In Virginia Beach, woman gets 6 months for molesting girl

VIRGINIA BEACH

A Chesapeake woman who admitted to taking indecent liberties with a teenage girl in her care more than a decade ago will spend six months in jail, a judge decided this week.

Melina McPherson pleaded guilty in return for a five-year sentence with all but one year suspended, half of which the judge said she may serve on house arrest if her probation officer signs off. She also must continue sex offender therapy and treatment, said Macie Pridgen, spokeswoman for the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.

McPherson, now 39, supervised the victim at Hope Haven Children's Home in Virginia Beach in the late 1990s. She and her husband, Stephen McPherson, later adopted the girl and her two sisters.

The couple admitted to using Bible verses to justify sexually abusing the girls between 1996 and 2000, court documents state. They prayed for God's forgiveness afterward.

The abuse was first reported to police in 2007. One of the victims came forward at the behest of her brother, who had only recently learned of the molestation, according to a stipulation of facts in the case.

The victim later regretted the decision. She wrote a letter to Chesapeake and Virginia Beach authorities in January 2009 urging them to drop charges against Melina McPherson and pursue only one indecent liberties charge against Stephen McPherson, a former assistant dean at Regent University.

The victim said she did not want the couple's two natural sons to grow up without parents, as she and her sisters had.

Despite her appeals, Stephen McPherson was sentenced to 16 years for the forcible sodomy and object sexual penetration charges in Chesapeake, where the couple lived. He was sentenced to three years on indecent liberty charges in a plea agreement with Virginia Beach prosecutors.

A retired judge from another city oversaw Melina McPherson's case in Virginia Beach on Tuesday. Two Circuit Court judges there had rejected previous plea agreements. The first called for 40 days in jail, the second for 60 days.

"Had the Special Grand Jury or I followed the written wishes of the victim," said Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney Harvey Bryant, "there would have been no prosecution."

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5131, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com