Serial Pedophile Committed to Federal Custody as a Sexually Dangerous Person

RALEIGH – United States Attorney Robert J. Higdon, Jr., announced that Chief United States District Judge James C. Dever, III, committed JACK LOUIS SPORICH,  84, to the custody of the Attorney General as a sexually dangerous person.  SPORICH is now the oldest sex offender to be committed under the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.

SPORICH has a long history of sexually molesting children and was once considered one of California’s most dangerous sex offenders.  His first known sexual offense occurred in 1966.  Over the course of the next 50 years – and despite a lengthy prison sentence, a term of state parole, and an involuntary commitment in a state hospital – SPORICH continued molesting children as young as five years old.  Even in his seventies, Sporich traveled to Cambodia, where he enticed children with money, toys, clothes, food, and other items, and then sexually molested them.  The evidence at trial demonstrated that SPORICH has molested at least ten children in his lifetime.

In March 2017, and while SPORICH was serving a federal prison sentence for his offenses in Cambodia, the United States certified him as a sexually dangerous person under the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act.  Congress passed that Act in 2006 to provide another powerful legal mechanism for protecting the public from some of the most dangerous sexual offenders.  The Act allows the United States to seek civil commitment of sexually dangerous persons who, because of a serious mental illness, abmnormality, or disorder, would have serious difficulty refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation.

The United States believed that SPORICH met every element of that definition.  The Court agreed.  On September 27, 2018, after a bench trial, Judge Dever committed SPORICH to the custody of the Attorney General as a sexually dangerous person.  In doing so, Judge Dever explained that SPORICH is not able to control his urges as they relate to children and continues to be sexually attracted to boys ages 8-12.  Judge Dever noted that Sporich’s offense conduct spans much of his adult life and demonstrates extraordinary efforts to create an atmosphere in which he could molest young boys.

“Jack Sporich is an unrelenting, unrepentant sexual predator,” said U.S. Attorney Higdon.  “He clearly could not control his deviant sexual urges, and children the world over suffered for it.  No more.  Our children and our communities are safer with Sporich off the streets, and he can now get the treatment that he so desperately needs.”    

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina litigates all Adam Walsh Act cases for the entire country.  All sexually dangerous persons who are committed to federal custody are housed in a federal facility in that district, where intensive, residential treatment is offered to them.  SPORICH is the eightieth sexually dangerous person committed under the Adam Walsh Act.     

Special Assistant United States Attorneys Michael Bredenberg and Genna Petre, and Assistant United States Attorney Michael Anderson, represented the government in this case.