FAMILY WORRIES AS WRONGLY JAILED MAN FACES HEARING

Border: Laguna Niguel Resident Held In Mexico For 6 1/2 Years Was Cleared
Of Molestation Counts But Now Must Answer To Newly Filed Drug Charges

ENSENADA--The family of a Laguna Niguel man wrongly jailed for 6 1/2 years
on allegations of molesting boys at a Mexican orphanage pushed for his
release Friday, saying they feared for his life as he awaits a hearing next
week on what they consider a trumped-up drug possession charge.

An attorney for David Cathcart said that he faxed a letter to the U.S.
ambassador to Mexico expressing those fears, and that the Tijuana-based
U.S. consul visited Cathcart in Ensenada on Friday.

In addition, representatives from Mexico's cabinet-level Commission on
Human Rights were keeping vigil at the jail to look out for Cathcart's
safety, said his attorney, William Bollard.

Meanwhile, in an interview with The Times, one of the boys who recanted the
sex charges said Friday that the orphanage's director threatened to put him
on the street when he was 15 unless he told authorities that Cathcart had
molested him.

A day after a Mexican judge declared Cathcart, 59, not guilty of those
charges, the man's family in Orange County was hopeful that the ordeal
would end soon.

"At times, we haven't kept it together very well, to be honest," his son
Jeff said. "We've all missed out by him not being with us. I don't know how
to describe that. I don't have the words."

Now, David Cathcart may be one step away from freedom--or facing one more
blind alley in his odyssey within the Mexican legal system.

Two prison guards allege that they found heroin in Cathcart's shirt in
1998. Bollard said his client was not charged until last month, days before
the molestation case was reopened.

Neither the shirt nor any heroin was produced at a hearing Wednesday that
lasted from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., he said.

The next hearing, scheduled for Friday, will be similar to an arraignment,
at which a judge will decide if there is sufficient evidence to go to
trial. Bollard expects that his client will be released then.

Cathcart, a travel agent, first went to the Door of Faith orphanage to
inspect its books after officials at St. Timothy's Catholic Church in
Laguna Niguel began to suspect that some of the $140,000 that parishioners
donated to the home was being diverted.

Cathcart's suspicions were raised when director Gabriel Diego Garcia pulled
up in a new Ford Bronco, while the orphanage seemed in need of repair, said
Cathcart's son Chris, 36.

Garcia ran Cathcart off the property when the American asked to see the
books, Chris said. Cathcart returned to Orange County. The next day, he was
asked to return, told that a child had been hospitalized.

When Cathcart got to the hospital, he was arrested. He was later sentenced
to 12 years in prison.

Recently, the boys who accused him recanted and told a Mexican judge that
Garcia coerced them into lying. The boys said they were beaten at the
orphanage and locked in a room without food or water.

In an interview Friday, Efrain Reyes Carrillo, now 22, said Garcia
threatened him and three teenagers in 1994 with eviction--and worse--unless
they leveled false allegations of sexual misconduct.

Reyes said Garcia took advantage of the fact that "I had no family and
nowhere to go."

"I had lived there all my life. That was the only home I knew," Reyes said.

"We did not make the accusations voluntarily. He made us talk to the
authorities."

Garcia has denied that he threatened the boys or coerced them to lie.
Garcia said Reyes and the others recanted after Cathcart's lawyers promised
them money and cars.

"Nobody offered me money or anything else," Reyes said. "I had to tell the
truth. I was forced to tell lies about an innocent man."

Judge Marta Flores Trejo, who cleared Cathcart of the sex charges Thursday,
said the four boys had been sodomized but found no evidence that Cathcart
had attacked them.

Flores said her investigation found that U.S. visitors were allowed to take
children from the orphanage to local hotels for sex.

"The children were physically and sexually abused. Someone has to
investigate this," she said.

On Thursday, Flores called for an investigation of the orphanage by Baja
California authorities.

Garcia, who has not been charged with any crime, denied that children under
his care were sexually abused.

He said children were occasionally allowed to leave for a few days with
American supporters of the orphanage.

"The only people who have taken the children are people who have helped the
orphanage," Garcia said at his home in La Mision, about 20 miles north of
Ensenada.

"These are honorable people," he said of those supporters. "Some of them
took the children to the U.S. for a few days. The judge can say whatever
she wants."

Garcia said Americans would take the children "to places like Disneyland."