Wife of molester ordered to prison

County judge sentences Leslie Yerger for her role in sex assaults

The wife of the serial child molester serving the longest prison term in Chester County history has been sentenced to state prison for her role in aiding, and participating in, his crimes against two young women.

Judge William P. Mahon on Thursday sentenced 36-year-old Leslie Yerger to seven to 16 years behind bars after she apologized for the pain she had caused the two victims, but contended she suffered as well at the hands of her husband, Warren Yerger, who abused her as well.

“I hope that one day I will be whole again and believe that with God’s love and counseling and the ability to love myself again and to know that I am beautiful inside and out, I will,” Leslie Yerger wrote in a three page letter to the judge that he read before sentencing her. “I hope more importantly that the girls will now and forever be free of his evil.”

Yerger’s sentence fell between the time that the prosecution had asked for, eight to 16 years in state prison, and what her defense attorney, Steve Jarmon of Malvern, recommended Mahon impose, that being four to eight years. She had pleaded guilty earlier to multiple counts of in-

voluntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, endangering the welfare of children, corruption of minors, conspiracy, and related charges.

Both sides said afterward that Mahon’s sentence was fair.

“We are satisfied with the result,” said Assistant District Attorney Anthony Rock, who handled Leslie Yerger’s sentencing. “We think it is appropriate.”

“Under the circumstances, it was a fair sentence,” said Jarmon. “I feel the judge definitely listened to both sides, took everything we asked him to under advisement.”

The sentence fell below that which Mahon had imposed on another women who had been part of Warren Yerger’s sexual abuse of children, Deborah Ann Keeley. Mahon sent her to state prison for a term of 22 to 44 years, after she pleaded guilty but refused to cooperate with the prosecution by testifying against her former boyfriend, as Leslie Yerger did at his trial in December.

It pales, however, in comparison to the sentence that Mahon handed down against Warren Yerger, who was found guilty of what the prosecutor at his trial, Deputy District Attorney Deborah Ryan, of the DA’s Child Abuse Unit, called “one of the worst criminal cases in Chester County.” Mahon sentenced him to a prison term of 339 to 690 years in state prison.

According to testimony at his trial, Warren Yerger sexually abused four young children, a brother and sister and two other girls, over a period of years between 1989 and 2012. In that 23year period Warren Yerger moved eight times to four different counties in the state, living in Phoenixville, Spring City, Lower Pottsgrove, and elsewhere. He began abusing the young boy when he lived in Chester County when the victim was 4 years old, and continued on an almost daily basis until the child was 8 and his sister was 6 years old.

The sexual abuse of the youngest girl in the Leslie Yerger case began in 1995 when Warren Yerger returned to the county after having lived in McLean County in north central Pennsylvania. She was 4 or 5 years old at the time. The abuse of that girl and the other, two years older, lasted until 2012.

Keeley abused the girls as well when they were young, and Yerger also made Leslie Yerger join in the abuse. The three were arrested in July 2013 when the Yergers were living in Birdsboro, Berks County, and Keeley was living in Douglassville, Berks County. The case came to light when one of the victims, who was in court in Thursday for Leslie Yerger’s sentencing, confided to a teacher that she had been molested by Warren Yerger from the time she was 5 until she was 20.

Ultimately, state police Trooper Heather Heffner, who led the investigation into the crimes, was able to track down the three other victims. All four testified against Warren Yerger at his trial, describing in graphic and horrific detail what he had done to them as children. In the instances involving Leslie Yerger, Warren Yerger would make the two girls come to his bedroom, where he was sexually assault them. Leslie Yerger testified that she would either assist Warren Yerger in his assaults, or at times assault the girls herself. The abuse took place in Chester, Montgomery, and Berks counties.

Leslie Yerger “participated in one of the most egregious and horrifying cases of child sexual abuse ever seen in Chester County,” said Rock, who was co-counsel in the case with Ryan, in his sentencing memorandum, “Her inaction and participation in these activities made the vocalization possible and represented only the latest incarnation of sexual abuse perpetrated by Warren Yerger over a total of 23 years.”

Although Rock acknowledged that Leslie Yerger’s cooperation had been useful in gaining a conviction against her husband, who took the stand to declare that he was innocent of all the charges against him, he nevertheless had harsh words for her actions involving the children.

Her “behavior is indefensible,” Rock wrote. “There is no rational excuse for (her) to have engaged in these heinous acts against young children. She was not forced to do anything. She could have left. She could have resisted. She could have said no. She could have called for help. Instead, she participated in the unthinkable abuse of long children and allowed (Warren) Yerger to continue his brutal victimizations for decades more.”

Although Jarmon, in his presentation to the judge, agreed with Rock that his client “had a choice” in whether to engage in the abuse with her husband, he cited an evaluation by psychologist Elliot Atkins that Leslie Yerger suffered from Battered Wife Syndrome and was under the control of Warren Yerger. “It is clear that the choice to leave or report him was not as easy as one not in her position would presume.”

Leslie Yerger was given time credit for the months she has spent in county prison awaiting trial, so that she will have to serve only five more years before being eligible for parole. After her release, she will serve 10 years of consecutive probation.

In her letter, she told Mahon how she regretted not being able to stop the abuse of the girls from happening, but blamed Warren Yerger for keeping her under his thumb. “If I had been stronger, the girls would have been hurt less. I’m sorry for that and the pain I did cause them. He was always one controlling step ahead of me.

Of the victims, she wrote, “I want them to realize that (Warren Yerger’s) evil world ad work on them is now ended. They are free to be themselves and for them, I know it is not too late.”