Ohio woman who unknowingly married her father says learning the secret was ‘devastating’

"It is devastating. It can destroy you," Valerie Spruill, 60, said of learning eight years ago that she had been married to her father.

Valerie Spruill hopes talking publicly about her ordeal will help others in similar circumstances.

An Ohio woman who unknowingly married her father says she is unsure whether he knew he was wed to his biological daughter before his death in 1998.

"It is devastating. It can destroy you," Valerie Spruill, 60, told CNN of learning eight years ago that she had been married to her father. A DNA test using hair from the late Percy Spruill's brush confirmed the shocking news.

Valerie Spruill lived silently with the secret until this month, when she gave an interview to the Akron Beacon Journal to try and help others dealing with similar circumstances.

"I want this to be more of an inspirational story," the 60-year-old told the newspaper. "If I've come through this, anyone can come through anything through the help of the Lord."

Spruill, who lives in Doylestown, Ohio, says other members of her family knew the dark secret long before the news was revealed to her.

Whether her husband ever knew “I don’t know,” she told CNN. “That conversation didn’t come up ... I think if he did know, there is no way he could have told me.”

Percy Spruill died in 1998 at the age of 60. The pair had been married for several years.

It was Valerie Spruill’s second marriage. She had three children with her first husband when she met Percy in Akron, Ohio, she told CNN.

They did not have children.

"We had a good life," she said.

Family members had long figured out the ordeal. After years of enduring silent whispers, it was Spruill’s uncle who finally told her.

Since then, she’s suffered numerous health problems, including two strokes and diabetes. She believes they were linked to living with the dark secret.

"Pain and stress will kill, and I had to release my stress," Spruill said. "I'm just telling the story to release my pain."

Spruill told the paper that her mother was just 15 when she first met Percy.

It remains unclear how many children they had or how long they were together, though Valerie says she is aware of six brothers.

Spruill’s family had a history of keeping secrets.

At only 3 months old, Valerie Spruill was given to her maternal grandparents, but knew them as her parents until she was 8 or 9 years old, according to the paper.

That's when she learned that the woman who frequently stopped by the house wasn't just a family friend, but her mother, Christine.

Her mother, a “lady of the night,” died in 1984.

Spruill, who is now retired with eight grandchildren, thinks all people should know the truth about their families.

“"It needs to be told, because children need to know where they come from," Valerie Spruill told th Beacon—Journal. "And I know it hurts, because I have been devastated by this.”

Thousands descend on tiny Dutch town after Facebook invitation goes viral

AMSTERDAM -- Riot police broke up crowds of youths who turned violent in a tiny Dutch town late on Friday after several thousand people descended on the community after a schoolgirl's Facebook invitation to her sixteenth birthday party went viral.

Media reports said six people were hurt, including three seriously, after disturbances broke out in the quiet northern Dutch town of Haren. Reports said shops were vandalized and looted, a car set on fire and street signs and lampposts damaged before police broke up the crowds.

Hundreds of youths gather in Haren, northern Netherlands, on Friday. Dutch mass-market daily De Telegraaf reported that tens of thousands of people received a Facebook invitation to a schoolgirl's birthday party.

Up to 600 riot police were on the scene during the disturbances, according to one media report. There were at least 20 arrests, media said.

Pictures from the scene showed party-goers wearing T-shirts with "Project X" written on them -- apparently a reference to the movie "Project X", in which three high school seniors throw a party that gets out of control as word spreads.

Some 30,000 people received the invitation from a girl announcing her birthday party on Facebook, according to media reports. The party was intended to be a small-scale celebration, but the girl did not set her Facebook event to private and the invitation went viral.

Chairs burn in the northern Dutch town of Haren late on Friday after thousands of party-goers showed up to a teenager's birthday party.

"She posted the invitation on Facebook and sent it to friends, who then sent it to other friends and soon it spread like wildfire across the Internet," Melanie Zwama, Groningen police spokeswoman told the AFP news agency according to the BBC.

A Twitter account was set up to promote the event, and the Dutch Daily News identified a video posted on YouTube that also promoted the party.

Dutch DJs Yellow Claw and Afrojack -- who each have thousands of Twitter followers -- posted messages about the party on their accounts (in Dutch).

Church admits Australia abuse

The Catholic Church in one Australian state has revealed that at least 620 children have been abused by its clergy since the 1930s, sparking a fresh call Saturday for an independent inquiry into sex abuse.

The Catholic Church in Victoria revealed the number in a submission to a state parliamentary hearing on Friday but said the instances of abuse reported had fallen dramatically from the "appalling" numbers of the 1960s and 1970s.

"It is shameful and shocking that this abuse, with its dramatic impact on those who were abused and their families, was committed by Catholic priests, religious and church workers," Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said.

Last year Pope Benedict XVI told Australian bishops that their work had been made more difficult by the clerical sex abuse scandal which has rocked the church as he exhorted them to "repair the errors of the past with honesty".

The full submission was not released publicly but the church said most of the 620 criminal abuse claims it had upheld over the last 16 years related to incidents 30 to 80 years ago, with very few related to abuse that has taken place since 1990.

Hart said the church had taken steps to redress the issue, including a programme implemented in the 1990s involving an independent investigation, an ongoing programme of counselling and support, and compensation.
"This submission shows how the church of today is committed to facing up to the truth and to not disguising, diminishing or avoiding the actions of those who have betrayed a sacred trust," he said.

"We acknowledge the suffering and trauma endured by children who have been in the Church's care, and the effect on their families. We renew our apology to them," he said in a statement in which he spoke for church leaders in Victoria.

But victims' supporters say the number of children abused was likely much higher than that confirmed by the church in its own inquiries.

Chrissie Foster, whose two daughters were raped by their parish priest from the mid-1980s, said the church had had decades to address the issue but had only revealed the figure to the Victorian inquiry on Friday.

"It's only been victims coming out and going to the police that has stopped all of this," she told the ABC.
"The church has never lifted a finger to stop their paedophile priests," added Foster, who said one of her daughters had ultimately taken her own life.

President of the Law Institute of Victoria, Michael Holcroft, said there was a need for more independent investigations.

"Obviously there's a public perception that the church investigating the church is Caesar judging Caesar and I think that the community is now looking for somebody external, someone independent to get to the bottom of what's obviously been a big problem for a long, long time," he told the ABC.

The Victorian state government announced the inquiry into the handling of child abuse cases by religious and non-government bodies after the suicides of dozens of people abused by clergy.

The church in Australia, as in other parts of the world, has endured a long-running controversy over its response to past abuses.

When Pope Benedict XVI visited Sydney in 2008 he met victims and offered a historic full apology for child sex abuse by predatory priests, saying he was "deeply sorry" and calling for those guilty of the "evil" to be punished.