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Smithfield — A judge will allow Lynn Paddock's oldest children to tell a jury that they endured abuse at her hand.Johnston County Assistant District Attorney Paul Jackson said Paddock murdered 4-year-old Sean through a pattern of torture unleashed on her children for years.Paddock's oldest children spent Monday and Tuesday telling a judge how Lynn Paddock beat and tormented her children for years. Such evidence is not typically allowed at trial unless a judge agrees to allow it.Paddock played on the children's worst fears and vulnerabilities to punish them, testified one of her adopted children, Tami Paddock.Now 21, Tami Paddock said that shortly after she was adopted in 1996, she confided in her new mother that she had been molested by a man who climbed into her bedroom through an open window. Lynn Paddock then ordered her to sleep beneath an open bedroom window at night, she said."Schooling was a privilege, talking was a privilege, even eating was a privilege," Tami Paddock said. "When you got in trouble, that stuff was taken away."Tami Paddock was one of six children adopted by Lynn Paddock and her then-husband, Johnny Paddock. Lynn Paddock is accused of suffocating one of the children, Sean, when he was 4 years old by wrapping him tightly in blankets.Under cross-examination, Tami Paddock said her father knew about some of the abuse. Johnny Paddock has not been charged in the case. He told reporters Monday that he was unaware of what was happening at home while he was at work.Tami's brother Ray testified Tuesday morning that Lynn Paddock forced him to jog in place for two hours and beat him with a metal fence rod when he slowed down. Ray, 17, said he developed a blood clot after she threw a hammer at his shoulder while he helped build a fence to keep goats.Lynn Paddock's rage grew when Sean and two other children came to live with the family in 2005 at a remote farmhouse outside Smithfield, he testified. She would duct-tape the mouths of the youngest children to keep them from talking to one another, and she often cursed at them while she beat them, he said."She'd just curse at us to make us feel we weren't worth anything," Ray said. "She very rarely told us she loved us. She told us nobody would ever take us if we left there."
