Salem woman who molested relative, photographed abuse, gets 25 years in prison
Michelle Lee Freeman's instincts led her to kick her husband out of their Salem house after he confessed he had sexually abused a young relative of theirs.
But her fundamentalist church pastor lectured her that she had done wrong by her husband and needed to let him come back home, said her lawyer, Nell Brown. And Freeman, a sexual-abuse victim herself whose ability to stand up to her husband had been worn down by nearly 20 years of emotional and verbal abuse, reunited with him, Brown said. Freeman kept her husband's abuse of the girl to herself.
The decision would eventually lead to "the gradual erosion of Michelle Freeman's inner moral compass," Brown said. The wife soon not only photographed and videotaped her husband's sexual exploitation of the girl, then about 8 or 9, and the girl's younger sister, but also began...