Saturday 12 March 2016

DNA result showed woman was married to her father


60-year-old Valerie Spruill learned the truth about her husband Percy six years after he passed. Nobody shared it with her while her husband was alive. For years after his death, she heard bits of the story. It was something about an absentee father, something about her husband. None of it made sense, she said. That's not until her uncle finally told her what no one else had: She had unknowingly married the father she never knew.
According to the Akron Beacon Journal, Spruill was sent to live with her grandparents when she was only three months old. She was actually told that her grandfather was her father and that her mother was a “family friend.” Her biological mother was reportedly a hooker who was sent to jail. The truth was that her biological father was Percy Spruill, who was only 15 when he met Valerie’s biological mother. When Valerie grew up, she married Percy, as she did not know at the time that he was actually her father.
"I don't know if he ever knew or not. That conversation didn't come up," she said. "I think if he did know, there is no way he could have told me."
She confirmed that her husband was indeed her father through a DNA test, hair taken from one of his brushes. The aftermath of the secret was devastating emotionally -- and physically, Spruill suffered two strokes and was diagnosed with diabetes.
Spruill met and married her husband-father in Akron and settled in Doylestown, a working class suburb of about 2,300.  It was her second marriage. Spruill was a nice man, a good provider. He was kind to her three children from her previous marriage.
"We had a good life," she said.
She initially struggled with anger, with hating Spruill for what happened. But therapy taught her what happened wasn't her fault. Her faith taught her to forgive.
Spruill said at about age 8 or 9, she discovered that the woman who often visited the house was not a family friend but her mother. But nobody, she said, talked about her father. There's nobody left to give her the answers about her husband-father. Her mother, Christine, died in 1984. Her grandparents have long since passed. So, too, have a number of Percy Spruill's relatives. Spruill knows her mother worked as a prostitute and even got caught up in the 1980 high-profile corruption scandal surrounding James Barbuto, a probate judge who was convicted of intimidating investigators and gross sexual imposition for attacking a courthouse clerk in his chambers.

2 comments:

  1. Quite devastating

    ReplyDelete
  2. she should take comfort in the fact that he was dead before she knew

    ReplyDelete