SAN FRANCISCO -- A Southern Baptist minister who worked at The Presidio army base child-care center is the 'prime suspect' in a child molesting investigation involving 37 alleged victims, a federal investigator said Tuesday.
U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello said Gary Hambright, 33, is the 'prime suspect' in the case at the San Francisco base. But Russoniello said he would 'not exclude any other person' as a potential suspect.
Hambright, 33, supervised children at the Presidio Child Development Center between June 1985 and November 1986. He was indicted Dec. 30 on charges of sodomy, lewd acts and oral copulation of a 3-year-old boy but the charge was dropped in March.
Russoniello refused to discuss specific details of who else may be under suspicion or if there are multiple suspects.
Army and FBI investigators have examined more than 60 children cared for at the center during the 18-month period Hambright worked there. A group of parents say 37 of the children are 'suspected victims' of sexual abuse.
'This is very difficult to put in perspective and not disclose facts from the investigation,' Russoniello said. 'It is very difficult to satisfy (the parents) that the situation has been corrected with the need not to disgorge information.'
Russoniello refused to discuss numbers of potential victims or whether the government is satisfied that investigators have talked to all the children who may have been victims.
Presidio spokesman Bob Mahoney said at least two of the alleged child victims were infected with the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia and two others also may have been infected.
Hambright is an ordained Southern Baptist minister with no criminal record and now works as a handyman at a local church, said his attorney, Rommel Bondoc.
The charges against him were dropped in March when U.S. District Judge William Schwarzer refused to allow the boy's parents or doctor to testify about the youngster's description of the incident. The child was considered too young to testify reliably himself.
Russoniello said his office seriously considered an appeal of Schwarzer's order barring the parents' testimony but dropped the plan and continued the investigation instead.
Testimony based on what the parents were told would violate Hambright's constitutional right to confront and question his accuser - the child in this case.
Without the parents' testimony the key evidence in the case was eliminated and the charges dropped.
Schwarzer did allow the government to refile charges against Hambright at any time new evidence came to light.
'We gave it (an appeal) a lot of thought ... but decided it had no chance and we had not shut down the investigation,' Russoniello said. 'We have expended a lot of energy and time and effort in the case but that does not mean the result is in sight.'
Five couples whose children attended the center sent a letter April 29 to 300 families in an effort to track down and identify potential victims.