Usually, when someone who’s been a mainstay of a community gets shot and killed in his own home, there’s a public outcry to bring his killer to justice. But not in the idyllic Pacific Coast town of Fort Bragg, Calif., where the citizenry has risen up in support of the man who pulled the trigger.

Aaron Vargas has been in jail ever since Feb. 8, 2009, when police say he shot and killed Darrell McNeill, the man he alleges sexually abused him when he was just 11 years old. After the shooting, 12 other men came forward to say that McNeill, a former Boy Scout leader and popular member of the community, had also abused them. Some had reported the abuse but law enforcement officials took no action.

When the truth came out, the town rallied behind the 32-year-old Vargas. Citizens held demonstrations demanding that he be freed from jail. T-shirts supporting his cause are being sold, with the proceeds going to his legal defense. Cars sport bumper stickers supporting him. Even McNeill’s widow is defending Vargas.

“They understand the situation, and they know Aaron to be a very kind and gentle person and that he doesn’t deserve to be locked up,” Vargas’ sister, Mindy Galliani, told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Thursday in New York.

‘He’s a victim’
The Mendocino County prosecutor, who initially wanted to push for first-degree murder and 50 years in prison for Vargas, has changed her mind after the outpouring of support for him. This week, Vargas was offered and accepted a deal in which he was to plead no contest Thursday afternoon to voluntary manslaughter.

TODAY Aaron Vargas will plead no contest to killing Darrell McNeill, in exchange for a light sentence.

In exchange, he will receive a relatively short sentence — perhaps as little as the time he’s already served, and certainly no longer than six years. Sentencing will be in two months.

Galliani thinks her older brother should be released immediately.

“It just doesn’t make sense to me to punish someone who has been put through hell for 20 years,” she said. “He’s a victim, and he’s not a danger to the community. He’s a very kind and caring person. Why torture him anymore? Why continue the abuse? Leaving him in jail is continuing the abuse.”

Years of abuse
Galliani said that Vargas was a happy child until McNeill took him on a fishing trip to Oregon when he was 11. McNeill began abusing Vargas on that trip and the boy became withdrawn and unhappy.

“I saw drastic changes in Aaron. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew something was really wrong with him. He was in so much pain,” Galliani said. “He withdrew from his friends, from the family. He was sad and angry. You could just see it in his eyes. He was in pain.”

TODAY Former Boy Scout leader Darrell McNeill abused Aaron Vargas starting at age 11, Vargas alleges.

The abuse allegedly continued into adulthood. As an adult, unable to shake off McNeill’s control, Vargas continued a sexual relationship with him. Four years ago, he broke it off, but McNeill wouldn’t leave him alone, calling him incessantly and stopping at his house in an effort to reestablish the relationship.

Galliani has said that after Vargas got engaged and became a father, McNeill offered to baby-sit his daughter. Afraid that his daughter would become the predator’s next victim, Vargas confronted him.

“I believe that McNeill had mental control over Aaron. It was like he was holding him mentally captive for 20 years. Aaron could not escape him. He was a scared little boy around McNeill,” Galliani told Vieira.

“I think Aaron became a parent and it put into perspective what was done to him and how horrible it was. And I think he felt his child was in danger and his child was going to be next.”

Fateful confrontation
Vargas has not said whether he intended to kill the 63-year-old McNeill, or just scare him a year ago February when he went to McNeill’s trailer home to confront him. Vargas brought with him a .44 caliber replica of a Civil War cap-and-ball revolver. He had the gun out when McNeill answered the door. After a brief exchange of words, the gun went off, the bullet striking McNeill in the chest.

McNeill’s wife, Liz, was home at the time. According to police, as McNeill lay dying, Vargas told her not to call 911. He waited a half hour for McNeill to die.

“After he shot Darrell, he told him something to the effect of, ‘You’re not going to hurt anyone again,’ and then he told me all about how Darrell abused him as a child,” McNeill told The San Francisco Chronicle. “I was shocked at all of this. He told me he wasn’t going to hurt me, but I was never scared. I knew he wouldn’t.”

Liz McNeill would also learn that among her husband’s victim was her own son — McNeill’s stepson.

“I think he went there with the intention to scare him to leave him and his family alone,” Galliani said. “Whether or not the gun went off accidentally, that will be discussed at the next hearing.”

Vigilante justice?
People are calling it a case of vigilante justice, a man taking action when the authorities did nothing.

TODAY Aaron Vargas’ sister, Mindy Galliani, said that imprisoning her brother would be “continuing the abuse.”

“I still wouldn’t put that label on it,” Galliani said. “Aaron wasn’t seeking revenge. He’s not a vengeful person at all. It’s really not a case of vigilantism. The post-traumatic stress disorder that he has and the harassment and the stalking and the risk of his child being abused, that’s not vigilantism to me — that’s just a desperate man who’s trying to protect his daughter and himself.”

It’s not that complicated, she said. “I think he just wants people to know that he’s been through hell and he hit his breaking point. He feels for all the other victims. He feels for the McNeills. He just wants help. He’s crying out for help.”

What’s most sad is that none of it had to happen, she said.

“He probably never would have been abused in the first place if something would have been done when it was first reported, and other victims would have been spared, also,” Galliani said.

MOSFELLSBAER, Iceland (AFP) – Anna Margret Bjoernsdottir never thought she would be forced to leave her once wealthy homeland, but after 18 months of economic upheaval she has decided to join the biggest emigration wave from Iceland in more than a century.

“I just don’t see any future here. There isn’t going to be any future in this country for the next 20 years, everything is going backwards,” lamented the 46-year-old single mother, who plans to move to Norway in June.

The former real estate agent who lost her job when Iceland’s housing market disintegrated two years ago said she feared she could soon be forced out of her large house in Mosfellsbaer, some 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Reykjavik.

“I don’t want to sell it,” she said, vowing to “fight to keep” the comfortable wooden dwelling she, her daughter Olavia, their cat Isolde Tinna and their dog Candit the Bandit have called home since 2004.

Bjoernsdottir is not alone in planning to leave Iceland’s economic mess behind and seek a new future abroad. Most people in Reykjavik have someone in their surroundings who has already packed their bags and left.

Emigration has rapidly picked up speed since the Atlantic island nation’s economy crumbled in late 2008, dragged down by the collapse of its major banks. Last year it marked the largest exodus from the country since 1887.

In 2009, more than 10,600 people left the country of fewer than 320,000 inhabitants, according to official statistics, with 4,835 more people moving away than immigrating.

Foreign workers, mainly Poles, who since the beginning of the decade had been drawn to Iceland’s financial miracle, were the first to leave.

But Icelanders like Bjoernsdottir have not been far behind, most heading to the country’s still prosperous Nordic neighbours, especially Norway.

“I don’t think I can offer a good future to my daughter Olavia” in Iceland, Bjoernsdottir said.

Like many other Icelanders who have seen their worlds collapse since the financial turmoil began, Bjoernsdottir’s predicament stems from the decision, on advice from her banker, to take up a loan in foreign currency.

Repayments on her loan, in yens and Swiss francs, became insurmountable after the Icelandic krona nose-dived following the banking sector implosion.

“My loans are twice as high as they were,” she said, shaking her head in disgust. “The payments keep going higher and higher, so I have to leave, I’m forced to!”

Bjoernsdottir lost her job in real estate at the end of 2008 as the crisis hammered Iceland’s economy. Since then she has picked up temporary teaching work, but that position also disappeared last September.

Analysts expect Iceland’s beleaguered economy to stabilise in 2010, but gross domestic product shrank 6.5 percent last year.

Other victims of Iceland’s financial woes have ended up with one foot in and the other out of the country.

Svanbjoern Einarsson, a 44-year-old father of three, says he is trapped in the country due to an unsellable house that he does not want to abandon.

Instead, the engineer has chosen to work for six-week stretches in Norway’s oil capital Stavanger on the western coast, with occasional one- or two-week breaks home with his family.

“It’s very difficult. When I work I forget about it, but in the evening it’s very tough,” he said.

Long-term, however, he acknowledged his future may be in Norway, not Iceland.

Like many of their countrymen forced into exile, both Bjoernsdottir and Einarsson blame Reykjavik for their country’s plight.

“I’m so angry about this government,” Bjoernsdottir said.

Iceland’s first ever left-wing government came to power last year after the previous right-wing administration collapsed following a wave of protests blaming it for the state of the economy.

But the current government is now under fire over a deal to pay out massive compensation to Britain and the Netherlands for costs incurred following the fall of the online bank Icesave in October 2008.

Iceland has agreed to pay out 3.9 billion euros (5.3 billion dollars) to compensate for money the two countries paid out to 340,000 of their citizens hit by the bank’s collapse.

“I had great hopes when the left-wing government was elected, that they would do something against corruption and the abusive loans, but all they do is talk about Icesave,” Einarsson said.

In a March 6 referendum, more than 93 percent of Icelandic voters rejected a deal to repay Britain and the Netherlands at a high interest rate. Reykjavik has since said it will try to secure a more favourable agreement.

Bjoernsdottir was among those who voted down the deal — and says the debacle strengthened her determination to leave Iceland.

“I don’t want my daughter to have to pay for this,” she said. “I just have such a bad feeling about what’s happening here.”

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