Trial Testimony Focuses on Dirty Linen : Rift: Details of personal lives are being aired on both sides as Gilbert Moegerle tries to prove that radio psychologist James Dobson ruined his career after bouncing him from Focus on the Family.

Six years ago they were a dynamic radio duo: James Dobson, the folksy, Christian psychologist dispensing advice over the airwaves on raising a family, backed up by his faithful sidekick, Gil Moegerle, the smooth-talking broadcasting pro.

Lately, however, Moegerle has been on a witness stand in Pomona Superior Court trying to explain when he first felt lust for the woman who became his second wife.

And Dobson has been disclosing some pretty personal details of his own, telling the same jury that he was a virgin when he got married, has been faithful to his wife for 31 years and never had an affair with Moegerle’s former wife.

What’s a nice religious radio partnership like that doing in a juicy court case like this? It’s a long story.

Moegerle sued Dobson and his powerful, Pomona-based Christian media empire, Focus on the Family, in 1988. He said they had invaded his privacy and harmed him financially and emotionally during the breakup of his first marriage and after his later marriage to his former secretary.

The trial, in its second week before Judge Theodore Piatt, originally promised to provide a glimpse of the inner workings of Focus on the Family and the man who founded it.

But a key ruling just before the case began last week changed all that. Piatt ruled that because the nonprofit Focus on the Family is a religious organization, Moegerle may not sue over actions that occurred while he was employed there. That leaves Moegerle trying to prove that his career was damaged by Dobson and the organization after he left.

Meanwhile, the trial has provided a forum for both sides to air some dirty linen.

Dobson has accused Moegerle and his second wife of spreading disinformation by encouraging speculation that there was something improper in the relationship between Dobson and Moegerle’s first wife. Moegerle claims that Dobson meddled in his foundering first marriage and ruined his career after he divorced. Both sides deny the accusations.

And both admit that things weren’t always this bad.

Dobson, who has written 13 books, nearly all of them best-sellers on marriage and parenting, founded Focus on the Family in 1977 to carry out his Christian ministry to families through the media, principally radio. He arranged for a Chicago advertising agency, which employed Moegerle, to place the broadcasts on Christian radio stations.

Moegerle joined the program as co-host in its second year. Dobson said Moegerle instinctively knew what questions to ask as they chatted about everything from breast-feeding to family budgets. “At times I accused him of being able to read my mind,” Dobson said. “He was like a straight man. He set me up.”

Their rapport made the program a hit. That was the beginning of what is now a massive, nonprofit communications organization, employing 750 people in Pomona, operating on a budget of more than $60 million a year, reaching more than 1 million listeners a day through radio programs and receiving 200,000 letters a month. The organization plans to move to Colorado Springs, Colo., by this fall.

Moegerle continued as announcer on the radio program until 1985, when his marriage neared collapse and it was feared that his presence as a spokesman could be embarrassing to an organization whose principles include the permanency of marriage. Moegerle stayed with Focus on the Family, however, heading its film department.

After the separation but before the divorce was final, Moegerle testified, he began thinking about dating and marrying Carolyn Alexander, who had recently become his secretary.

Dobson testified that Moegerle revealed his dating plans in September, 1986. Dobson said: “I stated he was not yet a divorced man and that I did not want him to date.” At Christmastime, Dobson said, Moegerle told him that he wanted to marry Carolyn. “Again I expressed in the strongest terms that he must not date her while (he is) her supervisor and not yet divorced,” Dobson said.

The romance blossomed, nonetheless, and Moegerle and Alexander left Focus after Dobson and others raised doubts about their continued employment. The couple resigned in April, 1987, and were married in June, taking the hyphenated name Alexander-Moegerle.

Dobson said he remained on good terms with the couple until January, 1988, when he hired Moegerle’s former wife, Ruth, to work at Focus on the Family. Dobson said he learned that Ruth was destitute and arranged for her to receive a job at Focus and $5,000 from the organization’s benevolent fund. Two days later, Dobson said, the Alexander-Moegerles learned of the hiring and became incensed, phoning and writing letters to the Focus board of directors and staff demanding that Ruth Moegerle be dismissed.

“We went through the most bizarre and incredible three or four days I’ve ever experienced in my life,” Dobson said. He said the Alexander-Moegerles threatened legal action and spread disinformation. Soon, he said, “things were swirling around about my ‘inappropriate’ relationship with Ruth.”

Asked on the witness stand if he had an affair with Ruth Moegerle, Dobson said that he has been married to his wife, Shirley, for 31 years. “We were both virgins when we got married and have never had the slightest flirtation with someone else,” he said.

To appease the Alexander-Moegerles, Dobson said, he called Ruth Moegerle into his office and told her four days after she was hired: “We’re being blackmailed and I’m going to have to let you go.”

Dobson said Focus gave her $17,000 in gifts and loans to help her through financial difficulties and found her another job at Azusa Pacific University. But, Dobson said, he still regrets his decision to fire her to placate the Alexander-Moegerles. He said: “If you pay an extortionist once, you pay them for life. I appeased them and it was like putting a match to gasoline.”

Dobson said he barred Moegerle from the Focus on the Family headquarters in Pomona but never tried to harm him financially.

But Moegerle testified that Dobson ruined his career. After leaving Focus, Moegerle testified, he couldn’t find a job in his field and worked for a while in a computer store. Finally, in February, 1988, he said, he rejoined the religion-oriented Chicago advertising agency that he was working for when he met Dobson in 1977. Moegerle opened a West Coast office for the agency, but he claimed that Dobson and Focus interfered so much with his attempts to recruit and serve clients that the agency closed in a year.

Moegerle said he was hired to train an announcer for Tony Evans, a Dallas minister whose radio programs are subsidized by Focus on the Family, but Dobson stopped him from performing that service. Dobson said that he did not care if Moegerle trained the announcer but that he would not allow him to use Focus on the Family facilities to do it.

But Dobson said he also helped Moegerle, recommending him to several employers before and after their dispute erupted in 1988. In addition, he testified, Focus continued Moegerle’s $60,000 annual salary for six months after he resigned and paid him $5,000 for the continued use of his voice on taped broadcasts.

Moegerle said he was hurt by a letter Dobson wrote in March, 1988, suggesting that he had dated his second wife before his divorce was final. Moegerle said that although he was sexually attracted to Alexander before the divorce was final in early 1987, they did not date. He said the dating allegation was extremely damaging in conservative Christian circles. “To date one woman while married to another is one of the most serious offenses they could imagine,” he said.

Originally Gil and Carolyn Alexander-Moegerle sued Dobson and Focus for being illegally fired, but Piatt last year ruled that they had resigned voluntarily and threw out her lawsuit entirely and dismissed part of his. In another ruling just before the trial began last week, Piatt further narrowed the case by ruling that the status of Focus as a religious organization prevented Moegerle from suing over actions that occurred while he was employed there. Leonard Hampel, Dobson’s attorney, argued that the internal workings of the organization were protected by the First Amendment.

Moegerle said that the ruling was a severe blow to his case and that many of his grievances, including claims that Dobson invaded his privacy by talking to his first wife and therapist about the marriage, will never be resolved.

Meanwhile, at 47, he has returned to college to obtain a master’s degree in communications. His current wife is also in college, studying horticulture, and although barred from the courtroom as a witness, she has been sitting in the hallway outside every day reading a book, “Toxic Faith,” about the pitfalls of religious organizations.

Through it all, Dobson’s career and popularity have never waned. His radio programs and publications continue to expand, he has become a national voice for traditional family values.

Just last week, he told the court, he was invited to spend half an hour with President Bush to chat about the problems of family life today.