Notorious California sex offender ordered held as ‘sexually dangerous person’

Jack Louis Sporich has been known by a lot of titles: pedophile, child molester, sexually violent predator.

Now he has a new one: “sexually dangerous person,” a designation that officially makes him one of the most dangerous sexual predators in the nation and will keep him in the federal government’s custody indefinitely.

Authorities say Sporich, now 84, has molested as many as 500 young boys from California to Cambodia over the decades, and that his unrelenting urges required an unusual prosecution under federal law to force him into a civil commitment rather than allow him to be released from his latest prison sentence.

Last week, a federal judge in North Carolina ruled that Sporich must be committed because he continues to be sexually attracted to young boys, a finding that made Sporich the 80th — and oldest — sex offender convicted under a 2006 federal law known as the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act.

“Jack Sporich is an unrelenting, unrepentant sexual predator,” Robert J. Higdon Jr., U.S. attorney in Raleigh, N.C., said in a statement following Sporich’s conviction. “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.”

Higdon’s office said evidence presented at his latest trial indicated he had molested at least 10 children during his life. Others say the number is far greater, and began in Ventura County in the 1960s where Sporich was a wealthy aerospace engineer who frequently took children on camping trips their parents paid for so he could molest them.

Sporich was convicted there of seven counts of molestation and spent nine years in state prison before being sent to Atascadero State Hospital as a “sexually violent predator.”

That designation allowed authorities to keep Sporich in custody even after he had served his prison sentence under a program designed to treat such predators until they can convince a court they deserve to be released.

Sporich, who was a focus of a 2006 Sacramento Bee series on failings in the program, refused to take part in treatment during his 39 months in Atascadero and won release in May 2004 after two juries declared they were unable to agree on whether he would re-offend.

He moved to an upscale Sedona, Ariz., condominium where he retired and told Bee reporters who visited him there that he was remorseful over his past.

“I know I can’t change the past,” he said in 2006. “In the future, what I can do is try to be as helpful as I can to people. I can’t make up for what I did.

“All I can do, in my own childish way, is try to compensate by helping other people.”

That isn’t the way things turned out.

Sporich left Arizona shortly after his past became public, and was building a $1.2 million home near a tourist destination in Cambodia known as Siem Reap.

He was arrested there in February 2009 after an aid agency that tracks predators alleged Sporich had molested three Cambodian boys — ages 9 to 12 — after luring them to his home with toys and candy.

Court documents say Sporich used to troll the town streets on a motor bike, attracting boys by dropping cash as he motored by.

He was expelled from Cambodia and returned to the United States in September 2009 as part of the Justice Department’s “Operation Twisted Traveler,” a program aimed at prosecuting pedophiles who travel the world as “sex tourists.”

In May 2010, Sporich pleaded guilty to molesting two 12-year-old boys in Southeast Asia in a plea agreement that netted him a 10-year sentence.

Federal court documents filed in North Carolina, where all prosecutions under the Adam Walsh Act are conducted, say Sporich could have been released on Oct. 20, 2017, but was detained after prosecutors sought to certify that he is a “sexually dangerous person.”

Sporich’s federal defender opposed holding him any longer, arguing in a court filing last week that the government was violating his rights by holding him nearly one year past his release date.

“Mr. Sporich’s criminal sentence expired in October of 2017, and his is now being held in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons only because of the certificate lodged against him,” his lawyer argued.

U.S. District Judge James C. Dever III disagreed, ordering on Sept. 27 that Sporich be declared a “sexually dangerous person” and committed civilly to a federal facility in Butner, N.C., where treatment is offered and where he must remain unless a court determines he is no longer a danger. He can petition for release every six months, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Raleigh.

Whether he will ever win release is not known. Sporich’s sister, June Caine, told The Bee in 2009 that she did not believe he could ever be reformed.

“I think he’s sick, and he’s never going to get well,” she said.

And the Ventura County prosecutor who convicted Sporich years ago and is now a defense attorney, said pedophiles rarely are slowed by age.

“They’re going to molest until they are dead, period,” David Lehr said in a 2009 interview.