Men Reveal Secrets of Sexual Abuse in Solidarity with Accused Killer

May 19, 2010— -- It was the kind of headline that rocks a city no matter how big or small -- a young man shoots his former neighbor in his home and claims he had been sexually abused him for years. The small California coastal town of Fort Bragg was left wondering exactly who was the real Darrell McNeill and whether a monster had lived next door as Aaron Vargas had alleged.

Paul Clark, who runs the local Century 21 agency where McNeill worked part-time, described him as hardworking and always willing to help out.

"Neighbors asked, 'Well, you knew, didn't you?,'" Clark told "20/20," "'Know what?' No. I had moved here since in 1976, and been around, and until the day after [the shooting], never a word."

But that was about to end. Within days of Aaron Vargas' arrest, the phone at the Vargas family home started ringing. The stories on the other end of the line, the family says, were chilling -- men in their thirties and forties, who said they too had been abused by Darrell McNeill and had kept the secret buried for decades.

One of those calls came from Todd Rowan, 45, who was part of a Boy Scout troop led by McNeill. The abuse, Rowan claims, started at age fifteen and continued for six years.

"[McNeill took] my whole life," Rowan told 20/20, "I didn't develop normally because I got preyed upon. And I carried it for a long, long time."

Mindy Galliani, Aaron Vargas' sister, said twelve stories like Rowan's trickled back to her family.

"It was hard to believe," she said, "Just when we thought things couldn't get any worse, we would find something else out."

And the family says things did get worse. They also heard from members of Darrell McNeill's own family, who said they had not only been abused, but had gone to warn the Fort Bragg Police Department.

"I hated him," John Clemons, McNeill's stepson told "20/20," "I never forgot about what he was doing to me."

Clemons, 46, said the abuse started when he was ten and continued until he was fourteen, when he finally decided to stand up to his stepfather. McNeill never touched him again and Clemons kept it secret for years. Finally, when he was in his thirties, he told his mother, Virginia Kotila, who by then was divorced from McNeill.

Kotilla says she went to the Fort Bragg police and was told the statute of limitations of seven years to report sexual abuse was up and that she would have to find a younger victim in order to move the case forward.