By Megan Ma

Wagner

A painful and emotionally agonizing chapter in David Grewal’s life came to an end last Friday as Los Altos resident and former Boy Scout leader Gregory Allen Wagner, 43, received the maximum prison sentence - 23 years and four months - for sexually molesting three Boy Scouts under his care and supervision between 1987 and 1992.

After hearing compelling statements from Grewal, one of Wagner’s victims, and Grewal’s parents and wife, Superior Court Judge Diane Northway addressed the court.

“It’s important that justice be done, but also that it is seen to be done. Child victims are not only entitled to the protection of our courts, but they are entitled to our compassion. My store of compassion as a judge is to give to the victims of these crimes,” she said, clearly moved.

Northway said she took into account the gravity of the former Boy Scout leader’s transgressions in her decision. Most egregious, Northway said, was the fact that Wagner had violated the trust of parents and families in his position of authority.

The judge commended Grewal for stepping forward and setting a powerful example for other molestation victims and for society at large. “I want to say to David: How courageous you are. Here you are standing up for yourself and for those who don’t have a voice,” Northway said.

Wagner was a Scout leader for 20 years until the day of his arrest Aug. 25. He chaperoned weekend trips in the Santa Cruz Mountains and weeklong summer camp trips throughout California.

Three victims had stepped forward with accusations by late September; in police files, however, Wagner confessed to having molested or having inappropriate contact with dozens more.

Grewal, 30, now a post-doctoral candidate in government studies at Harvard, was the first victim to come forward and the only victim to testify in court. In appealing to the judge to issue the maximum sentence, he spoke about the years of depression and self-loathing he experienced after his encounters with Wagner.

Grewal urged the judge to look beyond his academic accomplishments - two degrees from Harvard and Yale - as defining examples that he had somehow pulled through the pain. “I’ve lost years in a life that already feels too short,” he said. After four years of therapy, Grewal said he is still haunted by recurring nightmares.

Grewal remains in contact with several other victims, who find it too emotionally wrenching to speak out, he said, and insisted their court victory on Friday was a collective one.

Wagner faced nine felony counts that included a lewd act with a child under 14 by force, duress, menace and fear; continuous molestation of a child; distributing harmful material (pornography) to a child; and another lewd act on a child, police said. He has been out on bail since last September.

During the hearing, Kevin Ross Richland, a criminal investigator in the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office, testified under oath that between December 2004 and April 2005 he recovered child pornography on the defendant’s seven computer hard drives.

Wagner’s defense attorney, James Blackman, who argued in his closing remarks that his client’s behavior had changed in the past 15 years, did not reject or refute Richland’s findings.

Wagner sat stone-faced throughout the testimony and did not visibly react upon hearing his fate.