MS Coast oil rig worker sexually abused a 4-year-old for a year and made her keep it ‘secret’
Editor’s note: This story contains graphic depictions of child sexual abuse. Viewer discretion is advised. If you or someone you know is a victim of a sex crime, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline.
Harrison County prosecutor George Huffman called it one of the worst child sex abuse cases he had ever handled.
And many in the Biloxi courtroom cried or had to get up and walk out as details about what John Ross McElhenney Jr. had done came out in court when he pleaded guilty Tuesday to sexual battery and child exploitation in a plea agreement with the state.
McElhenney, the son of a former Gulfport narcotics investigator and current George County Sheriff’s Deputy, had repeatedly sexually assaulted the 4-year-old girl, beginning when she was 3, and had also taken sexually-explicit videos and pictures of the child.
In some of the pictures and a video submitted into evidence, Huffman said the little girl is wearing a Little Mermaid shirt while McElhenney is holding his penis near her. In the picture, Huffman points out the wedding ring on McElhenney’s hand.
A Harrison County grand jury indicted McElhenney on three counts of sexual battery, two counts of touching a child for lustful purposes and three counts of child exploitation. Prosecutors dropped the remaining charges in exchange for the plea but left it up to Judge Randi Mueller to impose a sentence.
When McElhenney admitted to the crimes, he mainly referred to the charging document itself for a broad explanation of his crimes and told the judge he was still struggling to understand why he did what he did.
McElhenney’s attorney, Michael Crosby, pleaded for leniency for his client and shared a letter from his mother asking the judge to give her son a chance to get out of prison one day. She said her son was a Christian man worthy of forgiveness. Many other friends and family also wrote in pleading for leniency in sentencing.
Huffman pointed to the details about the crime when he questioned whether those asking for leniency knew the extent of what this man had done to kids.
Mueller took little time to decide to sentence McElhenney to life in prison without the possibility of parole with additional time for the other crime. In addition, he will forever be listed as a sex offender.
Strawberry lubricant a child’s haunting words
The sex crime didn’t come to light until March 2022.
The Mississippi mother had just gotten out of the shower and was looking for some batteries in a drawer when she stumbled across some strawberry lubricant.
The 4-year-old happened to be in the room with her and said that what she had found in the drawer “is a secret” she wasn’t supposed to talk about it because McElhenney said, “You’d be really mad.” if she did.
The little girl underwent a forensic interview the night her mother called 911 to report the crimes. The child soon told her mother, and later authorities, that McElhenney was using the lubricant on her “to make me feel better and to help me sleep and feel happy.”
The child described what an erection looked like on McElhenney, how he “would push her,” and how it hurt. Huffman said the girl described the sexual assaults in a way that “no 4-year-old child should know.”
After questioning the child, U.S. Marshals and Biloxi investigators got on a helicopter, flew to the oil rig where McElhenney worked offshore, and arrested him.
On two phones authorities searched after his arrest, Biloxi police found sexually-explicit pictures of the little girl and a second phone where McElhenney had been communicating with a 13-year-old girl who told him she had first had sex when she was raped at the age of 5. Unphased by what that girl had just shared about being raped, Huffman said, McElhenney still asked for and received a nude picture of the girl on Snapchat.
A mother’s pain
The child’s parents shared how much her life and that of the child had been forever affected by what had happened.
The mother talked about how she had the life she had dreamed of and everything she wanted in life from the time she was a girl until that day her small and innocent child told her how McElhenney had repeatedly victimized her.
“You abused your privilege and position ... to manipulate and groom and abuse my child,” she said. ”You stole her choices, stole her safety, and you stole her power over her own body — trauma that she will have to live and deal with for the remainder of her life.”
She said what McElhenney had done ‘was no mistake” or “’ isolated incident” but a “thought out and planned crime committed over and over and over again for what appears to have been years. My daughter was coached to be quiet and made to fear my reaction, forced into silence ..and being afraid to make her mother angry.”
The mother said she now regrets ever telling her children that monsters don’t exist “because they really do.”
“After many months of trauma therapy and PTSD treatment for both (the child) and myself, I still find myself struggling with this every day,” she said.
Since the crimes occurred, the mother shared through tears how her daughter had praised her for her support since the crimes came to light.
“(The little girl) told me I was her hero for believing her and stopping him and for keeping her safe,” she said. “But what she doesn’t know is that she is my hero for speaking up.”
This story was originally published August 1, 2023 at 6:01 PM.
