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GREENSBORO -USA- On the surface, it appeared to be a case against all odds: a woman who suffered from mental illness and said she had 80 personalities suing a respected therapist and college professor and challenging the state board assigned to watch over him.

Even the lawyer who took Angela Spell’s case originally had trouble believing her claim: From 1996 to 1999, Greensboro psychotherapist and licensed nurse Daniel Longenecker had sexually exploited her. And the N.C. Board of Nursing had taken no disciplinary action in response to her complaint.

But Spell’s story never changed — that Longenecker had sex with her, that he made her eat faeces, that he confessed their relationship to a friend of Spell’s, that the nursing board never interviewed her for its investigation. The deeper attorney Phyllis Lile-King looked, the more convinced she became that Spell was telling the truth. Spell won her lawsuit when a jury found Longenecker liable for violating a state law called the Psychotherapist-Patient Sexual Exploitation Act.

Now Spell is taking on another fight: trying to convince the nursing board about her allegation that it has a sexual predator in its midst.