On October 9, 2015, a former Philadelphia altar boy reported to the office of Dr. Stephen Mechanick to undergo a court-ordered forensic psychiatric evaluation. It took nearly three hours because the two men had a lot of ground to cover. Daniel Gallagher is a slender 27-year-old with a wispy beard who is better known as “Billy Doe.” Under that pseudonym, he made national headlines in 2011 when he claimed to have been serially raped as a fifth- and sixth-grader at St. Jerome’s parish by two priests and a Catholic schoolteacher.
Gallagher subsequently became the Philadelphia district attorney’s star witness at two historic criminal trials. His graphic testimony helped convict three alleged assailants, as well as Monsignor William Lynn, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s former secretary for clergy, who was found guilty of endangering the welfare of a child. The monsignor became the first Catholic administrator in the country to go to jail for failing to adequately supervise a sexually abusive priest.
The Billy Doe rape story was so sensational it attracted the attention of crusading Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely. She described Billy Doe in a 2011 story, “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files,” as a “sweet, gentle kid with boyish good looks” who had been callously “passed around” from predator to predator. According to the charges recounted by Erdely, two priests and a Catholic schoolteacher “raped and sodomized the 10-year-old, sometimes making him perform stripteases or getting him drunk on sacramental wine after Mass.”
Erdely is the same reporter who later wrote about “Jackie,” a University of Virginia student who claimed she was gang-raped by seven men at a fraternity party. The 2014 story, which dominated headlines and cable TV news for weeks, was subsequently exposed as a hoax by “Jackie,” retracted by Rolling Stone and is now the subject of a couple of libel suits.
Judging from Mechanick’s report, Billy Doe has as much credibility as Jackie. In a 40-page report obtained by Newsweek, the forensic psychiatrist recounted Gallagher’s test results from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test known as the MMPI-2:
“The client is apparently immature and self-indulgent, manipulating others to his own ends…. He refuses to accept responsibility for his problems. He may have an exaggerated or grandiose idea of his own capabilities and personal worth. He is likely to be hedonistic and may overuse alcohol or drugs. He appears to be quite impulsive, and he may act out against others without considering the consequences…. Paranoid features and externalization of blame are likely to be present…. His manipulative and self-serving behavior may cause great difficulties for people close to him…. An individual with this profile is usually viewed as having a Personality Disorder, probably a Paranoid or Passive-Aggressive Personality. Symptoms of a delusional disorder are prominent in his clinical pattern.”
On top of bombing out on the MMPI-2, Gallagher admitted he lied and provided “unreliable information” to Mechanick about his substance abuse and psychiatric history, as well as his personal and medical background…
Talk to the eight defense lawyers in the criminal cases and they’ll all tell you Daniel Gallagher is a chronic liar, a junkie hustler and a confabulator. They can’t believe how lucky he’s been. After the DA got Gallagher out of jail so he could tell his stories of sexual abuse, he was arrested twice on charges of drug possession, including one bust for possession with intent to distribute 56 bags of heroin. But, thanks to his criminal lawyer, that heroin was thrown out of court as evidence. A subsequent drug bust, on charges of possession of a controlled substance, also disappeared after nine continuances in 18 months, when the DA let Gallagher into an accelerated rehab program for which he ordinarily would not have been eligible.
Today, Daniel Gallagher is a free man with a clean record living in Florida with his new wife, who’s expecting the couple’s first child. And, thanks to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, he’s also a multimillionaire.
