Quest for Funds From Molester Wins Court Test

A San Diego Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction Monday that allows a 16-year-old San Diego girl to continue her quest to obtain funds from the monthly pension of a retired state worker convicted of molesting her.

Judge Michael I. Greer issued the order, making permanent the freeze he initially ordered Sept. 5 on the pension paid to convicted molester Colby Flaherty, 67, by the state Public Employees Retirement System.

Greer ordered a Nov. 9 hearing to set a trial date for the case, which appears to be the first pitting the right to restitution provided victims by the California Constitution against a state law that says public retirement benefits are exempt from collection by others.

“It’s just a step in the right direction,” the San Diego attorney representing the girl, William A. Fogel, said after the hearing Monday. Fogel has said the girl will seek an order compelling the state to funnel the pension funds to her, to help her pay her therapy bills.

Flaherty, a retired Caltrans supervisor who lived in Loma Portal, was sentenced in December to 12 years in state prison for molesting the girl. He had pleaded guilty last October to oral copulation with a girl under 14 and to six counts of employing the girl to perform lewd acts that were photographed.

At Flaherty’s sentencing, Superior Court Judge Jesus Rodriguez, in addition to imposing the maximum prison term, also ordered Flaherty to pay the girl $10,000 restitution. That money was needed for the girl’s medical and therapy bills, Fogel said.

The only significant asset with which Flaherty could make that restitution--since he was sent to the medium-security prison in Ione--was his state pension, Fogel said.