Orr ready to get on with his life

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — One of the first things that Brian Orr did after being found not guilty of abusing three female inmates at the McKinley County Adult Detention Center was go back to the scene of the alleged crime.

But he didn't go back as a staff member he had resigned from his job as chief of security there in 2005 but to get an electronic monitoring device removed. He had been wearing the device since his arrest last February.

He was greeted with congratulations from several staff members at the detention center as he waited in the hallway near the front door.

Later, he talked about the fact that no one from the center came to his three-day trial to show their support.

"They were afraid to come," he said, saying that officials for the district attorney's office had told them that they didn't want them to have any association with Orr while he was facing the charges.

But that's not all he lost during the past year.

Although his family and friends stayed in his corner, Orr said he had to cope with having no money and no job for almost a year.

Orr resigned from his job at the detention center after being the subject of at least three investigations into allegations made by the three women who claimed that he used his authority over them to take sexual advantage of them.

Two of the women, he said, did this to get back at him for taking their jobs away from them because of affairs they were having with other staff at the center. The other one had a crush on him.

He claims that the two convinced the third to enter into a conspiracy against him to get back at him by making up accusations. Once the allegations were made, he said, officials at the center, as well as officials for the Wyoming department of Correction, began a series of investigations to prove that he was guilty.

He told of being interrogated, almost on a daily basis by someone. "I refused to resign," he said, and even though nothing was ever proven, he was put on administrative leave. That convinced him it was time to resign.

After working as a graphic designer for a few months at a weekly newspaper in Gallup, he got a job with Union Pacific.

"They also did an extensive investigation and finally decided to hire me," he said.

But just a few days after he got off probation, he was arrested and sent to a jail in Grants after officials here in Gallup thought it would be unsafe to put him in the Gallup jail because of his position there from 1997 to 2005.

"There were statements that I left Gallup to hide but that's not true," he said. "I was living in Las Vegas. I had a public address and I was listed in the phone book. I wasn't trying to hide."

He sold one of his cars to post bail. He sold another one to pay Steve Seeger a retainer to be his defense attorney. But by the time that retainer was used up, he had no more money to pay Seeger since he couldn't get a job.

Seeger came back on as his attorney in November, this time as a public defender since Orr had no income.

Under the conditions of his release he was basically under house arrest after 5 p.m. until 8 a.m. the next morning, but he was allowed to go anywhere he wanted from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

"That was to allow me to get a job," he said. But although he tried a number of places, no one would hire him while he was facing three counts of criminal sexual penetration, with conviction of any of the charges getting him nine years in prison.

He found himself forced to rely on friends and family for his living expenses.

Twice during the following months, he said, he was offered a plea agreement by the district attorney's office, which would have given him six years probation, but that would have required him to register as a sex offender.

He said he turned it down because "that would have listed me as a sex offender for life, and I'm not a sex offender."

With the not guilty verdict, Orr said he is planning to try and get a job.

"Right now, I have nothing," he said.

He wants to get a job to earn enough money to buy a car and then start planning for a future with his fiance, who is expecting to give birth in the next few weeks.

He's lived in Gallup since 1979, when he came here as a seventh-grader.

"I have no hard feelings about Gallup or its people," he said, adding that he even doesn't bear a grudge against the district attorney's office.
"They were just doing their job," he said.