Family Bereft as Abuse Cases Die
Charges stayed against dying man in pedophilia case
By Kerry Gillespie, Staff reporter
Originally published in The Toronto Star, February 24, 2002
"It's no consolation to you but this is an exceptional case. … I will do my best to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again." —Mr. Justice Robert Weekes
Holding hands, the middle-aged couple wept as they walked out of a Bracebridge court into a cold winter day.
Struggling with Ontario's justice system had left them drained and embittered.
For three years they watched delay after delay stand in their way of seeing Richard Gallagher, once a family friend, stand trial on charges of sexually assaulting two of their boys at his Muskoka cottage.
Earlier this month, Mr. Justice Robert Weekes ended their chance of ever seeing that happen by granting a stay because Gallagher is dying of cancer and not likely to live through a trial.
Gallagher, 60, a retired teacher and principal, has come into contact with the police nine times because of accusations and charges of sexually abusing young boys. In the last 22 years, at least 12 boys from nine families have said Gallagher sexually abused them.
Gallagher made friends easily.
He was respected and trusted by parents. He was a teacher, a regular at church, a sophisticated world traveller and a caring man who was ready to lend a supportive hand. He was popular with boys: His Muskoka cottage was on the lake and his Brampton home had a swimming pool. He enjoyed their games and listened to them.
The courts show another side of him. This past year, he has been fighting three sexual assault cases at once, in Brampton and Bracebridge.
Police have twice waited at Pearson airport to arrest him after boys came forward with claims while he was on teaching trips abroad.
Gallagher was found guilty of sexual assault once. He appealed. The second trial never took place. Instead he was allowed to sign an agreement to keep the peace for one year, which left him with no criminal record.
He has never gone to jail and never admitted anything. Gallagher, contacted through his lawyer, did not wish to comment.
Peel Region Detective Sergeant Paul Chisholm remembers the first time he heard Gallagher's name. It was 1980.
"That case is the worst nightmare of my life. That name never goes away," Chisholm said.
Chisholm and a crown attorney recalled the claim by a young boy as follows: The boy was part of a group at Gallagher's house for a movie night. He was sent to a bedroom with a pornographic magazine. When he came out, Gallagher asked him if he liked what he saw and then briefly reached into the boy's pants.
With the laws at the time, a child's word against a teacher at Brampton's St. Thomas Aquinas High School, wasn't much of a case, Chisholm said. No charges were laid and Gallagher was moved to a new school.
Chisholm kept Gallagher's file in a box under his desk for nearly two decades, waiting, he said, for more victims to come forward.
Then, in 1995 he cleaned up his desk and—figuring he'd never hear Gallagher's name again now—put the file in the shredder.
"I thought, okay, this guy has somehow squeaked through," Chisholm said.
One week later, he got a call asking: "Do you know the name Richard Gallagher?"
Brampton police officer Colin Nanton had just charged Gallagher—then principal at St. Stephen's Catholic Elementary School—with sexual assault.
This time, the allegation came from the 11-year-old son of a police officer. This would be the only charge against him to make it to trial.
The court heard that Gallagher, a family friend, had invited the boy to his home. He tickled him and twisted his nipple, asking if he wanted a "purple nurple." Later he grabbed the youngster's genitals asking if he wanted a "red wienie."
Gallagher was heavily defended in court by friends and colleagues.
"It was just a parade of people coming in saying what a great guy he was," said Al O'Mara, the crown attorney at the trial.
One of those witnesses was Steve Jones, a 16-year-old who lived with Gallagher so he could play a higher level of hockey than was available in his hometown. (The names of victims and their families have been changed.)
"I knew some things were kind of shady but this was my friend," said Steve, now in his 20s.
At the time, there wasn't a moment's doubt about defending Gallagher, who made the sport he loved possible and who attended his father's prayer group.
The entire Jones family sprang into action to help Gallagher. So did another family they knew, the Smiths, who had a cottage on the same lake as Gallagher. Bill Smith, a Toronto businessman, knew where to find Gallagher a good lawyer quickly.
Despite their efforts, on the strength of the boy's evidence and what the judge called unconvincing testimony from Gallagher, he was convicted of sexual assault and given two years probation. He appealed.
At the start of the trial, the crown attorney asked, "Mr. Gallagher, is there a Mrs. Gallagher? Has there ever been a Mrs. Gallagher?"
O'Mara says he was just making conversation. Gallagher's lawyer, Peter Derry, argued those comments prejudiced the trial against his client by suggesting he was gay.
A new trial was ordered, but never took place—the police said the victim didn't want to go through it again. In September, 1997, a deal was struck between lawyers: Gallagher signed a peace bond and agreed to get counselling.
"He technically has no criminal record," Nanton said, about the result of that bond.
Things returned to normal for Gallagher. He again hosted movie and swimming parties.
"It was this haven of getting to escape from home and go over and spend time with this really cool guy who paid lots of attention to me and I got to do all these kinds of things that I wasn't able to do most places," said Jim Jones, Steve's younger brother and a regular at Gallagher's cottage.
There were cars and boats to drive and lots of boys to go water skiing and swimming with. There were fancy omelettes for breakfast, chips, pop, beer and wine all day, and steaks for dinner. And there was always $20 to be had for doing a bit of yard work.
Years later, in February, 1999, Steve, now at university, got a call from his parents. Steve's 13-year-old brother, Brian, told them Gallagher had been sexually abusing him for years.
The words hit the family in a way the 1995 trial against Gallagher had not.
"That was the combination to the vault," Steve said.
Steve, Jim and oldest brother Dean all said: "I thought I was the only one." Now, the brothers all said Gallagher had abused them.
Steve and Dean's individual experiences with Gallagher had largely been watching pornography, sharing a bed and having him watch them take showers or swim nude. The younger two, Brian and Jim, said, that for them, it had gone further to include Gallagher masturbating them and attempting oral sex.
Their parents were devastated. During the decade that Gallagher had been a part of the family they had asked the boys if anything had ever happened. "No," they said.
"I understand why they didn't say anything," Brian, now 16, said of the silence that let each boy, in his turn, be friends with Gallagher.
At a family meeting they decided to go to the police. Police laid 12 sexual assault-related charges against Gallagher for acts against the two youngest Jones boys—police didn't think what happened to the eldest boys was enough for charges—and a boy from another family.
From the beginning it was frustrating.
At each court, they kept expecting the trial to begin, unaware that years would pass and still lawyers would be arguing about whether it should go to trial at all. They couldn't accept that Gallagher's lawyer always seemed to get the delays and adjournments he requested.
"As victims we don't have rights in the system, it's the perpetrators who have rights," Steve said.
"I wouldn't encourage any kid to go through this," his brother, Brian said.
But others did. News of Brian's 1999 allegations had set off an avalanche.
In March, 1999, Gallagher was charged with sexually assaulting Craig Smith, whose father had found Gallagher's lawyer for his first trial.
A newspaper story brought forward two more boys from different families.
These two cases began to wind their way through the Brampton courts where the families faced the same frustrating delays the Joneses had: waiting for documents and available dates before judges, and scheduling conflicts between lawyers.
Then in February, 2000, a year into the process, Gallagher was diagnosed with prostate cancer. His lawyer began arguing for a stay.
In September, Gallagher needed more surgery and by last November he was on his fifth round of chemotherapy.
The Joneses' court file shows 17 different court dates where judges' recorded notes reveal the court's time was used largely to discuss adjournments, scheduling problems and Gallagher's deteriorating health.
Four trial dates were set and adjourned before they began. The investigating police officer has been through two paternity leaves waiting for a trial to start.
"Prosecuting a sick and dying man … is fundamentally at odds with the values and the underlying purpose of our system of criminal justice. The public would be shocked by the crown's determination to convict and sentence this dying man," reads the stay application.
The doctor hired by the Brampton court to review the medical files in January of this year stated Gallagher had "certainly less than six months" to live.
Based on that, in Brampton's Superior Court last month, Mr. Justice Ronald Thomas stayed the charges from Smith's allegation that Gallagher reached into his pants and masturbated him when he was 13 years old.
"The family must take focus and understand that the administration of justice must be tempered with mercy and understanding. This is not a murder case, this is not a case of persistent and constant debauchery. This is a single incident," Thomas said.
Sitting in the courtroom were the Smiths, the Joneses and the family of the boy involved in the 1995 trial.
"I can only say to the family that this is not an easy matter for the court and if I was in your position I might be very annoyed. I understand that," Thomas said delivering his judgement.
"No, you don't," Craig's mother shouted.
Rather than ignoring the outburst, Thomas said he was sorry she felt that way, and that opened the floodgates.
All three sets of parents—anxious to make the most of the first judge who had actually spoken to them—told Thomas what they'd been through and the other cases that were going to fall apart because of his decision.
It developed into a conversation, with Thomas at the bench, and the parents sitting in the body of the courtroom craning their heads to speak around the lawyers in the middle.
"I now understand there's more to this, but I can only deal with what I'm dealing with, this one allegation, one charge," Thomas said. "You have to understand, I wasn't presented with a career pedophile."
As the Joneses' and Smiths' hopes for seeing Gallagher go to jail faded, they were replaced by a desire to make a positive dent in the justice system. In individual ways—writing letters to politicians, talking to court officials and support staff, and working with other victims—they are trying to make the trip through the courts easier for other victims and families. Their years of effort, they say, were pointless.
"What are the victims left with?" Jim said. "They are left with an empty feeling, 'I came forward and nothing happened.'"
The mother of one boy reads the obituaries every day looking for Gallagher's name.
For the Jones boys' father, Don, none of it matters anymore. "We're just not going to play the game anymore," he said two weeks ago about why the family decided not to contest Gallagher's request for a stay in Bracebridge any longer.
On Valentine's Day, the Brampton charges in the third case against Gallagher were also withdrawn.
Two more people have recently come forward with allegations against Gallagher, but no more charges will be laid given his health and what has happened in the courts. "There's no point," the officer on the case said.
In the days leading up to their final court date earlier this month, the Jones family tried to prepare for the unsatisfying end that would come in the small Bracebridge courtroom.
As usual Gallagher was not going to be there. A doctor's note said travel would be too difficult. His lawyer wasn't coming up from Toronto, but sending someone in his place to save Gallagher money.
Judge Weekes granted the stay. But then he granted the family's wish to be heard. He told the lawyers they could leave, he got down from the bench and invited the family to sit at a table in the front of the courtroom with him, and talk. They did. Their first words were full of frustration. Had it all been for nothing?
Then there was anger. "He killed us, he took away my childhood," Brian said.
Weekes listened as the family told him of poor grades, lost university years waiting for trials, failed relationships, of drug and alcohol abuse trying to deal with what had happened to them, depression and thoughts of suicide.
"Who's going to accept the blame for that? These are the consequences," the Jones boys' mother said. "I don't have an answer. All I can say is it hasn't fallen on deaf ears," Weekes said. And finally there were tears.
The 50 minutes of compassion shown by Weekes went a long way to balancing three years of pain believing that no one in Ontario's court system cared.
"I know you're a religious family," Weekes told the Joneses and said he hoped that would bring them some comfort. "There is a greater justice out there than this court can deliver."
