Wife of Regent ex-assistant dean released from jail

VIRGINIA BEACH

Melina McPherson walked free on bond from the city's jail Thursday, a day after she and her husband, a former Regent University assistant dean, pleaded guilty to child sex abuse charges.

McPherson, 37, had pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with a teenage girl and agreed to serve 40 days in jail. Circuit Judge A. Joseph Canada Jr. revoked her bond and ordered her jailed pending an Oct. 7 sentencing hearing.

The judge reinstated her bond Thursday because a presentence report couldn't be finished by that date, said her attorney, Franklin Swartz. Keeping her in jail beyond then would exceed the jail term set forth in her plea agreement, he said.

McPherson and her husband, Stephen Lee McPherson, were convicted Wednesday of sexually abusing three teenage sisters during the late 1990s at Hope Haven Children's Home, a Christian-based community in Virginia Beach, where the couple served as house parents.

The couple manipulated the girls into engaging in sex acts, according to court records. They cited Bible verses that they said justified the abuse and, afterward, prayed together for God to forgive them, records show.

On Thursday, Commonwealth's Attorney Harvey Bryant released excerpts of letters written this year by the three victims that showed they didn't want the couple to be jailed - or even prosecuted - in Virginia Beach.

In the excerpts, they wrote of wanting to put the case behind them. Each is married with children, and two live outside Virginia, Bryant said.

They had wrestled with whether to report the abuse to authorities before finally doing so in 2007 in Chesapeake, Bryant said. The couple had moved there and adopted the three sisters after they left Hope Haven in 2000.

After Stephen McPherson was indicted in Chesapeake, the victims said they didn't want him or his wife to be charged in Virginia Beach, Bryant said. They worried about how trials and lengthy prison terms would affect the rest of the McPhersons' family, particularly the couple's two sons, ages 4 and 5, he said.

The eldest victim, whom Melina admitted to repeatedly molesting, wrote in January: "I feel an incredible sadness when I think about Melina and Stephen's children. I know the pain of losing family and want desperately to spare them of this pain."

Bryant said he understood the victims' wishes to drop the charges in Virginia Beach but declined to do so. Instead, he said in a prepared statement, he agreed to resolve the cases "so that they no longer felt that an injustice was being done to the two small McPherson children."

He said the victims were his primary concern in reaching the plea agreements.

"To re-victimize a reluctant and unwilling witness by forcing them to go forward in cases they do not wish to pursue would be grossly unfair and cruel," he said.

Stephen McPherson, 40, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Virginia Beach Circuit Court to taking indecent liberties with two of the sisters at Hope Haven. His plea agreement required him to serve three years in prison. He is to be sentenced Sept. 16.

He already is serving 16 years after pleading guilty in January to the Chesapeake charges of forcible sodomy and object sexual penetration involving the girls. Melina McPherson was not charged in Chesapeake.

State sentencing guidelines called for her to serve no jail time for the felony charge in Virginia Beach, according to Bryant and Swartz, her attorney.

"We entered the plea in good faith," Swartz said. "She isn't just getting just a slap on the wrist."

The plea agreements require her and her husband to register as sex offenders and remain on indefinite probation. Neither is allowed to have unsupervised contact with minors, except for their two sons. Bryant said there was no sign either would abuse their natural children.

Shawn Day, (757) 222-5131, shawn.day@pilotonline.com