When news broke in 2011 that an Augusta child psychologist was suspected of sexually abusing patients, accusations began to stack up.
It happened in 2011, and in 2010. Before that it happened in 2008 and even before that, it happened in in 2005. And as a former prosecutor assigned to the case prepared for trial, there was even a call from a man who said Kenneth McPherson molested him from 1979 to 1981.
Tuesday, March 1, in the Richmond County Superior Court courtroom where he could have stood trial next week, McPherson, 65, entered an Alford plea to a single count of sexual exploitation of a minor. The plea deal was for five years in prison followed by 10 years on probation.
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McPherson, who had been on bond since 2011, was indicted on seven counts of child molestation and one count of sexual exploitation of a minor. As a condition of bond, he stopped seeing child patients.
Assistant District Attorney Deshala Dixon acknowledged the plea negotiation wasn’t favored by some of the victims. But the plea meant certainty that McPherson would be convicted, sent to prison, and forever labeled a sex offender.
“It will be over. There will finally be closure,” said Dixon, who stepped in as lead prosecutor on the 12-year-old case just last year.
There is no closure, no peace for the victims whose attacker was being given a “slap on the hand”, said the mother of a young man who said he was 3 years old when McPherson molested him in 2005. “Sixteen years, 10 months and 15 days. That’s how long I have lived with the guilt of not being able to protect my child from this monster.”
A second mother also told he judge how she was under a court order by the judge presiding over her divorce proceedings to send her two daughters to McPherson for treatment, even after she walked into a session to find her daughter naked.
Her daughters were 4 and 5 years old when they were sent to McPherson. The oldest became suicidal. Both told the judge how any sense of trust they might have had was shattered.
Each of the victims who spoke Tuesday told the judge that McPherson ruined all sense of trust in others.
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A case against McPherson was briefly opened by the sheriff’s department in 2005, but it was not pursued until 2011 when a 9-year-old boy revealed he and McPherson took off their clothes during their sessions together. In a search of McPherson’s office on Central Avenue, officers found photographs of naked adults and other sexually explicit material. A picture of the 9-year-old boy which was taken as he was naked in McPherson’s office was also found.
It was that single photograph that formed the plea negotiation entered Tuesday. McPherson’s plea was not an admission of guilt, but an acknowledgement there was evidence that could lead to a conviction.
Defense attorney Kirk Gilliard and Jason Sheffield asked the judge to accept the plea negotiation. The 65-year-old would go to prison and forever be known as a sex offender. They pointed to the stack of letters in support of McPherson, and the calls and messages from former patients and their parents who supported him.
At the end, Judge John Flythe, who inherited the case in 2018, accepted the plea negotiation and sentenced McPherson.
McPherson was taken into custody after the hearing.
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.Â
