District Attorney for DeSoto County in Mississippi Matthew Barton has called for the resignation of a local school official and slammed what he sees as gender bias after Lindsey Whiteside, a former youth minister with Getwell Church in Hernando, Mississippi, was sentenced to just three years of house arrest and seven years of additional probation after she pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse.
“We, as the state of Mississippi and on behalf of the victim, requested the maximum sentence, which is 30 years, and I don’t mind just saying it frankly — I’m extremely disappointed,” Barton said during a press conference last Monday, calling the sentence “an absolute abomination of justice.”
Court documents cited by Action News 5 allege that Whiteside, now 27, knowingly had sex with an underage girl under her guardianship between May 14 and Nov. 6, 2024.
“She used the gospel of Jesus Christ as a weapon. She used the vulnerabilities of a child who was going through personal struggles to gain access and manipulate an entire congregation. But even worse and more specifically she manipulated a family through an undeniable pattern of abuse that started with several months of grooming and then several months of prolonged and repeated sexual abuse in the worst type of manner,” Barton argued.
“I cannot summarize the entirety of this abuse in a short press conference [but] suffice it to say, I sincerely believe that if this was perpetrated by a man against a young woman that we would have seen something akin to 20 years in prison,” he added. “I think that she is a benefactor of a very wrong double standard in society.”
Prosecutors said Whiteside’s victim was 14 and 15 years old when the sexual abuse happened, and Barton said there was a mountain of evidence against the former youth pastor.
“We had 64,000 pages of printed out text messages. We had handwritten letters that were on church stationery,” Barton explained.
During the press conference Monday, Pam Pegram, a family member of Whiteside’s victim, said Whiteside, who will also have to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life, was in charge of assigning where children should sit and sleep on church trips and used that position to her advantage.
On Tuesday, Barton also slammed Michele Henley, a DeSoto County School Board member, for supporting Whiteside in court and called on her to resign.
“I hate to be the one to wake you up to this fact, but it is good versus evil out there and lines in the sand must be drawn. There is no place for those who harbor child predators within our schools or churches,” he declared in a statement on Facebook.
“That is why Michele Henley, an elected member of the DeSoto County School Board, must resign following her unapologetic support in court for Lindsey Whiteside — a known child predator and convicted sex offender,” he demanded.
“When people in prominent positions like Michele Henley, a vice principal, teachers, and church members write letters to the judge, it creates a safety net for the sentencing judge to deviate from every acceptable measure of justice,” he added.
“If you are wondering why a judge would feel comfortable giving house arrest to a predator, when the victim and State were requesting the maximum sentence (as I would have likewise done for a male offender, or a Memphis criminal), then you can look no further than people like Michele Henley.”
Contact: leonardo.blair@christianpost.com Follow Leonardo Blair on Twitter: @leoblair Follow Leonardo Blair on Facebook: LeoBlairChristianPost
