The father of a boy molested by Samuel Warren Calvert in 1999 says he’d like to see the sexual abuse Calvert admitted to cost the Rowan County man his life.

A judge sentenced Calvert to 40 years in prison Thursday for molesting a 5-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl, who aren’t related. Prosecutors and the victims’ families say they hope it amounts to a life sentence for the 37-year-old man.

“Personally, I’d just as soon see him sent to the electric chair for what he did,” the boy’s father said after Superior Court Judge Sanford Steelman Jr. sentenced Calvert.“But I can live with the 40 years.”

The Post is not naming the parents to protect the identities of the children.

The sentence resulted from a plea agreement Calvert and his attorney, David Bingham, struck with Rowan County District Attorney Bill Kenerly. The case was scheduled for trial next week. Kenerly said he took the plea agreement to spare the children from exposure to the publicity their testimony at a trial would cause, and to spare the families from of a drawn out appeals process.

“The third goal was that Samuel Calvert never got out of prison again alive,” Kenerly said.

Calvert pleaded guilty to six counts of taking indecent liberties with a child and five counts of first-degree sex offense with a child. He received two sentences, one for each child. He’ll spend at least 40 years in prison — minus the time he has served awaiting trial — and could be behind bars as long as 491/2 years.

The offenses began around Thanksgiving of last year, according to the statement Calvert made to Rowan County Sheriff’s Department investigators when they arrested him on Dec. 17, 1999. The first, with the little boy, took place in a wood shed behind Calvert’s house at 2120 Flat Rock Road in China Grove.

Calvert’s appearance has changed since his arrest. His brown hair, short-cropped then, has grown halfway over his ears now, and he has grown a mustache. He shuffled into court on Thursday wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans and leg irons.

During the nearly three-hour hearing, he sat almost motionless in his chair, his hands folded in his lap, looking at the judge. He moved perceptibly only when his attorney leaned over to speak to him or when told to stand to answer the judge, leave the room for lunch, or receive his sentence.

He answered Steelman with a clear “Yes” when asked if he understood the plea agreement and if he is in fact guilty.

Calvert’s wife, Phyllis Calvert, was the children’s babysitter. She has not been charged with any crimes and has maintained that she knew nothing about inappropriate contact her husband had with the children.

When pressed by Kenerly on Thursday, Phyllis Calvert said that her husband had told her that he had inappropriate thoughts about a little girl whose parents became suspicious and stopped bringing her to the Calverts’ home.

She denied that another couple had left the church the Calverts attended after suspecting, as Kenerly said, that Calvert “was bothering their daughter.”

But she said Calvert told her, before his arrest, that the little girl he later admitted molesting had kissed him. She said she asked the girl about it, but didn’t tell her parents.

“It was nothing. She said it was nothing,”Phyllis Calvert said. “He said that she had kissed him, not in a sexual way, she just kissed him.”

Kenerly said he is looking into possible charges against Phyllis Calvert, who his office reported to the State Bureau of Investigation in December, 1999, for running an illegal day care center. But without specific knowledge of the crimes Calvert committed, she probably can’t be charged even as an accessory.

“Her general knowledge that he had a predisposition to molest children, Idon’t think, would have made her criminally liable for anything,” Kenerly said.

The little boy told his parents that he and Calvert — who the children knew as “Brother Sam” — “had a secret,” they said. But he wouldn’t tell them what the secret was. They only discovered it after they took him to NorthEast Medical Center and he told a nurse what had happened in the Calverts’ house.

Calvert told his wife and others after his arrest that the children had invited his actions and willingly participated.

That further agitated the families and their friends who came to watch his sentencing. The little boy’s father, seated with the other parents behind Kenerly, took a couple of steps toward Calvert before being stopped when the judge recessed for lunch. Several family members exchanged words with Phyllis Calvert outside the courtroom before the hearing resumed after lunch.

“She could have stopped it if she wanted to,” the little boy’s father said after hearing Calvert’s wife testify. “In my opinion, she is just as guilty as he is if she allowed that to happen in her home.”

At least 10 sheriff’s department deputies and officers, including Sheriff George Wilhelm, remained in the courtroom until after the hearing concluded and both groups had been escorted out of the courthouse along different routes.

Calvert also said after his arrest that he’d “heard voices”telling him to perform the lewd acts upon the children.

Bingham referred to Calvert’s medical history as some explanation for his actions. In 1998, Calvert learned that he had a tumor growing on his pituitary gland, the small gland at the base of the brain that secretes hormones affecting growth, metabolism and other functions of the body.

Medication a doctor gave Calvert to shrink the tumor affected his thinking and perception, and caused the auditory hallucinations — the “voices” that Calvert heard telling him to molest the children — Bingham argued. He produced a report in which a doctor said the medication could have had such an effect.

Bingham also said, and called Calvert’s mother and several siblings to the stand to confirm, that Calvert’s father physically abused him and his brothers and sisters.

His family called Calvert a religious man. His wife said that he has preached at various churches. A truck driver by trade, Calvert initially told investigators that he was also an associate pastor at New Beginnings Baptist Church, a claim the church denied.

Six of the 10 relatives and family members who attended the hearing to support Calvert took the stand and expressed shock that he could commit the crimes, and said they knew he was remorseful.

But he offered the victims’ families no apology on Thursday, not that it could have replaced what he took away, they said. The children are psychologically scarred, have trouble sleeping and suffer nightmares, they said.

“Thanks to Mr. Calvert, my daughter has lost her innocence, and she will never get it back again,” the girl’s mother said.

The boy’s father said he hopes this serves as a warning to parents.

“They need to watch their children. They need to pay close attention to how their children act. If they say they’ve got a secret, they better do their damnedest to find out what it is.”