Trial weighs story of sexual abuse

April 19--Either a middle-aged man took advantage of trust a family placed in him and sexually abused an adolescent boy, or he himself is a victim, living a nightmare after being falsely accused of a horrendous crime, attorneys said on Wednesday.

George William Sheffield, 54, is accused of forcing a then-12-year-old boy to watch pornography and perform sexual acts, then trying to anally rape the boy, Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lee said in an opening statement in Caldwell Superior Court.

The boy, who is on the autism spectrum, is "the perfect victim," Lee said. He was once a "very emotionally open young man, at 12. He was friendly and talkative."

Lee said that the boy's mother was dating a man who lived next door to Sheffield at a home in Lenoir. Sheffield, a solidly built man with thinning gray hair, a pointed chin and cell-block pale skin, was well-liked, a friend of the family who would sometimes cook for them, allowing the woman's children to play in his yard, watch TV in his home and even use his showers.

On the evening of July 23, 2015, Lee said, the boy and his brother were visiting Sheffield, as they often did, when Sheffield invited the boy into another room, where he showed pornography on his laptop, forced him to perform and receive oral sex, then slathered baby oil on his own penis and tried to anally rape the boy, Lee said.

The boy struggled, and his shirt was torn, but he managed to escape and run home, where he told his mother Sheffield had touched him inappropriately. Sheffield was indicted on a charge of a first-degree statutory sex offense.

Joe Delk IV, Sheffield's attorney, said that the boy is lying to protect his own misbehavior.

"One night, the kids maybe had too much sugar," he said, and they went into Sheffield's computer room and looked up porn on his computer.

"George didn't know what they were doing. He came in, yelled at them to get out," Delk said. The boy "got caught with something he wasn't supposed to be doing. ... He's going to create a story to protect himself."

The boy, thin and bird-like, with curly dark hair, continues to maintain that Sheffield molested him. Just three days shy of his 15th birthday, he swiveled nervously in his chair in court while answering questions: He's in eighth grade. His grades are "somewhat good." His mother's ex-boyfriend lived near Sheffield, and on the day he says Sheffield molested him, he had eaten dinner, hamburgers and hot dogs, at Sheffield's house, mowed his lawn using a riding mower, showered there and even had his clothes, which were dirty from mowing the lawn, washed.

He was watching TV with his brother when Sheffield approached, tapping him on the shoulder.

"He took me to his computer, ... and had the porn website up," the boy said. "I sat down in a chair that was to the right of the computer."

As his brother sat in another room watching TV, the boy sat with Sheffield as the man played pornography and asked him questions about it.

"It was men, women, and some women and women," the boy said.

The boy essentially repeated Lee's statement, describing Sheffield's actions, how he recoiled, tried to inch away. He said that he felt uneasy.

"He pulled my pants down," he said. "I tried to move."

It lasted "a few minutes, maybe two, three."

Delk asked the boy about other parts of the day, such as whether perhaps his shirt got torn while he was playing tag with his siblings.

"My shirt got torn when he pulled me toward him at the computer," the boy said.

As the boy talked, emotions washed over the faces of some of the jurors: disgust, contempt. One man sat, face stony, with his arms folded in front of him. A bearded man, his face carefully blank, scribbled notes with a blue ballpoint pen.

The boy's mother, a slender brunette, testified through sobs that when her son returned after visiting Sheffield, he seemed nervous. He fidgeted. His expression "was a little off," she said.

When she pulled him into a bathroom and asked him what happened, he didn't want to speak.

"I said, 'Buddy, whatever you tell me, we're going to get through this,'" she said, putting her face in her hands, her voice thick with tears. "He just broke down crying. He said, 'Mom, he touched my penis.'"

They got in the car and drove to the Lenoir Police Department. Then they went to Caldwell Memorial Hospital, where they learned that the hospital does not perform sexual assault forensic exams, or "rape kits" on children. They drove the two hours to Mission Hospital in Asheville in the middle of the night, where the boy was examined and interviewed.

In his questioning of the mother, Delk highlighted the fact that both mother and son admitted the boy has problems remembering things.

His memory issues "will come and go," the woman said. He can come home and not remember what he ate for lunch, or what he did in school that day. When he's under stress, his memory is worse, the woman said, but he does not distort things that he has experienced.

"That's one thing about his Asperger's (syndrome). It is what it is," the woman said.

Delk asked about her son's computer use. She said he didn't often have access to computers and she's not sure he would have known at that age how to Google pornography.

If her son were lying, the woman said, he would have broken and admitted it by now.

"He would have said, 'I've had enough, I won't go through this no more,'" she said.

Delk again mentioned her son's memory problems.

"Do you not realize that that's a convenient explanation, that [the boy] can remember the important stuff?" Delk asked.

"Objection," Lee snapped.

"No further questions," Delk said.

Testimony in the trial, which is expected to last several days, resumes this morning.

Reporter Kara Fohner can be reached at 828-610-8721.

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