The State - News from Nov. 16, 1987

The Army announced it is closing and demolishing a child-care center at its Presidio base in San Francisco amid allegations that as many as 60 youngsters were sexually abused there. An Army spokesman at the Pentagon said the Presidio Child Development Center will be closed Friday and a new center opened by April. Presidio spokesman Bob Mahoney said the closure was for “health, safety and sanitation reasons, and not as a result of allegations of child abuse.” But U.S. Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Army officials told her that some children were afraid to return to the center. Gary Willard Hambright, 34, a former civilian employee at the center and a former Southern Baptist minister, has been charged with abusing 10 boys and girls there. He faces trial April 4.