Accused child molester’s wife testifies in his defense
Closing arguments in case against former teacher are scheduled today
Former teacher Gary Gregor’s wife, a woman 30 years his junior, took the stand Tuesday in his trial on child molestation charges, telling jurors she became jealous when fourth-grade girls in her husband’s class held his hand and wrote him letters saying they loved him — but she never saw him touch any child inappropriately.
Gregor, 62, who taught in Santa Fe and Española schools, is accused of raping and molesting several female students in both districts between 2003 and 2009, and faces multiple counts of criminal sexual penetration and criminal sexual contact in four cases.
His first trial — based on charges that he molested two students at Española Public Schools’ Fairview Elementary during the 2007-08 school year — began Dec. 4 in Santa Fe. State prosecutors called numerous witnesses over the past week, including his accusers, a school employee and a child sexual assault expert.
Gregor’s wife was the only witness called by his defense attorneys, who presented no other evidence before resting their case Tuesday.
Judith Gregor, 32, a native of the Philippines, told jurors she and her husband became “pen pals” in 2005 after he posted a message on a website called Asian
Treasures, saying he was looking for a wife. They corresponded for about a year before he came to visit her in the Philippines in December 2005, she said. They were married in January 2006, Judith Gregor said, and she came to the United States with him in March 2007, when she was 21.
The two students of Gary Gregor who testified in the case last week said he had made them sit at a table close to him during class, brought them gifts, and stuck his hands inside their clothing, touching their genitals.
Both said the abuse sometimes occurred during class, with Gregor touching them under a table, and that he would take them into a closet in the classroom, where he would kiss or fondle them.
One of the accusers, now a young adult, sobbed as she told jurors last week that the former teacher had “gripped” her buttocks in the closet and rubbed her vagina.
Gregor’s wife said Tuesday that as soon as she arrived in the United States, she began accompanying her husband to work and spent each day in his classroom for about a month before someone complained that she hadn’t undergone a background check and shouldn’t be in the school.
During her time in her husband’s class, Judith Gregor said, she sat right by his side and never saw anything inappropriate, except for hand holding and love notes, which she said were initiated by the children.
She and her husband were Mormons, Judith Gregor said, and had invited some students to a “sleepover” at their home “because my husband is a missionary … and he taught me always to share the gospel of the church. That’s why he wanted to invite people over.”
Earlier in the trial, one of Gary Gregor’s accusers told jurors that during the sleepover, the teacher had asked her to sleep with him and had become upset when she refused.
Asked about the incident during her testimony, Judith Gregor said her husband had asked her to send the girl into his bedroom to speak with him — she didn’t know why, the wife said — but the child refused.
The accuser and her two sisters fell asleep in the living room, Judith Gregor said, and she’d called her husband to help carry them to the guest room, which she’d decorated in pink in hopes of having a daughter of her own one day.
That contradicted testimony from the accuser, who said she and her sisters had slept in the living room the whole night.
Judith Gregor tearfully testified that she never became pregnant and had no children.
That prompted Deputy Attorney General Clara Moran to ask why she had told her husband, during a phone call with him while he was jailed, that she wanted to return to the Philippines to visit her son.
Judith Gregor said there must have been a mistake because she she had no son; she swore she’d never had a child.
When Moran offered to play a recording of the phone call, state District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer nixed the idea, telling the prosecutor: “I think you’ve impeached her enough.”
Gary Gregor faced allegations of misconduct in Utah and Montana before he began teaching in Santa Fe in 2000, according several lawsuits filed against him and the two local school districts over allegations he had sexually abused students.
When Gregor was a teacher at what was then Agua Fría Elementary School in 2004, docents at a Santa Fe museum raised concerns with school officials about Gregor’s behavior with students on a field trip to the museum.
Following the complaint, Gregor resigned without a formal hearing, and Santa Fe school officials did not report him to police; instead, they agreed to give him a neutral recommendation, allowing him to be hired by the Española district.
Gregor first came to the attention of law enforcement in 2009 when parents of one of his students at Fairview Elementary reported their concerns about him to Española police. But it wasn’t until 2017 that the state Attorney General’s Office filed criminal charges against him.
By that time, several civil suits had been filed against Gregor by accusers who said law enforcement ignored their reports. One of them had even appeared on a national television show to talk about the alleged abuse.
Española Public Schools has paid out more than $9 million to settle lawsuits filed by women who accuse Gregor of sexually assaulting them when they were children.
Carolyn M. “Cammie” Nichols, the civil attorney who handled those claims on behalf of Gregor’s accusers, sat in the courtroom most of the day Tuesday.
Marlowe Sommer sent the jurors out of the courtroom temporarily Tuesday to admonish Nichols for “annoying the court” by “making faces” and shaking her head during Judith Gregor’s testimony.
Attorneys in the case are expected to present their closing arguments when Gregor’s trial continues Wednesday.