Pastor Says Scandals Sap Respect for Clergy : Religion: Walker L. Railey addresses a group in Reseda. He was acquitted of trying to murder his wife in Dallas.

Walker L. Railey, the once-prominent Dallas minister and Los Angeles church executive acquitted of trying to murder his wife after a sensational Texas trial last spring, has hit the lecture circuit.

Railey was applauded Wednesday by a group of clergy members in Reseda after telling them that religious leaders are losing public respect because of scandals like the one that engulfed him after his wife was choked nearly to death in their Dallas garage in 1987.

“Every time a religious scandal hits the headlines, the stock of clergy goes down. With the stories about Jimmy Swaggart and Walker Railey . . . many lay people across the nation begin to wonder whether rabbis and pastors are ever faithful to their spouses at all,” he said.

“We got lay people all over the nation who don’t trust clergy with their family or with their finances.”

Once the high-profile senior pastor of Dallas’ prestigious First United Methodist Church, Railey, 46, was accused of trying to strangle his wife, Margaret (Peggy) Railey, so he could join his lover, former Dallas psychologist Lucy Papillon, in California.

Margaret Railey was left for dead in the couple’s Dallas garage and remains in a coma at a Tyler, Tex., nursing home. After the attack on her, Walker Railey attempted suicide and resigned from the ministry. He also gave up custody of the couple’s two children, who now live in Arkansas with a friend.

Railey later moved to Los Angeles and got a job as executive administrator of Immanuel Presbyterian Church. He was arrested in his church office last year--nearly six years after the crime--when Texas prosecutors said they had developed new evidence against him. Word of his indictment polarized the Mid-Wilshire congregation, with some church members departing in anger.

Railey was acquitted in April in a trial that enthralled Dallas residents. Moved to San Antonio because of extensive pretrial publicity, the proceeding was broadcast daily on cable channel Court TV. A cable spokesman said that one week, it was the most-watched daytime cable program in Dallas and surrounding cities.

Prosecutors charged that Railey wrote threatening letters to himself on a church typewriter to hide his tracks. An FBI agent said a DNA examination of the envelopes showed that the saliva was consistent with Railey’s genetic makeup.

For the defense, Papillon, a Methodist minister’s daughter, testified that her former lover was incapable of violence. Three others testified on Railey’s behalf.

Nattily attired in a blue suit Wednesday and wiping sweat from his balding pate, Railey showed his old preacher’s flair as he spoke at a Reseda nursing home before about 35 members of the San Fernando Valley-based Clergy Network.

Saying clergy members live in glass houses, he urged them to be careful when counseling “the wicked woman of the parish” or even driving children home, saying such actions could be misinterpreted by suspicious members of their congregation.

But he also criticized the clergy, saying some members set themselves above their congregants. He even complained that fellow ministers were among his most vituperative attackers.

“Since 1987, for every one ordained person who has written me a letter (of support) . . . 100 ordained people have judged me sanctimoniously and have spoken to the press on condition of anonymity,” he said.

Railey also attacked the press, saying that even reporters for respected media outlets are developing “tabloid mentalities” that lead them to probe for even the smallest details of the lives of church leaders, politicians and celebrities.

“The public has a right to know, but they don’t have the right to know everything,” he said.

Since his indictment, he has been “financially down the tubes.” He has not held a full-time job in more than a year, although he has worked briefly as a funeral consultant and film script reviewer.

He lives in a modest one-bedroom apartment in Silver Lake and still owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to his five-attorney defense team in Dallas, he said.

He added that he no longer sees Papillon and has been giving talks with such titles as “Healing the Hurt Within” to small groups in Los Angeles. His talk Wednesday in Reseda was unpaid.

Railey said his infidelity and “long fall from grace” have cost him his family, his job and his prestige in the Methodist church.

But he added: “When I lost everything I had, all that was left was all that was needed.”

Several listeners murmured approval and said they felt sympathy for Railey. But one former Dallas man, Paul Primm, had a different reaction.

“He was very, very nervous, and not just from speaking before a new group, but internally,” said Primm, who saw Railey preach in Dallas and is now a mental-health fund-raiser in Los Angeles.

“It just seemed that he had an overwhelming sense of people feeling that possibly he was guilty and that the trial was a technicality. I’m reading a lot of body language and other things into it, but it seemed to me that he was not totally convinced that he can be totally convincing to other people.”