Alabama Teacher Gets Prison in Child Porn Case - Updated

(Mobile, Alabama) Thirty-year-old teacher Melissa B. Gray appeared before U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose in federal court yesterday to hear her sentence for receipt and distribution of child pornography.

DuBose sentenced Gray to eight years in prison, followed by a lifetime of supervision by the U.S. Probation Office. Gray also will have to register as a sex offender.

"There's no other way to say it than you are a very sick woman, and you need help," DuBose said.

[Defense attorney] Hanley said his client suffers from bipolar disorder and struggled with a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality.

It appears that bipolar disorder can be blamed, in some undefined manner, to motivating women to commit child sex offenses. A number of female bipolar offenders have been documented on Interested-Participant over the last several years.

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Alabama Teacher Allegedly Drugged Children for Sex
[Previous 9/17/09 post]
(Mobile, Alabama) In January 2009, a 29-year-old teacher formerly at Little Flower Catholic School, Melissa B. Gray, was arrested on child pornography and sex charges.

Reportedly, Gray traded child porn with a Florida man, Jonathan Daniel Bervig, along with arranging sexual encounters for him with two children, one an eight-year-old girl.

According to court documents revealed this week, Melissa Gray will plead guilty to child pornography charges. No charges have been filed on allegations that Gray made arrangements for Bervig to have sex with a young relative of Gray's and another child, both of whom would be drugged.

Melissa B. Gray will enter a so-called "blind plea" to possession and distribution of child pornography charges, meaning that she will get no promise of a lenient sentencing recommendation from federal prosecutors in Mobile. U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine "Kit" Nelson scheduled a Sept. 23 change of plea hearing.

Gray, a 30-year-old former schoolteacher, faces a mandatory-minimum sentence of five years in prison. A worst-case scenario of her punishment under advisory sentencing guidelines shows she could get more than 12½ years. U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose will make the final decision.

Defense attorney Neil Hanley noted that federal judges have more discretion than they did before a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made the sentencing guidelines advisory. He said he plans to present testimony about a psychological disorder that Gray suffers from.

State charges are pending against Jonathan Daniel Bervig.