Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Reports of ayres' abuse

From smdailyjournal.com forum memebers Taylor and Wilson, we have the following list of reported attemps to do something about ayres.

http://smdailyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=695

(Re-posted immediately below) I'm overloaded right now. Commentary will follow sometime soon.

From Taylor:

Here is a list of people we know who complained about Dr. Ayres. Very incomplete.

1) In the mid-1970s, Dr. Hugh Ridlehuber, a partner of Ayres, inherited a patient from Ayres, a dentist's son. The father told Ridlehuber that the boy refused to go back to Ayres because of the physicals he was getting. Ridlehuber asked Ayres why he was giving the boy physicals. Ayres told him he was trained to do so at Judge Baker in Boston in the 1960s. Howeve,r a number of his colleagues at Judge Baker insist that this was not so, and indeed Judge Baker had its own pediatric unit, where the children were giving physical exams.


2) June 1987. Therapist Jeff Lugerner files a formal complaint with San Mateo Childrens Services on behalf of Ayres victim Greg Hogue. Lugerner told the Chronicle that Childrens Services covered it up because he was their primary vendor. He suspected that others had complained to Childrens Services about Ayres. He said no one contacted him again and when he tried to call, he was told that the case was closed.

3) 1987 - Dr. David Schwartz told San Mateo police officer Rick Neilsen that he believed that he had a patient, a Hispanic boy from a group home, who had been molested by Ayres. He told Neilsen that under no circumstances should a child psychiatrist be giving physicals to kids because it was dangerous. Neilsen who was investigating Ayres as part of the Greg Hogue case, deemed the case "unfounded."

4) In the 1980s, a concerned father of a victim asked pediatrician Sam Leavitt, who had referred his sons to Dr. Ayres, whether it was normal for Dr. Ayres to be making his sons strip and showing them "anatomical drawings." Dr.Leavitt, a staunch, opera-going pal of Ayres, didn't want to discuss the matter with the father and just changed the subject.

5) 1994- A victim went to the California Medical Board to say that Ayres molested him in 1966. Because the victim is out of statute, the Board does nothing. They don't even alert the police.

6)1994- A man in Folsom Prison for bank robbery confesses to a nurse during a psychiatric evaluation that Ayres molested him during court ordered sessions. When the police tried to investigate, the victim became too distraught to talk about it.

7)1997- Ten years before Ayres was arrested, a mother of a victim called Ayres' partners to complain that Ayres was touching her son. His partners held an emergency lunch and confronted Ayres. Ayres gave him the old song and dance about how he was trained at Judge Baker to give physicals in the therapeutic sessions. But all physicals of children at Judge Baker were done by their own very good pediatrics department !!! Gee, how is Dr. Ayres gonna explain this ? And how is he going to explain that he spoke quite differently in his deposition when he told lawyers that it was "highly unusual" for him to ever ask a child to take his pants down and that years went by when he never asked a boy to take his pants down ? In fact, he says that he has never asked a boy to take his pants down.. So why is he telling his partners that he gives physicals to boys ? The mind boggles...

Shame on his partners for not challenging their "esteemed" colleague. It is possible that they were either intimidated by Ayres and duped by his arrogance. Or, more realistically, they just didn't want to see the truth and didn't want to be bothered.

8)After Ayres was arrested, a reporter from the Bay Area
learned that another boy who had been molested in a group home around 1997, was then sent to Ayres, who tragically, molested the poor boy
again !!! The mother confronted Ayres who apologized and said it wouldn't happen again. So there we have it: Dr. Ayres admitted he was doing something wrong.

9) When a man filed the civil molestation suit in 2003, a psychiatrist
named Dr. Albert Rainieri told the victim's mother that he was "not surprised
to hear" that Ayres had molested the victim because he had been hearing stories about Ayres and boys for years. Ranieiri committed suicide in 2005.

10) A therapist revealed to a source recently that he had heard stories about Ayres and boys from another doctor "years before he was arrested."

11) A female therapist recently revealed to a source that she had a boy who was a juvenile offender who was getting strange physicals from Ayres. Alarmed, she and another therapist went to Childrens Services to file a complaint. Childrens Services thwarted them, saying there was nothing they could do because Ayres was a medical doctor and giving physicals were within his rights. Shame on you, Childrens Services.

12)Some months before Dr. Ayres was arrested, the mother of a victim told his crony and blind loyalist Dr. Etta Bryant that Ayres had molested her son. We are still waiting for Bryant to come forward to the police.

13) In the summer of 2007, after the arrest of Ayres, a group of juvenile defenders serving on the San Mateo Citizens Review Panel learned that a large number of doctors knew what Ayres was doing to boys but instead of reporting him, as they were mandated to by law, they just stopped referring boys to him.

Do we smell a plea bargain ?

Feel free to add to this list.

From Wilson:

Psychiatrist Dr. Dick Shadoan is in the same category with Ayres cronies Dr. Etta Bryant and Dr. Sam Leavitt. We hear that he is angry at the psychiatrists who believe the victims of Dr. Ayres.

It was Dr. Shadoan who tried to get Dr. Ayres elected President of the American Psychiatric Association. We are thankful that the esteemed members of this association elected Dr. Rodrigo Munoz instead, in a landslide victory in which Munoz took 49 out of the 50 states. At least there are some good and savvy psychiatrists out there !

5 comments:

  1. Re: the boy who was molested in a group home and then subsequently molested by Dr. Ayres.

    For the group home molestation, the boy was represented by lawyer John Boessenecker, who is married to Ayres pal Juvenile Judge Marta Diaz. According to reports, Judge Diaz was appalled that the boy had been accused at the group home.

    Then the boy was sent to Dr. Ayres, who molested the boy again.

    The above information comes from a Bay area reporter. The reporter also spoke with the mother of the victim who said that after she confronted Dr. Ayres about molesting her son, Dr. Ayres apologized to her for fondling her son.
    Did Marta Diaz or her husband know about the second molestation incident ? If Marta was so vocal and outspoken about the group home incident, why is she not speaking out now about the over 40 victims of Dr. Ayres who have come
    forward ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to people who tried to report Dr. Ayres. I repeat: just the tip of the iceberg.

    ReplyDelete
  3. From "Facts for Families"from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, of which Dr. William Hamilton Ayres was president in 1993:

    Child Sexual Abuse

    No. 9; Updated May 2008

    Child sexual abuse has been reported up to 80,000 times a year, but the number of unreported instances is far greater, because the children are afraid to tell anyone what has happened, and the legal procedure for validating an episode is difficult. The problem should be identified, the abuse stopped, and the child should receive professional help. The long-term emotional and psychological damage of sexual abuse can be devastating to the child.

    ___
    We hear from another former president of the Academy that no one dares speak about the notorious Dr. Ayres at the annual meetings. Needless to say, Dr. Ayres no longer shows up for the annual ritual at these meetings of sitting on stage with the past presidents.

    ReplyDelete
  4. We hear that a doctor called the police about a year before the arrest and said that psychologist Al Fricke, who had worked with Ayres, knew stories about Ayres. We have heard this from two other psychiatrists as well.

    Why didn't Al Fricke come forward ?

    ReplyDelete
  5. What's Steve Wagstaffe in the DA's office doing about all this ? We know he doesn't like news that makes his precious San Mateo County look bad ? But the silence from those in authority to do something about this in San Mateo is sickening.

    ReplyDelete