Saturday, November 21, 2009

A SPOKESMAN-REVIEW INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

Alleged child molester 'very sweet brother'

Sister says she never suspected anything until deputy killed himself

Bill Morlin / Staff writer

May 5, 2005

© The Spokesman-Review 2005

Note: This story appeared in The Spokesman-Review on June 8, 2003

So how could David D. Hahn also be an alleged child molester?

One of Hahn's two sisters says she doesn't know the answer, but can provide a glimpse into the man she calls "a very sweet brother."

Linda Armstrong said she never suspected that her brother abused young boys until after he killed himself on Aug. 28, 1981, at age 36.

Her suspicions were confirmed recently by three men who say they were molested as children and teenagers by the deputy.

Hahn's other surviving sister didn't want to discuss the matter, and his parents are dead.

Armstrong said her family didn't want to know the details surrounding Hahn's suicide 22 years ago when then-Sheriff Larry Erickson went to the family home after the funeral.

Hahn was raised in a modest bungalow in Northwest Spokane with two sisters, the children of Donald and Virginia Hahn. His dad was a tennis pro; his mother a homemaker.

He attended Field Elementary and Shadle Park High School, where he graduated in 1963. As a boy, Hahn was active in the Boy Scouts -- an organization he continued with when he became a deputy.

"Our dad pushed him in athletics and made him excel beyond what he was capable of doing," Armstrong said.

She said she doesn't think Hahn was molested as a boy.

He became particularly angry when their parents divorced in 1966, Armstrong said. About the same time, her brother broke up with a girlfriend after finding out she was interested in someone else. He seldom dated after that.

"He was a great older brother, always screening my boyfriends and watching out for me," Armstrong said. "He was very loving and sweet."

Hahn attended Gonzaga University and graduated in 1967 with a psychology degree. He was commissioned as an Army lieutenant after completing the university's ROTC program.

He went to Vietnam as a Green Beret intelligence officer for the U.S. Army and was wounded in a deadly firefight near the Cambodian border in late 1969 or 1970.

Armstrong said Hahn returned to Spokane and lived with her briefly while he recovered.

She described him as "a health nut" who loved to compete in triathlons, which involve swimming, bicycling and running.

He became a sheriff's deputy in 1976.

Armstrong said Hahn quickly became close friends with another new deputy, Jim West, who left the department in 1978 for an unsuccessful run for sheriff against Erickson. West, a Republican, is now state Senate majority leader.

West said last week that he knew nothing about Hahn's alleged molestations. After Hahn's death, West said he asked sheriff's officials about the suicide, but was told the matter was closed and wouldn't be discussed.

Armstrong said she never had a clue her brother might be a child molester until after his death, when she started piecing bits of information together and "began to wonder." She wanted to pursue unanswered questions, but her mother and sister "just didn't want to know what had occurred."

"David was not a monster at all," she said. "Troubled, yes. I knew he was troubled. There was a sadness to him."