Ex-pastor gets jail in teen sex case
He impregnated girl, who draws praise from police for courage
WEST CHESTER >> The West Whiteland police investigator who brought charges against a former youth pastor who impregnated a teenage girl who had looked to him as a parental figure paid tribute Friday to the woman, on the day that saw the defendant formally sentenced to prison in the case.
“She is a pretty remarkable young woman,” Detective Scott Pezick said outside the courtroom where Jacob Malone was sentenced to three to six years in state prison for the illicit relationship that resulted in the birth of a baby girl, who is now 1 year old.
“She doesn’t hold a grudge (against Malone), even though obviously she’s been traumatized,” Pezick said of the woman, whose name is being withheld by The Mercury because of the nature of the crime. “She wants to see the defendant make something useful in his life when he gets out (of prison). That’s mainly because of her religious beliefs.”
Both Pezick and the prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney Emily Provencher of the D.A.’s Office Child Abuse Unit, said the 20-yearold woman, now back in her home state of Arizona, was satisfied with the resolution of the case against Malone and the amount of time he agreed to spend in prison.
“She didn’t have to come to testify and relive the trauma she went through,” Pezick noted.
She is raising her child now, but not working or going to school, missing all those steps in life that she had planned while growing up, he said. “That has all changed.”
Chester County Court President Judge Jacqueline Carroll Cody sentenced Malone to the prison time plus five years additional supervised probation after having last month rejected a plea agreement offered by Provencher and defense attorney Evan Kelly of West Chester that called for a two- to four-year prison term. The victim had expressed
opposition to the length of the sentence, and spoke against it at the March 29 hearing.
Malone pleaded guilty to charges of corruption of minors, institutional sexual assault, and endangering the welfare of children. Charges of rape and sexual assault were withdrawn by the D.A.’s Office.
Cody questioned Provencher on the thinking behind the proposed sentence, and the prosecutor said that there was no evidence that any sexual contact occurred between Malone and the woman before she turned 17, past the age of consent in Pennsylvania. Although he likely had been “grooming” the teenager for some time, the actual
sex occurred only after they had moved to Pennsylvania.
“You are serving a sentence much lighter than the crime deserves,” Cody told Malone as he stood before her in handcuffs and shackles.
“You have taken responsibility for a very, very serious series of crimes that have completely altered someone’s life,” the judge told Malone, who expressed remorse for his actions. “You can’t ever take that back.” Cody called it a failure of the court system that the age of the victim played a role in downgrading the crimes he was guilty of, even though he had “encouraged” and “promoted” the illicit behavior.
“The things you have done are inexcusable,” she told Malone.
For his part, Malone said that he was entering the guilty plea voluntarily, although he hesitated when Cody asked if anyone was forcing him to do so. “No physical force,” he said, before acknowledging that there had been no force of any kind used against him to accept the terms of the plea agreement.
“I want to say I am deeply sorry for the way my weaknesses have hurt (the victim) and my family,” said the married father of three. “I recognize that it was my responsibility to keep our relationship from becoming inappropriate, and I betrayed that.” He said he looked forward to benefitting from the court-ordered sex counseling he will have to undergo as part of the sentence.
In a statement he issued after the proceeding, Kelly said his client had always insisted that he had neither raped nor forcibly sexually assaulted the victim. “He did, however, commit other crimes and for that he is embarrassed, ashamed,
and truly remorseful.”
According to the scenario laid out for Cody by Provencher, and from Pezick’s investigation, the victim reported that she had met Malone at a church in Mesa, Ariz., when she was approximately 12 years old. Malone was a pastor at the church that the victim attended. Several years later, in June of 2014, Malone contacted the victim and invited her to stay with him and his family in Minnesota, where he had become a pastor at a local church.
While in Minnesota, police said, the victim alleged that Malone began trying to have suggestive contact with her. In September 2014, Malone moved his family to Chester County, where he was starting a new position as a pastor at Calvary Fellowship, a nondenominational church off Route 100 in Exton. Malone again invited the victim to live with him and his family, and he even registered the victim in a local high school. Provencher said he became her registered guardian.
Having grown up without a father in her life,
Provencher said the woman began to see Malone as a father figure. Pezick said she gravitated toward him and his family, including his wife and their children, whom she helped care for, over time. The relationship, she felt, gave her life some structure.
But Malone also began giving her alcohol and acting inappropriately with her, trying to convince her that it was all right for them to become sexually involved, with Malone touching her and kissing her.
The victim reported that Malone began sexually assaulting her in the fall of 2014 while she was living at his residence in the unit block of Atherton Drive in Exton and attending Calvary. She was 17 the time. She became pregnant, and the child was born in March 2016, when she was 19.
Police said Calvary parishioners brought the victim forward when they found out a crime had occurred. They confronted Malone and terminated him from his position at the church in late 2015.
As part of his sentence, Malone will have to register as a Megan’s Law offender, and is prohibited from having contact with the woman or with children. Kelly said that his client hoped to move to Minnesota when he is released from prison. He has been held in Chester County Prison since his arrest in January 2016.