Mom says she has new evidence in priest sex abuse case. But California’s AG’s office denied her request

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Deanna Hampton was “crushed” last month after reading a letter, barely over a page long, that came in the mail from California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office.

Last fall, The Sacramento Bee told the story of Father Michael Kelly, a Diocese of Stockton priest who fled to Ireland to avoid prosecution in a case of child rape involving Hampton’s son, Trevor Martin. Kelly fled in 2012 in the middle of a civil trial and amid a criminal investigation.

Martin died in 2016 in a base-jumping accident. At the time, Kelly had been picked up by authorities in Morocco because of a federal flight warrant. The Calaveras County’s DA’s office told Hampton it had to drop the charges. Kelly was released from custody and returned to Ireland.

Despite accusations by multiple other victims, Kelly remains a free man and over the years has worked as a tour guide in Ireland, according to depositions recently viewed by The Bee.

The Bee’s investigation revealed prosecutorial missteps by the Calaveras County District Attorney’s Office, including losing grand jury testimony and taking no discernible steps to extradite Kelly. Bonta took the rare step of announcing that he would review the case for “abuse of discretion” by Calaveras County DA Barbara Yook.

In the letter to Hampton, Bonta said he found no cause that the DA abused her discretion. The AG’s letter stated: “We did not see anything in the materials provided to suggest that the Calaveras County District Attorney’s efforts in this regard were less than diligent.”

But Hampton called the scope of the “AG’s review shockingly narrow.”

Hampton and a former official who worked for the DA’s office said the AG should issue a more detailed report of what happened in the Kelly case, and examine what they describe as a systemic failure in Calaveras County to prosecute sex crimes in a timely fashion.

Monique McDevitt, now a senior deputy district attorney in Yuba County specializing in sex crimes, worked in Calaveras County from 2018 to 2020. “I feel terrible for what Trevor Martin’s family has gone through,” she said. “But what happened in that case did not occur in a vacuum. I don’t think that the AG is aware of just how screwed up things are in Calaveras County.“

What happened in Morocco

Hampton, in her initial letter to Bonta requesting the review, asked for the attorney general to issue a report about what efforts the Calaveras DA took in the Trevor Martin case.

Bonta offered no details in his letter to Hampton about what efforts the DA undertook to extradite Kelly prior to Martin’s death, or the series of events that led to Kelly’s arrest and subsequent release in Morocco in 2016.

Hampton said she is disappointed that Bonta did not take her up on multiple requests to meet with her, especially because she said she had important evidence to share.

“In other cases involving abuse of discretion, the Attorney General has issued a detailed report,” she wrote Bonta in a letter April 24. “I’m calling on you to do the same in this case, which is important to my family and symbolically to the thousands of victims of sex abuse within the Catholic Church.”

Hampton told The Bee that “the attorney general’s page-and-a-half letter reflects a general complacency about Catholic sex abuse. “I would say to Mr. Bonta, they owe it to the people of California and to victims of church abuse to conduct a thorough investigation and explain what happened,” she said. “And he should look for a resolution.”

Bonta’s office did not respond to questions about the review from The Sacramento Bee. The attorney general’s letter to Hampton, signed by Deputy Attorney General David Lowe, did not focus on the broader facts about how Kelly had evaded justice by traveling to Ireland. It focused more narrowly on the question of whether Trevor Martin’s testimony to a grand jury was admissible.

“Unfortunately, given the current state of the law, these statements and/or testimony would not be admissible in a court of law to prove the truth of the allegations,” the letter stated.

Another case, new evidence

Hampton said she would have shared new evidence had Bonta met with her. This would have included, she said, the revelation of another victim with whom the diocese settled. The case involved another victim close to Martin’s age and was then, and still is, within the statute of limitations. That civil case was ultimately settled by the diocese for $4 million.

According to the complaint, the anonymous “John Doe” victim in the case was, like Trevor Martin, an altar boy at St. Andrew’s Parish in Calaveras County. It states: “Michael Kelly’s physical and sexual abuse commenced in or around 2000 when plaintiff was twelve years old. ... Using his position as priest, Father Michael Kelly would travel to plaintiff’s home (when parents were not home) and inside he would sexually abuse and harass plaintiff ...”

Michael Hatfield, a spokesperson for the Calaveras District Attorney’s Office, said that the sheriff’s interviews concluded that Trevor Martin was the only person who reported sexual abuse by Kelly within the statute of limitations.

However, The Bee on Tuesday reached the victim in the second case through his attorney John Manly.

The victim said the assertion that he did not report the abuse to authorities is not true. He said he was living in Sacramento 13 years ago and reported Kelly’s abuse to the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office. He said a sheriff’s deputy came to his apartment in Sacramento and he described, in detail, the serial abuse he suffered.

Asked if he would have wanted to see Kelly prosecuted, he said “yes.” He also said given Trevor Martin’s untimely death, if asked, he would have helped any way he could to bring Kelly to justice, including testifying in a criminal case.

Now 36, the man remains within the statute of limitations in California, which currently cuts off criminal cases for those abused as children at 40. Legal experts said the existence of another victim within the statute of limitations could have either augmented the case involving Trevor Martin, or been cause to file a new case.

Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor experienced in prosecuting sex crimes and counsel to former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, noted that Kelly had been in custody and released.

“The real issue here is, you have a guy in custody in Morocco, a serial pedophile who fled justice,” he said. “What was the rush to let him out?”

Hampton’s other assertions

The other evidence that Hampton said she wanted to bring to Bonta’s attention involves the flow of money from Kelly supporters to the Diocese of Stockton.

Documents from a 2013 civil case show a $150,000 payment between a group called Friends of Father Kelly and the Diocese of Stockton, which for years claimed Kelly to be innocent.

A spokesperson for the Diocese of Stockton last year told The Bee that FOFK was “in no way affiliated with the diocese” and that “they have never reflected the diocese’s opinions.”

But the documents reviewed by The Bee show money changed hands between the two groups. The documents also show the diocese asked for regular updates from FOFK and then forwarded letters and documents from FOFK to the Calaveras DA containing attacks on both victims.

FOFK’s letters argue that fraud was involved in the claims against Kelly, and the millions of dollars being paid in settlements was harming the diocese’s ability to perform good works.

A March 2014 letter to Yook from FOFK attacks the second victim’s veracity, stating the “civil lawsuit claims he was abused at home ... the parents were not even suspicious or they would have said something sooner.”

Other letters cast doubt on the wisdom of extraditing Kelly. “Wasting taxpayer’s money with an unnecessary extradition or delaying action will allow the fraud to continue with success,” one states.

The documents include depositions that show Erika Robinson, one of the founding member of FOFK, had a conversation with Bishop Stephen Blaire, the highest official at the Diocese of Stockton, in which she communicated that FOFK raised approximately $170,000 on Kelly’s behalf that remained unspent.

“I did not want to hand over – the group did not want to hand over – all the money, and we’d be stuck with the liability with no funds, so we negotiated that we could keep some of the money and we would keep the liability of Friends of Father Kelly because the diocese did not want to – I was going to try and make them sign some paper saying that they would have – there would be conditions on the money.”

According to the deposition, Blaire suggested an arrangement in which, “We (FOFK) keep some of the money and all the liability.”

In a phone interview, Robinson said she still believes that Kelly has been wrongfully accused. “There have been a few priests who have done some terrible things,” she said. “Father Kelly is just not one of them.”

Who is FOFK?

Friends of Father Kelly first emerged in 2007 to fight allegations against Kelly and an initial suspension, which the diocese rescinded. Brigid Jenkins, who was a church member at St. Joachim Catholic Church in Lockeford, Kelly’s last post, said last September that she was “very active” with Friends of Father Kelly, even helping him pack for Ireland.

She said she did not consider herself a full member of FOFK because “those people have deep pockets and gave a lot of money.”

The Bee reported last year how members of FOFK considered Kelly an unfairly prosecuted “martyr” after he was found responsible in a civil trial for sexually abusing Travis Trotter, a former combat Airforce and Southwest Airlines pilot.

Hours after the verdict in 2012, Jenkins, during a service at St. Joachim Catholic Church, said, “We have a martyr here. We are blessed to see a martyr in our midst.”

Reached 11 years later, Jenkins stated that she has not changed her opinion “one iota” about Kelly.

Calaveras County initially told The Bee last summer that it had no communications involving FOFK or the Diocese of Stockton. But in November the prosecutor said it had found documents and provided them to The Bee.

Among the documents is a June 14, 2014 letter from Paul Balestracci, the Diocese of Stockton attorney, to the Calaveras County DA. Blaire was cc’d.

“I had previously provided all the information to Detective Whitney of the Sheriff department,” Balestracci wrote, “but since the case has been filed. I am now sending the information directly to you.”

The communication from Balestracci was written six months after Kelly was indicted and a federal complaint for unlawful flight had been issued by the U.S. Attorney in Sacramento.

Attached were a series of letters from FOFK members also addressed to the Calaveras County District Attorney. “So, I ask again, how is the fraud investigation coming along?” one states. “A man has to live with the fear of extradition and jail for something he did not do.”

The Diocese of Stockton did not respond to recent emailed questions about its relationship with FOFK.

In her letter to Bonta sent last week, Hampton questioned the relationship between FOFK and the diocese. “At a time when the diocese’s only interest should have been aiding in bringing Kelly to justice, they instead forwarded letters from a group who was in touch with Kelly,” she said. “The letters to the DA from FOFK disparaged my son and suggested those seeking to bring Kelly to justice were guilty of criminal fraud.”

Wu said another important revelation in the depositions is that members of FOFK visited Kelly in Ireland, bringing him cash and using his services as a tour guide in Ireland.

Kelly communicated with FOFK members regularly, according to emails turned over by Calaveras County DA to The Bee as part of a public records request. The priest remained defiant, claiming, “the bishop believes me.”

Kelly also pitched a tour: “I am looking into organizing a bus trip with a travel company I have been working with the past number of years. ... If you know anyone interested, let me know.”

Multiple members of FOFK attended a tour in Ireland led by Kelly in 2013, according to depositions.

In 2012, shortly after Kelly initially fled, Chris Hewitt of the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office, voiced frustration with FOFK interfering with his investigator. “Friends of Father Kelly,” Hewitt told the Calaveras Enterprise, “is just piling on, emailing him, sending him letters, just hindering his investigation.”

Wu said he finds the FOFK involvement troubling. “From a criminal standpoint, the group and the church could be charged with whatever they want to call it under California law,” Wu said. “But it’s basically obstruction of justice where you’re aiding a fugitive.”

‘A major disappointment’

Melanie Sakoda, Survivor Support Director for SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called Bonta’s letter to Hampton “a major disappointment, the AG really punted here.”

Sakoda said in 2019, then-State Attorney General Xavier Becerra was gathering information about Catholic Church abuse. She said the hope was that, like other states such as Pennsylvania, the state would pursue holding-to-account report or grand jury.

But, she said interest from the AG’s office appeared to fizzle.

“When Bonta agreed to review Trevor Martin’s case, there was hope, at least in this one case, there is going to be some transparency,” she said.

Sakoda, a Stanford Law graduate, said she believes that Bonta erred by looking at the case where something “just does not smell right” too narrowly.

“Was Friends of Father Kelly a proxy group working for the Diocese of Stockton to keep Kelly from being extradited?” she said. “What impact did the group have on the DA’s Office? Was there a chilling effect on the DA?

“If you want victims to have faith in the system, then you need to provide true transparency,” she added. “What victims got here was more of the same.”

Sakoda said the revelation that another victim is still within the statute of limitations and is willing to assist with a prosecution is significant.

“There are thousands of victims in California of priest abuse and many are very discouraged,” she said. “If Attorney General Bonta could find a way to bring Michael Kelly back to California to face to justice, that would give victims hope.”