The alleged abuser, James Franklin Sapp, lived next door to the victim on top of Jeter Mountain. The child was 12 years old when she and her mother, Carol Lynn Owenby Siebert, met with a Henderson County sheriff’s deputy at the Waffle House on Upward Road to report “a statutory rape that had occurred over several years at the Sapp residence,” a search warrant application said.
Four days later, on June 16, 2014, the girl told detective Tonya Reeves during a lengthier interview that Sapp had started molesting her at age 5 and had raped her repeatedly over the next seven years. The girl told Reeves that “there was about 40 occurrences when something happened.”