, but said she rarely "blows up" anymore. He closed saying, "I can't believe that I once thought this angel wore horns."

McDaniel-Webb was generous with the girl, friends of the girl and their parents said. He took her shopping for clothes several times a week, bought her jewelry with real diamonds and gave her four horses, which she rode at a horse farm near her new home.

In December, the seemingly comfortable existence began to unravel.

Police say it started with AOL Instant Messenger, an Internet messaging system that McDaniel-Webb, the girl and her friends used to stay in touch with one another. The girl had been communicating with someone -- she thought it was an older guy in Pennsylvania, but not even police are sure who it was -- to whom she sent a nude picture of herself and wrote about being sexually abused by other girls at the orphanage. The person in Pennsylvania became angry with her, police said, and sent the photo and her messages, which he had saved, to his buddy list, which included many of the girl's classmates.

A few weeks later, school administrators learned about the photo and alerted sheriff's deputies.

When deputies searched the contents of four computers seized at McDaniel-Webb's home, they discovered dozens of images of the girl, according to testimony by Wake Sheriff's Deputy Tony Wright at a hearing on Feb. 7.

They depicted a progression, Wright said, showing the victim clothed, then wearing a bathing suit, then nude in the bathtub and eventually showing her on McDaniel-Webb's bed in sexually explicit poses. In some of the photos she appears to be asleep, Wright said.

When FBI agents arrested McDaniel-Webb, they found luggage in his pickup truck packed with clothing, a loaded revolver and a passport. They also found some books about retiring to Mexico and Costa Rica, and living in Mexico for less than $600 a month. His nephew said the luggage was packed because McDaniel-Webb had just leased an apartment in Raleigh. He said McDaniel-Webb had bought the handgun from a former employee because he had received threats after his arrest in January. U.S. District Judge William Webb noted that as a convicted felon, McDaniel-Webb could not legally possess a handgun.

In the luggage, the agents also found an envelope containing a goodbye letter addressed to the girl. It began: "I will never be able to understand why you choose [sic] to say the things you did to those investigators because you had to know that it meant that you would be taken from me forever. ... I thought we loved each other and understood each other better than that. You will never know how much your betrayal has hurt me. ...

"I gave you clothes, jewelry, shoes, horses, vacations with friends, phones, an ear to talk to, lots of freedom and more. ... And when you had needs... I still tried to give you what you needed."

It was signed, "Your best friend and sometimes 'father,' Jim."

Caption:

McDaniel-Webb was a volunteer at the orphanage.