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Local Priest Arraigned on Molestation Charges

Church leaders may have known about molestation charges as early as 1976

The Santa Rosa man who charges that a popular priest from St. Eugene's Cathedral molested him as a child is calling for the families of younger victims to come forward while decrying what he calls "a conspiracy of silence" among church leaders.

Steven Gallagher, 31, says he felt little vindication when he saw the Rev. Gary Timmons at a court hearing last week, where the priest was arraigned on molestation charges. "I'm really glad that he's been exposed and that some of the people who have allowed him to continue [his alleged crimes] at this length also have been exposed, but he has not been prosecuted and he hasn't received any punishment, and nothing is certain at this point," says Gallagher, who alleges that Timmons molested him in 1976 at Camp St. Michael's in Leggett--where Timmons served as director and later as chaplain--and at St. Eugene's rectory.

"He could walk in the next week or two."

Dressed in dark blue prison overalls and looking grim, the 55-year-old Timmons appeared Wednesday in Sonoma County Municipal Court to face 17 felony counts of sodomy and oral copulation involving two boys, including Gallagher.

Chicago police arrested Timmons three weeks ago. He had been studying at the church-run Institute for Spiritual Leadership. Timmons, a North Coast priest for 27 years, is being held at Sonoma County Jail on $750,000 bail.

If convicted, he could face 136 years in prison.

Timmons is the third Santa Rosa priest charged recently with molesting the children of local parishioners. In 1994, the Catholic Church paid $500,000 to a church member after she charged that Timmons had molested her son. In August, the Santa Rosa diocese settled a second lawsuit--for $450,000--after a local man charged that the Rev. Peter Keegan, now a priest in Mexico, had sodomized him as a boy at the rectory. That lawsuit claimed that church officials knew about previous allegations of molestation against Keegan in San Francisco, but still moved him to Santa Rosa to work closely with children, even permitting him to bring young boys to his room at the rectory.

Last week, the Rev. John Rogers committed suicide after being ordered by Santa Rosa Bishop Patrick Ziemann to return from study in Belgium to report for psychiatric evaluation after being implicated for alleged molestation in Eureka.

Ziemann has criticized what he calls "a betrayal of trust" by some local priests, included in more than 400 molestation cases filed against the Catholic Church nationwide in the past 15 years. Those charges have resulted in $400 million in settlements.

But despite assurances from local church officials that they are willing to cooperate with investigators to help find victims and root out pedophile priests, Gallagher remains unconvinced of their good intentions.

"There are all these corrupt, sanctimonious priests, and the church officials have allowed this to continue without doing a damn thing," says Gallagher, the son of Sonoma County Superior Court Judge John Gallagher and one of 10 men who has filed a civil lawsuit against Timmons. "They've turned a blind eye and have shown absolutely no compassion or concern for the children of parishioners.

"You know, they teach the moralities that Jesus taught, but they do a lousy job of living up to them.

In depositions filed at Sonoma County Superior Court, local church leaders have stated that they knew about allegations against Timmons as far back as 1976. The Rev. Gerald Fahey, pastor of St. Eugene's from 1976 to 1980 and now pastor at Star of the Valley Parish at Oakmont, has noted that he felt no obligation to serve as "dean of discipline or a snitch or a detective" after witnessing Timmons take small boys to his room at the rectory back in 1976.

That is the year that Gallagher's ordeal started. He alleges that the first molestation by Timmons took place when Gallagher attended the Catholic youth facility in Humboldt County. He was 12. "Since then, I've found out that many other people that I've talked to were molested [by Timmons] long before that time," says Gallagher, who contends that up to 70 victims have reported to church officials. In 1982, at age 19, Gallagher returned to the camp as a counselor. "There's some sort of sick, magnetic attraction that pedophiles have over the children that they molest," he says, explaining his decision to return to the camp as a teen. "It's like you can't get away from them.

The following year, Gallagher heard two young boys discussing Timmons and calling the priest a child molester.

At a staff meeting, Gallagher confronted Timmons about the complaints and disclosed to camp leaders, counselors, and priests that he had been molested several years earlier while attending the camp. Two other counselors spoke up as well, Gallagher claims, saying they'd also been molested by Timmons.

"Timmons didn't really deny the allegations and said he'd been accused of this twice before. The way he said it was like an admission of guilt. His tone of voice and demeanor implicated him."

According to Gallagher, then-camp director Bob Bailey instructed everyone to keep quiet about the meeting and not discuss the matter. "I was just floored by all of this. It was like being molested all over again," Gallagher says. "I was crushed."

After the meeting, he "began a downward spiral" that eventually led to alcohol and drug abuse and later homelessness.

In 1988, Gallagher started to clean up and again tried to bring Timmons' alleged abuses to the attention of church leaders, first to a priest at St. Rose in Santa Rosa and later to the late Rev. Desmond Devine at St. Eugene's. "Before I even said the name, [Devine] asked, 'Was it Gary Timmons?' That really shocked me because it became obvious that everyone knew about it but wasn't doing anything. "

Two years later, Gallagher reported the molestation to investigators at the Santa Rosa Police Department, who informed him that the statute of limitations would prevent them from pursuing the case. The police suggested Gallagher file a civil complaint instead.

In March 1993, Camp St. Michaels sent a letter to Gallagher and other alumni boasting that Timmons would be returning to the youth facility for a visit. "When I read that I said, 'No way, this is going to stop," Gallagher recalls. "I realized I had to step forward."

The Catholic Church apparently took no action against Timmons until last year, when church officials learned a lawsuit by Gallagher and nine others was imminent. Since then, Bishop Ziemann has said another dozen victims of clergy molestation have come forward to tell their stories.

Meanwhile, Gallagher is pleading with families of younger victims to inform the District Attorney's Office about their experience, since more recent charges against Timmons have a better chance of sticking under statute-of-limitations laws.

"Now more than ever we're trying to get others to come forward to help put Timmons away and send a strong message to the church and other pedophile priests that this is not OK, this has got to stop, and they've got to change," he says. "One TV reporter has talked to the parents of a 12- or 13-year-old. But their opinion is pretty indicative of everyone else who has a child that may have been molested--obviously they're very concerned about their children, they don't want them to be harmed by this.

"But the truth, looking back over my past, is that it would have been much more beneficial for me to go through the initial pain at age 12 and dealt with the situation than to allow it to fester."

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