Testimony: Paddock children lived in fear
Published: Thu, May. 29, 2008 11:08AM
Modified Thu, May. 29, 2008 12:33PM
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closeSMITHFIELD -- Ray Paddock told jurors he lied to deputies and social workers about what went on in their home because he feared his adoptive mother Lynn Paddock would beat him.
Ray said on the witness stand that he lied to detectives the day Sean died because he worried he would have nowhere to go. He feared that if he went back to the Paddocks' home, his mother would punish him for tattling her.
"I didn't want to be the one if she went home with us that night to be the one who told on her," Ray told jurors this morning. "I knew it wouldn't go well for the one who did."
TIMELINE
DECEMBER 2002: Sean's day-care teacher called social workers when the infant arrived shivering, his lips blue from the cold. Social workers found no heat in the home; Sean's uncle, Ron Ford Jr., takes in the children but has to give them up six months later when finances become too strained.
MARCH 2003: Sean's father is charged with abusing the boy's siblings. (Dwayne Ford later pleads guilty. He is put on probation and ordered to stay away from the children.)
JUNE 2003: Sean and his siblings move into a Wake County foster home.
SEPTEMBER 2004: After several attempts to reunite the children with their birth mother, social workers give up, and they are legally severed from her care. The children are available for adoption.
OCTOBER 2004: Children's Home Society lines up Johnny and Lynn Paddock, a Johnston County couple who have adopted three other foster children through the private agency, to adopt the Ford children.
JANUARY 2005: Sean and his siblings first visit the Paddocks' farm outside Smithfield. Sean returns from the weekend visit with a bruise on his backside. Lynn Paddock said he fell off a bunk bed. He and his siblings said Paddock whipped him for playing with the family dog.
FEBRUARY 2005: Social workers conclude that Sean tumbled from the bunk bed and the Ford children resume their visits to the Paddock farm.
JULY 2005: The adoption is completed.
FEBRUARY 2006: Sean suffocates after being tightly bundled in blankets. Investigators determine Lynn Paddock has been spanking the children with plastic plumbing supply line. Lynn Paddock is charged with first-degree murder and child abuse. She has been in the Johnston County jail since.
FEBRUARY 2008: Sean’s biological grandparents sue the Paddocks, the state Department of Health and Human Services, Wake County Human Services and private adoption agency Children’s Home Society for the boy’s death. Ron Ford Sr. wants to learn how the agencies failed to protect Sean. The suit is still pending.
AT THE TRIAL
On Wednesday, several Johnston County deputies recounted their dealings with the Paddocks the morning dispatchers directed them to the farmhouse outside Smithfield to save Sean. Detectives described Lynn Paddock as agitated, asking them if she needed to call a lawyer.
Jurors also studied pictures of Sean's body, marred with scrapes and bruises.
Jurors are expected to hear from more of Lynn Paddock's adoptive children when the trial resumes this morning.
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More Lynn Paddock
Paddock, 47, is on trial for first-degree murder for the death of Sean. He was bound so tightly in blankets on night in February 2006 that he suffocated.
Defense attorneys picked through each of the statements Ray made to authorities after Sean's death. Ray admitted that he had probably made the statements included in the reports, but that most of what he said was meant to "protect Lynn Paddock."
Ray told jurors that Paddock coached him and his adoptive siblings on what to say to a social worker before an adoption agency representative came to ask if they wanted another child in the home. They posed for pictures to pretend that their family went on vacations and turned them over to social workers who were reponsible for determining whether the Paddocks could adopt more foster children.
"We went to Florida and Alabama, but those were rare trips," Ray said. "It was all put on to make it look like we were one big happy family."
Paddock's children have accused her of beating them with plastic plumbing pipe, forcing them to exercise for hours on end and taping their mouths shut to keep them quiet. Each child offered his or her own story Wednesday and Thursday.
Jurors were dismissed at noon today because of a scheduling conflict with a defense attorney.
Testimony from Paddock's oldest children will resume tomorrow.
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