Sunday, November 22, 2009

A SPOKESMAN-REVIEW INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

Men say they suffered sex abuse by deputy

Spokane officer shot himself after allegations surfaced in 1981

Bill Morlin / Staff writer

May 5, 2005

© The Spokesman-Review 2005

Note: This story appeared in The Spokesman-Review on June 8, 2003

They all share the same nightmare, one that recurs every time they see a cop in uniform.

Brothers Brett and Rob Galliher, and Doug Chicklinsky say they were sexually assaulted as boys more than 20 years ago by a Spokane County sheriff's deputy.

In one instance, Chicklinsky says the deputy checked him out of the county's Juvenile Detention Center for the day to molest him.

Deputy David D. Hahn killed himself with his service revolver in August 1981, just hours after being accused of molestation by his supervisors. The suicide ended the official investigation into Hahn's conduct. But it didn't erase the trauma of abuse for the three men.

"Every time I see a cop in uniform, my heart really just starts pounding," Chicklinsky, 39, said recently. "My hands get all sweaty. I run all the time from the cops. All the time."

Similar feelings are expressed by Rob Galliher, 34, who led police on a high-speed chase in March, and his 36-year-old brother, Brett, who had drug problems as a teenager.

Spokane Co. Sheriff's Deputy David D. Hahn, shown here in the late 1970's, committed suicide in August 1981. (File/The Spokesman-Review)

The case puts a law enforcement agency alongside the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts as trusted institutions whose leaders are accused of abusing boys years ago.

Hahn, who also was a Boy Scout leader, was an associate of George E. Robey Jr., another Scout leader, and the Rev. Pat O'Donnell, a Catholic priest. O'Donnell was the church's liaison with the Scouts and also was a chaplain for the Spokane Police Department.

Both Robey and O'Donnell are called serial pedophiles by men now suing the diocese and the Boy Scouts over alleged sex abuse that occurred years ago.

Robey committed suicide in April 1982 -- eight months after Hahn's death.

O'Donnell left the priesthood and became a state-licensed psychologist. He lives in the Seattle area and has declined interview requests.

Hahn was assistant scoutmaster at Hamblen Elementary on Spokane's South Hill, where his friend and fellow deputy, Jim West, was the scoutmaster. West, now the state Senate majority leader, said last week he "had no clue" Hahn may have been a child molester.

The three men who claim Hahn molested them said they decided to talk publicly after hearing the stories of boys -- now grown men -- who were abused by priests. They are talking to lawyers and considering lawsuits.

The Spokesman-Review interviewed more than 40 people over five months for this article. Many didn't want to be identified by name.

Some couldn't remember precise details, while others were embarrassed and reluctant to talk publicly about what they called a law enforcement cover-up. "It was all handled real hush-hush," a former sheriff's detective said.

The sheriff at the time, Larry Erickson, confirmed that Hahn was under investigation for molestation when he committed suicide.

But Erickson said he couldn't remember other details of the case. Erickson now lives in Olympia, where he is executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

Neither the sheriff's office nor the police department could produce any documentation of a criminal investigation into Hahn's conduct.

The only documents that still survive are a brief report by sheriff's supervisors who found Hahn's body and an accompanying police department document stamped "not for release."

The alleged victims said the deputy molested boys both on- and off-duty over a period of at least three years.

The abuse occurred at Hahn's apartment on the South Hill, at a Spokane Valley home, at a Boy Scout camp at Diamond Lake and apparently other locations, they said.

Hahn, who had a stellar reputation in the sheriff's office, continued working even after mid-1980, when the Gallihers say they first reported the abuse.

"When I reported it, I informed them that this had been going on for three years," Brett and Rob Galliher's mother, Marlene Galliher, said in a recent interview.

At that time, she said, she thought only Brett had been molested. Only later did her youngest son, Rob, say he also had been abused, beginning when he was 8.

"They said they weren't going to do anything about Hahn, but they would send Brett to counseling," Marlene Galliher said.

"At the time, Dave Hahn was a poster boy for the sheriff's department," said a fellow deputy who's now retired. "Nobody took these allegations about him seriously."

That apparently changed a year later when another round of allegations surfaced involving an alleged victim whose name isn't currently known. Hahn was told he must resign or face criminal prosecution, former sheriff's officials say.

Instead, at the age of 36, he went to his South Hill apartment and shot himself.

`He began groping me'

Brett and Rob Galliher grew up in the 1970s with a third, older brother in a house near Boone and Pines in the Spokane Valley.

They were raised primarily by their mother, an Australian who moved to Spokane in 1973. Her husband -- the boys' father -- was a long-haul trucker and frequently gone from the home. He has since died.

Brett Galliher said that one day in the spring of 1977, while on his morning newspaper route, a woman threatened to run him and his older brother down with her car.

Their mother called the sheriff's office, and Hahn responded. The deputy quickly settled the matter and struck up a friendship with the Galliher boys.

"He just very quickly let my mother know, and told us, that he'd be willing to do things with us, since our dad wasn't around," said Brett Galliher, who was 10 at the time. "He started taking me to different places, and my mom thought it was OK because he was a sheriff's deputy."

Within a few days, Galliher said he was invited to go to the gym by Hahn, who showed up off duty at the family home in his blue Datsun 280Z.

"I remember that he got me down to the gym and got me into the shower," Galliher said. "Looking back, I believe that was probably a pretty good way to start being a predator on us boys."

On other occasions, Hahn took the Galliher boys to his apartment, but never together.

"He'd take us swimming, then we'd shower down," Brett Galliher said. "Afterwards, he'd want to give us oil rubdowns."

Galliher estimated that he was abused by Hahn at least two dozen times between the ages of 10 and 13. Galliher became involved with drugs in his youth but has stayed out of trouble since completing drug counseling as a teenager, his mother said.

Rob Galliher was 8 years old in 1977 when he was first molested, and the abuse lasted until he was 11, he and his mother said.

The abuse of the Galliher boys ended in the summer of 1980, Brett Galliher said, when Hahn tried to assault him in the boys' backyard clubhouse, where Brett was sleeping.

Galliher said he was awakened in the middle of the night by Hahn, who was in uniform and presumably on duty.

"He began groping and molesting me," he said. Galliher said he resisted the deputy and ran inside, hysterically, to tell his mother.

Marlene Galliher said she went to the sheriff's office to file a complaint. Sheriff's supervisors said they believed her son's accusations, "but still treated him like he was the perpetrator, rather than the victim," she said.

"It was an interrogation," Brett Galliher said. "I was threatened. I was belittled. I was told I was a liar ... for coming out with this story about a `good cop' like this."

The sheriff's office sent Galliher to counseling at county expense, Marlene Galliher said. Sheriff's officials and county auditors now say they can't find records of either Marlene Galliher's complaint or her son's counseling bill.

Within a few weeks, the sheriff's office got another complaint about Hahn. It came from a man who told authorities his 6-year-old son had been molested by an older boy who earlier had been molested by Hahn.

"I know that I made a report to them at least a year before Hahn killed himself," said the man, who now works in the criminal justice system. His ex-wife corroborates that story.

Jerry Hendren, a now-retired sheriff's detective, said he and his partner, detective Jim Hill, concluded the allegations were unfounded after the older boy denied anything occurred.

Sometime after that, Hahn met Doug Chicklinsky.

Abuse at Boy Scout camp

Like the Galliher brothers, Chicklinsky grew up in the Spokane Valley, in a home on East Broadway.

One night when he was about 17, Chicklinsky and his buddies burglarized a grocery store, stealing a couple of cases of beer. In no time, state troopers and sheriff's deputies were chasing the teens' car.

Hahn arrested Chicklinsky and booked him into Juvenile Detention before he was released to his parents. Once back at home, the deputy paid the teenager a couple of visits.

A short time later, Chicklinsky eluded deputies on his motorcycle. Hahn called the family home and convinced the teen to turn himself in.

Back in detention, Chicklinsky said Hahn visited him several times.

"He took me out of Juvie one night and we went for an airplane flight with another guy," Chicklinsky said.

He was not molested on that outing, but the deputy was back a couple of days later.

"He checked me out of Juvie again and we went to the Boy Scouts camp at Diamond Lake," Chicklinsky said. "We walked through the camp and the kids were gone. It was the end of summer.

"While we were swimming, he started fondling me."

After spending most of the day at the camp in Pend Oreille County, Chicklinsky said he was taken to Hahn's apartment on South Regal, where he was molested.

The deputy then took Chicklinsky back to Juvenile Detention. When Hahn stopped by again, Chicklinsky said, "I told him I didn't want to see nothing of him again."

Chicklinsky said he kept the molestation a secret for 20 years, until July 2001, when he was arrested for domestic violence. When deputies showed up, Chicklinsky fought back and was charged with resisting arrest.

He told deputies that he'd been molested two decades earlier by Hahn. Deputy Marty Pannell noted the accusation in his report, but also wrote that Chicklinsky posed a threat to officer safety.

Chicklinsky got out of jail, but was arrested again in October because of a judicial paperwork mix-up. Again, he attempted to get away from deputies.

"Yes, I run from the Spokane County Sheriff's Department," Chicklinsky told Superior Court Judge Robert Austin during a court hearing. "But I have been beaten. I have been raped."

`Child is basically killed'

The stories of Chicklinsky and the Galliher brothers leave former Spokane County Prosecutor Donald Brockett shaking his head.

Brockett recently criticized the Catholic Diocese for not forwarding sex abuse complaints over the years to police and prosecutors.

He was prosecutor at the time of Hahn's suicide, but said he never knew about the allegations. "I didn't hear a thing about any molestation by a sheriff's deputy," he said recently.

"The criminal justice system really mistreated people who were molested," Brockett said. Too often, he said, there is more concern about "ruining someone's reputation" than fully answering accusations.

"When these kinds of molestations occur, that child is basically killed," Brockett said. "That child is never the same.

"Because of a violation of trust, whether it's the Boy Scouts, the Roman Catholic Church or the sheriff's department, these victims can no longer trust anybody."