Parents and school supporters are sponsoring proms at various venues in the coming days despite the fact that statewide Covid-19 restrictions bar the high schools themselves from participating in the traditional spring dance that students missed last year. “The students have made many sacrifices during this pandemic and we felt like the students were most deserving of a special night,” said Alison Gosnell, one of the parent organizers of the prom at Hendersonville High School. “The best reactions I have gotten are really from the students. They have been telling me ‘thank you’ and telling me about their dresses and tuxedo selections.”
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.”