Gay bashing mayor like to fondle little boys : AZ IMC

Mayor accused of molesting boys

Nicholas K. Geranios
Associated Press
May. 6, 2005 12:00 AM

SPOKANE, Wash. - Mayor James West, a Republican foe of gay rights, was accused in a newspaper story Thursday of molesting two boys decades ago and was caught by the paper using the trappings of his office to try to court a young man on a gay Web site.

West on Thursday denied the molestation allegations but acknowledged he "had relations with adult men."

He admitted offering autographed sports memorabilia and a possible City Hall internship to someone he thought was an 18-year-old man on the Web site Gay.com. The man was actually a private computer expert hired by the Spokesman-Review as part of a journalism sting operation.

West, 54, a former Boy Scout leader and Army paratrooper who was married briefly in the 1990s, denied that the online offers constituted abuse of his office, and he said he would serve out the more than three years remaining in his term.

The Spokesman-Review ran interviews Thursday with two men who allege West molested them decades ago when they were Boy Scouts and the mayor was a troop leader and sheriff's deputy. Both men have criminal records because of drug problems.

"I categorically deny allegations about incidents that supposedly occurred 24 years ago as alleged by two convicted felons and about which I have no knowledge," West said.

West, a conservative with an abrasive style and a fierce temper, rose to become majority leader of the state Senate during a two-decade legislative career. He consistently opposed efforts to expand civil rights protections for gays and voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, a ban on gay marriage, in 1998.

West said he would not characterize himself as gay. As for his visits to the Gay.com Web site, he said, "I can't tell you why I go there, to tell you the truth ... curiosity, confused, whatever, I don't know."

The molestation accusations came in a deposition for a lawsuit against Spokane County by Robert J. Galliher, 36, of Seattle, and other men who claim they were molested by another sheriff's deputy at the time, David Hahn.

In interviews with the newspaper, Galliher and a second man, Michael G. Grant Jr., 31, said they were introduced to West by Hahn in the late 1970s or early '80s, when the two sheriff's deputies were close friends and leaders of a Boy Scout troop.

Hahn committed suicide in 1981 after being publicly accused of molesting boys.