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Superior Court Judge Robert Ervin did not make a decision April 14, the last day of the rare, three-day removal hearing of District Attorney Greg Newman in Henderson County Superior Court. But in closing statements, independent counsel James Cooney III asked the judge to weigh the power of a district attorney and the “heft” of the men who spoke up for him – sheriffs, police officers, pastors and judges – against the power of alleged sexual assault survivors, bravely speaking their truth to Newman and accusing him of violating their constitutional rights. Something, Cooney said, that t...

Warning: Story contains descriptions of sexual violence. Grace Pryor thinks back with remarkable clarity to that murky, nightmarish night six years ago, when she was stumbling back to her dorm room at Brevard College. Pryor, now 26 and an aspiring doctor of audiology, knew she’d had too much Bacardi to be driving home in the early morning of April 12, 2015. But she was alert enough to remember the alleged rape by two basketball players she called friends. In addition to that trauma were the stinging words of District Attorney Greg Newman, whose job Pryor thought was to uphold justice. �...

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 to...

More By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism. A heroic effort for heroes Citizens gather to celebrate construction of Veterans Park of Effingham County Audience members stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance during the Feb. 28 ceremony at Veterans Park of Effingham County. - photo by Mark Lastinger/staff With Ruth Lee and Lamar Crosby behind him, Mose Mock leads the audience in the ...

Valerie Owenby, known until now in court records at "V.O.," wants everyone to know her name. Owenby grew up in the house her grandfather built, on a mountaintop in Henderson County. She lived there with her father, brother and grandparents at the end of a country road, surrounded by woods and very few neighbors. The closest neighbor was James Franklin Sapp, who Owenby, now 22, said sexually assaulted, raped and terrorized her from age 5-12, most of her childhood. “When I was 12 I started my period, and he decided not to do it anymore and told me to keep my mouth shut or my family would di...