Now that my problem is solved, the spam is gone and the spammer is banned for a period of time. If more is posted, I'll ban them permanently.
I didn't want to post the reason publicly before it was fixed as if anyone posted anything objectional I couldn't do anything about it. For the last couple of weeks I have been locked out of the administrative log in of the forum which meant all I could do is what you could do. The database problem is fixed and everything is back to normal.
Sorry it took so long.
Leonard