Ex-teacher who abused kids gets years added to sentence
Man got 108-year sentence in 2018
State District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer on Monday sentenced former teacher Gary Gregor to six more years in prison following his conviction in December on a charge of molesting an Española second grader in 2007.
Gregor, 63, who also taught in Santa Fe, is already serving a 108-year sentence for his December 2018 conviction on more than a dozen charges of raping and molesting two fourth grade girls he had taught at the same school, Fairview Elementary.
Gregor’s trial in December 2019 was his second on the charge of criminal sexual contact of a minor; a mistrial was declared in January 2019 after a jury could not reach a verdict.
On Monday, Gregor’s defense attorney asked Sommer to run the new sentence concurrent to his existing sentence, but the judge denied his
request. The young woman who had accused him of the crime was due justice after waiting 14 years for it, the judge said.
The woman, now in her 20s, testified in December that Gregor had asked her to lie on a carpet in a classroom as he rubbed his groin across her body.
The woman described how Gregor would lie behind her and rub his genitals on her buttocks while other children were outside during recess.
“He would tell me we should take a nap,” testified the woman, who is not being named because the does not identify victims of sexual assault.
A victim’s advocate read a letter from the woman Monday in which the woman said Gregor’s actions had scarred her for life.
Gregor faces additional charges of molesting two Santa Fe students he taught in the 2003-04 school year at the former Agua Fría Elementary School. He is expected to stand trial on those charges later this year.
Several of his former Santa Fe students also have a civil case pending in federal court accusing him of sexually abusing them in 2004.
Española Public Schools has agreed to a series of settlements totaling $21 million for lawsuits accusing Gregor of sexual abuse. The New Mexico Public Schools Insurance Authority has handled most of the payouts.
Prosecutors have said Gregor was accused of inappropriate conduct with students at schools Utah and Montana before he began teaching in Santa Fe in 2001. But he was never criminally charged in either state.
Concerns about him emerged in Santa Fe in 2004, prompting district officials to pressure him to resign. Officials agreed to provide a neutral recommendation to his next employer and did not report him to police.
Española Public Schools hired Gregor in 2005.
According to testimony presented during his trials, Gregor “groomed” students by giving them gifts, selecting them for special class privileges and inviting them to his home.
He took girls into a closet, where he kissed and digitally penetrated them, they said.
One girl’s parent reported Gregor to Española police in 2009, but he wasn’t charged.
It wasn’t until 2017 — after one of Gregor’s accusers appeared on an episode of the TV program Dateline about teachers who were serial sexual abusers — that the Attorney General’s Office took action against him.