Conservative faces sex assault charges

[Guns Guns Guns]

A former Regent University law school assistant dean has been indicted on 13 felony sexual assault charges involving two girls, according to court records.


The allegations against Stephen L. McPherson, 39, of Chesapeake include object sexual penetration, forcible sodomy, and taking indecent liberties with a child by a custodian.


The charges, reported to Chesapeake police in July 2007, stem from events between May 2000 and May 2002, according to the indictments handed up Tuesday by a Chesapeake grand jury. The girls' ages weren't available Friday.


A conviction on the penetration charge is punishable by up to life in prison.


McPherson and his wife worked from August 1996 to August 2000 as house parents supervising a cottage of as many as eight girls at Hope Haven Children's Home on North Landing Road in Virginia Beach, said Linda Jones, a spokeswoman for Union Mission Ministries, which operates the home. Hope Haven, founded in 1965, provides Christian-based care for children from "distressed family situations," according to its Web site.


McPherson is a grandson of the Rev. Theodore Bashford, executive director of the ministries for 52 years, Jones said Friday.


"We are very saddened by the whole thing," she said.


After they left Hope Haven, the McPhersons adopted three girls over the objections of Hope Haven, Jones said. The shelter opposes staff adoptions to avoid interfering with relationships between children and the parents who place them there, Jones said.


McPherson volunteered at Hope Haven during his high school and college summers, Jones said.


In October 1998, two years after being hired as a house parent, he also became development director and general counsel.


Along the way, Jones said, McPherson and his wife underwent the same screening process as everyone else, such as criminal background checks, character references, interviews and spending time with the staff.


Since 1991, the facility has had a counselor working 20 hours a week on site, talking with the children and staff members.


After leaving Hope Haven in 2000, McPherson started work at Regent in Virginia Beach as a writing instructor.

He rose to assistant dean for student affairs.


He resigned in 2007, said Judith Baker, a spokeswoman.


He received his law degree and a master's degree in business administration from Regent in 1996.


McPherson is expected to turn himself in next week, said his lawyer, Lawrence Woodward Jr., who declined to comment on specifics of the case.



http://hamptonroads.com/2008/06/former-regent-assistant-dean-faces-sexual-assault-charges

 

[Cancel 2018. 3]

conservative? where is the proof he is a conservative?

let me guess....more dumbass legion troll lies

 

[Bonestorm]

conservative? where is the proof he is a conservative?

let me guess....more dumbass legion troll lies

You seriously doubt that an Assistant Dean at Regent University Law School, the school that was founded by Pat Robertson, isn't a conservative? OK.

 

[Guns Guns Guns]

You seriously doubt that an Assistant Dean at Regent University Law School, the school that was founded by Pat Robertson, isn't a conservative? OK.

John Ashcroft and Monica Goodling are also affiliated with Regent.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- The title of the course was Constitutional Law, but the subject was sin. Before any casebooks were opened, a student led his classmates in a 10-minute devotional talk, completed with "amens," about the need to preserve their Christian values.

"Sin is so appealing because it's easy and because it's fun," the law student warned.

Regent had no better friend than the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school were among the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni hired to federal government positions since President Bush took office in 2001, according to a university website.

One of those graduates was Monica Goodling , the former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is at the center of the storm over the firing of US attorneys. Goodling, who resigned, became the face of Regent overnight -- and drew a harsh spotlight to the Bush administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations.

Documents show that Goodling, who asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before Congress, was one of a handful of officials overseeing the firings.

Because Goodling graduated from Regent in 1999 and had scant prosecutorial experience, her qualifications to evaluate the performance of US attorneys came under fire. "It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession," wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . ". . . That a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."

The Regent law school was founded in 1986, when Oral Roberts University shut down its ailing law school and sent its library to Robertson's Bible-based college in Virginia. It was initially called "CBN University School of Law" after the televangelist's Christian Broadcasting Network, whose studios share the campus and which provided much of the funding for the law school. (The Coors Foundation is also a donor to the university.)

In 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of Regent's government school, Kay Coles James , to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management -- essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch. The doors of opportunity for government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni.


Their path to employment was further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft , then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks.

Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.

In a Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.

"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.

The graduate from Regent -- which is ranked a "tier four" school by US News & World Report, the lowest score and essentially a tie for 136th place -- was not the only lawyer with modest credentials to be hired by the Civil Rights Division after the administration imposed greater political control over career hiring.

The changes resulted in a sometimes dramatic alteration to the profile of new hires beginning in 2003, as the Globe reported after obtaining resumes from 2001-2006 to three sections in the civil rights division. Conservative credentials rose, while prior experience in civil rights law and the average ranking of the law school attended by the applicant dropped.

As the dean of a lower-ranked law school that benefited from the Bush administration's hiring practices, Jeffrey Brauch of Regent made no apologies in a recent interview for training students to understand what the law is today, and also to understand how legal rules should be changed to better reflect "eternal principles of justice," from divorce laws to abortion rights.


60 percent of the class of 1999 -- Goodling's class -- failed the bar exam on the first attempt.


http://www.boston.com/news/educatio...andal_puts_spotlight_on_christian_law_school/