Victim to Receive Her Molester’s Pension

A 16-year-old San Diego girl won a court settlement Monday that enables her to pay her therapy bills by collecting the monthly pension of the retired state worker convicted of molesting her.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Michael I. Greer approved the settlement under which the girl will receive $10,000 paid to convicted molester Colby W. Flaherty, 67, by the state Public Employees Retirement System.

The case appears to be the first pitting the right of restitution provided for victims by the state Constitution against a state law that says public retirement benefits are exempt from collection by others.

Although the 1982 constitutional amendment dubbed the “Victim’s Bill of Rights” gives crime victims an “unequivocal” restitution right, it does not say how victims should secure that money, according to William A. Fogel, the San Diego attorney representing the girl.

“We’re pretty happy about it because she’s got a lot of therapy bills and no help,” Fogel said.

The settlement means Greer compared the laws and decided that the constitutional provision was more important than the state law, Fogel said.

It also means that the judge found this was a situation in which “people shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind technical exemptions, as if they’d made a bad business deal, when in fact they’ve gone around and destroyed people’s lives,” Fogel said.

Flaherty, a retired California Department of Transportation supervisor who lived in Loma Portal, was sentenced last year to 12 years in state prison for molesting the girl. He pleaded guilty in October, 1988, to oral copulation with a girl under 14 and to six counts of employing the girl to perform lewd acts that were photographed.

Flaherty was arrested after police received a tip that he had been molesting the girl, a neighbor, for two years. He first lured her into his house with promises of candy, police said.

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

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

Flaherty’s pension is $364.20 a month, a pension system official said after Fogel filed suit Sept. 5 seeking to tap the funds.

Under the settlement, Greer ordered that funds that had been frozen pending his decision--about $1,000, Fogel said--be paid to the girl within 15 days. In addition, future payments are to be turned over, through Fogel, to the girl until the amount reaches $10,000, Greer ordered.

In exchange, Fogel agreed that he would forgo any fees for his work on the case.