Copyright 1987 The Washington Post  
The Washington Post
March 7, 1987, Saturday, Final Edition
SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A1

LENGTH: 888 words

HEADLINE: 3 Molestation Charges Added Against Maryland Principal

BYLINE: Charles W. Hall, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:
Three new child molesting charges were lodged yesterday against David B. Harrington, a Silver Spring private school principal, and Montgomery County police said they will begin a nationwide search because they believe that he has disappeared for the second time in 17 years.

Harrington, the county's 1985-86 Big Brother of the Year and high school principal at the Hebrew Academy of Greater Washington, has not been seen by authorities or his bail bondsman since his arrest last Saturday. According to a source involved in the search, Harrington on Monday drained a bank account containing $ 15,000 to $ 20,000.

Harrington, 43, also operated a youth travel agency from his Germantown town house and had possession of more than $ 10,000 paid to his Independent Schools Travel Association to organize a weekend ski trip for about 70 youngsters.

"We do not know where he is at this time," said Sgt. Kathi Rhodes, the head of the Montgomery police pedophile unit, after announcing the new charges at a news conference.

"We foresee more victims" being discovered, said Rhodes, adding that interviews with children could take "weeks, months, who knows how long?"

Harrington, who faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted, worked with hundreds of youngsters in recent years in a succession of school jobs, in his travel agency and in Big Brothers, a volunteer agency that matches fatherless boys with men willing to act as male role models.

Police searching Harrington's home last Saturday found hundreds of photographs of children, most apparently taken on group outings. Some photos showed children in suggestive poses, police said.

Neither the Big Brothers organization nor the Hebrew Academy, where Harrington worked since 1980, was aware that he had been convicted and sentenced to a 30-day jail term on a 1969 child abuse charge. Each organization said it checked his references but found no suggestion of wrongdoing.

Harrington disappeared in August 1970 by faking his drowning in Lake Champlain, just one day before he was to take a polygraph examination in a child molestation case in Vermont, where he taught high school mathematics, police said.

Harrington then obscured his identity by obtaining a new Social Security number, falsifying his date of birth and taking three different middle names, police said.

According to court papers outlining the new charges, Harrington was a Big Brother to one of the three minors involved. He is alleged to have sexually fondled the boy at his apartment in 1980 after giving him wine and showing him X-rated movies. The boy was 12 at the time.

The other two minors were molested between 1982 and 1983, police charged. The youths, who were 14 and 15 at the time, also were given wine and shown X-rated movies, the court papers said.

The initial charge against Harrington involved a 14-year-old who participated in Big Brothers and was allegedly sexually abused this year, according to police.

Harrington, whose last known contact was a phone call Monday to a friend, was free on $ 10,000 bond at the time of his current disappearance. His bail bondsman, Nick Pantazes of Rockville, said he had not talked to Harrington since Sunday and that he became worried when "I asked him to call me Monday and he never got back."

Rhodes complained yesterday that Harrington's bail had been set too low and said that if he is located her office would request that he be held without bond. "We would love to have higher bonds set in cases like this."

At the time bail was set, police did not know that Harrington had previously fled prosecution in a sex abuse case. Harrington surfaced in Florida before moving to Maryland in the early 1970s. He served as headmaster at the McLean School of Maryland in Potomac before joining Hebrew Academy.

Rabbi William Altshul, headmaster at Hebrew Academy, said his staff had checked references only at schools where Harrington had taught in Maryland and had not learned of his problems in Vermont.

Willis Johnson, a spokesman for Big Brothers, said his agency did not have access to national criminal records when Harrington was accepted as a volunteer in 1980. He said Big Brother candidates in Maryland must now submit fingerprints, and a new law allows the organization to request criminal records through the state police.

Harrington first came to the attention of Montgomery police in 1985 when he was sentenced to 18 months' probation for buying stolen computer equipment from youngsters. An officer searching Harrington's house became suspicious after seeing numerous photos of children, police said.

In recent months, after the formation of the county police's pedophile unit, police said they stepped up surveillance of Harrington. An investigation source said police covertly followed Harrington on a ski trip that he had organized shortly before his arrest. "We wanted to make sure he wasn't putting the kids at risk, and we didn't see any sign that he was doing so."

Parents at the Hebrew Academy, where Harrington supervised 70 high school students, expressed deepening shock as news accounts detailed Harrington's past. Although police have said there is no evidence that any of the high school students had been molested, Jason Rosenblatt, a parent, said, "We've all been abused. He has betrayed everyone's trust."