7A-66 Removal affidavit submitted by Teresa Pullin

IN THE GENERAL COURT OF JUSTICE						State of North CarolinaSUPIOROR COURT DIVISION								County of DareFILE No:______________________________
IN THE MATTER OF THE REMOVAL OF: JEFFREY CRUDEN, District attorney of the 1st prosecutorial district in North CarolinaAFFIDAVIT PURSUANT TO N.C. Gen. Stat.§ 7A-66

My name is Teresa Pullin.

I live in Powhatan County, Virginia and I am over the age of 18 and competent to testify. 

Jeffrey Cruden is currently the elected District Attorney for the 1st Prosecutorial District in North Carolina. 

I received an email with a statement from DA Jeffrey Cruden. The email is a public record since it was sent via government email. I believe his actions in this case mandate him to be removed from office via. N.C.G.S.§  7A-66 for willful misconduct and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the office into disrepute. 

I know Melissa Nicholson from church and have attended a mission trip with her to Brazil. 

I attended a peaceful protest to support survivors of sexual violence in the Outer Banks along with Melissa Nicholson and other supporters on August 9th, 2025. 

I assisted in sending out flyers to inform the public about my concerns about how sexual assault cases are being handled in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. 

The flyers that we sent out requested for people to take action by calling or emailing the district attorney, Jeffrey Cruden to ask him about how he is handling sexual assault cases.

One case was specifically referenced in the flyer about the reported sexual assault of Survivor X, also known as Melissa Nicholson. 

The flyer contained copies of emails sent by Melissa Nicholson where she offered to provide the DA with evidence of how her sexual assault was accomplished by means of her perpetrator taking advantage of her mental health disability. 

The North Carolina General Statue 14-27.27 provides protections for individuals who have conditions that prevent them from saying no or resisting sexual contact, making what happened to her illegal.

The Flyer also contained emails from the Dare County Sheriff’s Office saying that DA Cruden did not have enough evidence to prosecute. 

This decision was made without pertinent evidence that was offered by Melissa Nicholson and refused by DA Cruden prior to making his charging decisions in May of 2025.

I believe that refusing to consider Ms. Nicholson’s evidence of mental disability with regards to the assault constitutes willful misconduct and a violation of NC Persons with Disabilities Act and the ADA. His actions were discriminatory in nature. Discrimination against someone with a disability is a civil rights violation that even prosecutorial discretion cannot supersede.  

I believe that these actions also constitute willful misconduct because he intentionally bypassed evidence that he knew (or should have known) was critical to the case. 

I sent an email to district attorney Jeffery Cruden after these flyers were sent out asking about his handling of sexual assault cases and specifically, Survivor X’s (also known as Melissa Nicholson’s) case. 

Andrea Powell, who works for DA Cruden, sent me a response with a statement from DA Jeffrey Cruden himself. 

DA Cruden provided specific details of Melissa Nicholson’s case in his response to me.

DA Cruden did not have a legal or social duty to share the private details of this sexual assault case with the public. He could have replied to my email saying that his office investigated the case thoroughly and was unable to prosecute. 

However, he chose to make statements about the victim, Melissa Nicholson’s character. 

Making public statements about a victim or witness’ character is strictly prohibited by the National Prosecution Standards and North Carolina Code of Professional Ethics. 

Ms. Nicholson has since shared with me documents that prove that DA Jeffery Cruden not only made statements about Ms. Nicholson’s credibility, but that he made false statements of fact about her and the case. 

I have seen and read a copy of the Emergency Protective Order (EPO) filed by Ms. Nicholson in 2020 which includes descriptions of sexual violence between her and the accused. 

I have seen the first page of the police report that was filed when Melissa Nicholson reported her sexual assault to Dare County, which it says she did in January of 2021. 

I have seen the Virgina Courts Case Information website regarding Melissa Nicholson’s divorce and custody proceedings. According to public information, Melissa Nicholson’s divorce hearing was in June of 2022 and the last custody hearing was in November of 2023.

DA Jeffrey Cruden’s statement to me says that Melissa’s “allegations only came about after their divorce and the alleged suspect received full custody of their children.” Cruden also said in his statement that, “It was also only after attempts by the complainant to regain custody failed that the allegations of sexual assault by her now ex-husband surface.”

He even goes on to say refer to her as not an “actual victim” and say that her claim was “unsubstantiated.” 

In DA Cruden’s public statement, he claims that Melissa Nicholson did not report the sexual assault till after the custody proceedings which happened in 2023, however according to the actual records, she reported to Dare County in January of 2021 and reported the sexual abuse to Powhatan County in the Emergency Protective Order in 2020. 

For a DA to publish false details of a case publicly via his work email and to engage the help of government employees in the discrediting of a victim of sexual assault is unfair to the true victim at hand.

Since reading the email sent on behalf of DA Jeffrey Cruden, Ms. Nicholson has shared with me numerous documents that show that his statements about her were false. Including mental health records from years prior to their separation that I believe show evidence of abuse. Melissa was described by her provider as “not having a safe place to return to” after the provider had communicated with Mr. Nicholson. There were documents where their restrictions on intimacy were discussed with regard to her mental disability and where Melissa disclosed that her husband becomes aggressive during sex. This was documented history of abuse years before the assault in Dare County. Yet DA Cruden’s statement to me essentially says she made up the assault to try to gain custody. 

DA Jeffrey Cruden sent out false and hurtful statements about a victim of sexual assault without even looking at the documented history of abuse in this family that I have been privileged to read. 

DA Jeffrey Cruden wrote and had distributed to me these false statements of fact about Melissa Nicholson, a victim of a violent crime. I believe, based on the rest of this statement, that he did this to further his political career and cover for the fact that he did not do his due diligence and consider all the relevant evidence in this case. 

According to the precedent set in the previous removal proceedings, I believe that this situation qualifies extremely well for Jeffrey Cruden to be removed from office. 

Jerry Spivey was removed in 1995 for making derogatory statements and using the “N’ word on a patron at a bar while off duty and put the office into disrepute. 

Tracey Cline was removed in 2012 for making false accusations about a sitting judge and Greg Newman was removed in 2021 for mistreating victims of sexual assault and not respecting victim rights. 

Jeffrey Cruden has violated victim rights and put the office into disrepute by making public statements that were false about a victim of sexual assault. He has mishandled the case by discriminating against a person with a disability. He engaged in willful misconduct by engaging his staff to participate in spreading his false statements and by refusing to obtain evidence that he knew or should have known was critical to the case. For this reason, Jeffrey Cruden should be removed from office.