Registered sex offender charged, detained, in groping of 6-year-old girl on Chicago's South Side

A registered sex offender was ordered detained until trial Thursday on charges that he sexually abused a 6-year-old girl at a bus stop in Chicago's Chatham community last weekend.

James Spencer, 41, is charged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse in the incident this past Saturday.

In a proffer, Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Karen Crothers said at 7:41 p.m. Saturday, the 6-year-old girl was standing at a bus stop on 87th Street just west of State Street with her mother and her 8-month-old brother, who was in a stroller.

As the bus was about to pull up, Spencer came up to the 6-year-old girl from behind and roped her over her skirt, prosecutors said. The girl's mother saw Spencer getting closer to her daughter and pulled the girl away from him, telling him not to touch her, prosecutors said.

The bus arrived shortly after Spencer toucher the girl, and Spencer pretended to fall and began yelling, prosecutors said. Spencer got on the bus, then abruptly turned around, got off, and fled the scene, prosecutors said.

Meanwhile, the little girl got on the bus with her mom and her baby brother. The girl was visibly shaken as she told her mother what had happened to her, prosecutors said.

At that point, the woman got off the bus with her children. The woman looked for Spencer and saw him coming from the direction of a nearby store, prosecutors said.

Spencer tried to avoid the woman and went in another direction, but the woman got close enough to take his picture, prosecutors said. The woman called her husband, and when he arrived, they went to a nearby Chicago police station to report the incident, prosecutors said.

Surveillance video from a Food4Less at 112 W. 87th St., showed Spencer wearing a blue short, baseball cap, light pants, and black shoes driving a silver car and parking in the store lot, prosecutors said. The video showed Spencer getting out of the car and going for the 6-year-old girl at the bus stop, bending down several times to get close to her, prosecutors said.

The video showed Spencer going on to get on and then off the bus, and then going back to the Food4Less, where he made a purchase and left, prosecutors said.

The day of the incident, the little girl described what happened to her to the Chicago Children's Advocacy Center, prosectors said. Police went on to issue a community alert and an anonymous caller identified the man in the photos from the alert as Spencer, a registered sex offender, prosecutors said. The little girl identified Spencer from a photo array, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Spencer was sentenced to 15 years in prison for criminal sexual assault in 2007.

In that incident, prosecutors said a 40-year-old woman was working on a web deign project at home when she went to the 7-11 at the northeast corner of Halsted and Roscoe streets in the Northalsted District to buy a snack. As the woman left the 7-11 and walked home, Spencer grabbed her, threw her to the ground, and raped her in an alley, prosecutors said. Police came and found Spencer on top of the woman, who suffered numerous injuries, prosecutors said.

Also in 2007, Spencer was sentenced concurrently to seven years in prison for choking a woman, slamming her head to the ground, and robbing her of her cellphone, and for smashing into a woman's car and ransacking it, prosecutors said.

He also has a rap sheet going back to 1999, when he was a juvenile. This includes a forcible rape arrest in Missouri in 2006.