Former children’s home official loses law license for sexual abuse plea

The Associated Press

The Virginia State Bar has revoked the law license of a former house parent for a children's home who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing two girls. Stephen L. McPherson is scheduled to be sentenced May 22. The former assistant dean at Regent University's law school pleaded guilty earlier this year in Chesapeake to forcible sodomy and object sexual penetration involving two girls between 2000 and 2002. The 39-year-old McPherson faces trial in May in Virginia Beach on sexual abuse charges stemming from events from 1996 to 2000, when he and his wife served as house parents at Hope Haven Children's Home. Thirty-seven-year-old Melina Ann McPherson is also charged. McPherson started working at Regent as a writing instructor after leaving Hope Haven in 2000. He resigned in 2007.