NEW YORK
Times Herald-Record
By Steve Israel
Times Herald-Record
Posted May. 2, 2015
PINE BUSH – Mikey Kyles’ 17-year-old twin brother, Tyler, had just been killed in a car crash – with Tyler sitting in the back seat of the 2004 Honda and Mikey in the front passenger seat.
So in August 2009, the priest who had just officiated at the mass for Tyler visited the Kyles’ bi-level home outside this northern Orange County hamlet.
Rev. Kevin Gallagher of Pine Bush’s Church of the Infant Saviour hugged Mikey Kyles and told him he would be there for the teen who did everything with his twin, from shooting baskets in the driveway to skateboarding around town.
“If you ever need anything, come and talk to me,” Kyles recalls Gallagher saying.
Mikey Kyles, now 22, claims Gallagher subsequently sexually abused him in the rectory behind the church – after giving him hundreds and hundreds of dollars over a few years to buy drugs for a heroin habit that Kyles has since kicked. He claims the abuse started when he was 19.
“He was feeding me money to get close to me; he knew what he was doing,” says Kyles in the home where Gallagher first offered his help. “He groomed me. He found a broken kid and when I needed the help the most he abused me.”
Because of that year-old allegation to the Archdiocese of New York, Gallagher, 63, has been forbidden to serve as a priest.
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