BRIDGETON -- A Superior Court judge dismissed an indictment Friday against two individuals prosecutors charged with conspiring to commit sex acts with children.

John Desper, 37, a former Gloucester County public employee now residing in Woolwich, and Diane Melvin, 25, of Mount Royal, exchanged letters between 2003 and 2005 containing "lurid and suggestive language about things they wanted to do" while Desper was at South Woods State Prison on charges of endangering the welfare of a child.

But Waters felt the prosecutor's office went too far by presenting evidence to a grand jury he believed was irrelevant to the offense of conspiracy to commit aggravated sexual assault.

"It was atrocious presentation to the grand jury," Waters remarked. "That's not to say that a fair presentation could be made. (But) their wanting to have sex with a dog has nothing to do with their wanting to have sex with children. I agree as base, as reprehensible as these communications may have been, it is not a crime to think bad thoughts or dream about doing horrible things. You can't indict someone for their thoughts."

Prosecutor Ron Casella said the evidence against Desper and Melvin will be brought back before the grand jury as early as next week, without the zoophilia letter.

"It showed a tendency toward deviant behavior," she said. "They also make a reference to whether or not canine sex is illegal. That evidence showed they worried about getting caught."

Melvin allegedly talked about convincing the parents of one of the potential victims to let her baby-sit her daughter, putting the child in a position to be assaulted by Desper, according to the prosecutor.

"A fantasy would not involve a cover up. If this was a fantasy there would be no limits placed on what they could do," Paley said. "When I was a little girl I fantasized about being Ms. America. In that fantasy, I never came in second, or tripped, or messed up during the talent portion."

"(Melvin) wrote a fictional account of an encounter with a young girl and what happened to lead to that encounter. It's obviously fiction but the grand jury was led to think otherwise. They weren't told at anytime it was fictional. That's improper," he remarked.

That's just another of the accusations prosecutors made against Melvin and Desper, believing Melvin sent nude pictures of children and a stolen pair of used children's undergarments to Desper while he was in prison.

Desper, a former systems administrator at the Gloucester County Communications Center, was fired from his job in 2002 after allegedly using the Internet to solicit a female minor who was actually a detective working undercover.

That same year, he was sentenced to three years in prison for fourth-degree endangering the welfare of a child and third-degree conspiring to endanger the welfare of a child.

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