Many of us are puzzled as to why the San Mateo prosecutor Melissa Mckowan did not challenge Ayres' lawyer's bogus defense that physical exams of boys in therapy was standard practice when Ayres was training in the 1960s. Here is an article from San Mateo County Times on June 19, 2009, during the trial. Entitled “Books Depicting Nude Young Boys Suppressed in Ayres Trial”, the article says the following:

The defense has argued that Ayres performed physical examinations on some of his patients as part of his “therapeutic model.” He is the former President of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

He told colleagues that he performed medical examinations because it was the way he had been trained. He had done his residency in the early 1960s at the Judge Baker Center in Boston, one of the country’s premier centers for the study of child psychology.
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On this website, some of us are especially puzzled as to why the prosecutor did not bother to look into Ayres' Boston training, as she had already been told by his former partner Dr. Hugh Ridlehuber ( who died a few months before the trial) that Ayres had told him that he had been trained to give physical exams-that included the genitalia- at Judge Baker in Boston.

After the mistrial, reporter Victoria Balfour, who had already tracked down four doctors who had trained with Ayres in Boston in the 1960s before Ayres was arrested - doctors who told her Ayres was lying about his training, but for varying reasons the prosecutor didn't use them - set about to find and interview more doctors who had trained with Ayres in Boston at Judge Baker. In all, she interviewed 20 doctors. Many of the interviews have been posted over at the William Ayres blog. www.williamayreswatch.blogspot.com
We will give you a condensed sampling of some of those interviews with the doctors who trained with Ayres.

The question she posed to each of the twenty doctors was this:

During your training at Judge Baker, were you at any time trained to give physical exams to children as a routine and regular part of therapy -- physical exams that would include an examination of the genitalia?

Here are some of their answers.

- Dr. Lee Willer: "I trained with Ayres. Neither he nor I nor anyone else in our training group was trained to give physical exams to children as part of therapy. In fact, we were advised NOT to do physicals on children.

- Dr. Nicholas Verven: "I was not trained to give physical exams to kids in therapy. Physical exams of children would not be supported by the training we had. I knew Ayres at Judge Baker, and Ayres was certainly not trained to do this at Judge Baker.


Dr. Irving Hurwitz: " I remember Bill Ayres and his wife Solveig, who taught at the Manville School at Judge Baker. Judge Baker was a bastion of psychoanalytic teaching and it imposed very strict rules as to how therapy with children would be done. Physical exams were not done. Any hint that any therapist would be doing physicals would raise serious concerns."

Dr. Gordon Harper: "We didn't do physicals on children in therapy at Judge Baker. In my career, I don't know of any child psychiatrist who has been trained that way. Although I have heard of other child psychiatrists who've molested kids who have used Ayres' line about being "trained" to give physicals to kids. That's just a dodge that child psychiatrists who are molesting children use."

Dr. Milton Shore: "Never, never did you touch a child in therapy! It was very implicit. You didn't do physical exams. Period."

Dr. David Reiser:"Absolutely not!! If there had been any instance in which a child needed a physical exam, the physical exam would have been done at Children's Hospital, right across the street. I am 83 years old and have been practicing child psychiatry since 1954, and I have never conducted a physical exam on a child in therapy in my entire career. I don't know anyone who has. It would be a violation of boundaries. Giving a physical to a child in therapy is like having a priest do physical exams on people who get confession."

Over at the San Mateo Daily Journal forum, reporter Victoria Balfour, the whistleblower on the Dr. William Ayres case and who has spent eight years investigating the good doctor, talks about the failure of the San Mateo District Attorney's office to challenge the defense's theory that Ayres was trained to do physical exams on children in therapy.

Called "The DA's Curious Blind Spot: The Training of Dr. William Ayres", it's a must read.

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1236

Over at the Ayres thread at the San Mateo Daily Journal Forum, reporter Victoria Balfour reports that psychiatrist Dr. Etta Bryant, longtime supporter of Ayres, engaged in intimidation tactics on a witness for the prosecution just before the start of the trial last year.

Balfour also reports that Bryant failed to report an incidence of sexual abuse by Ayres.

From the Daily Journal Forum

Breaking the Law

During Ayres’ criminal trial last June, an Ayres victim and his mother became distressed when they saw Bryant hanging around with Ayres and his supporters in the courtroom. The mother of the victim had once upon a time been Bryant’s patient.

The mother of the victim then made an appointment to see Dr. Bryant, which took place in June, during the trial.

The mother then told Bryant that Ayres had molested her son.

Bryant’s reply? “You’ve put me in a difficult situation. I should go to the police but Ayres and I are friends..”

Bryant never reported the abuse to authorities. This is against the law.

And even worse, even after receiving a report from the mother of the victim that Ayres had abused her son, Dr. Bryant for the remainder of the trial continued to support Ayres and to sit with Ayres supporters like Thea and Dr. Sam Leavitt.

It is now a year later. Bryant has still not reported the abuse to the California Medical Board. Let us hope that someone from the California Medical Board is reading this forum


Read more of Balfour's report on Dr. Bryant here:

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1237

In the first criminal of Dr. Ayres, the prosecution failed to challenge two key points:

1) Ayres' testimony that a child psychiatrist taught him how to do physicals on children in his one and only year of pediatrics at Yale . This is important because he has said all along that when he was training, it was common for child psychiatrists to do complete physical exams on children. This has been proven to be a lie.

2) The prosecution also failed to challenge and investigate Ayres' statement that he was taught at Yale that doctors didn't need to have a chaperon in the room when physically examining the genitalia of boys.

Reporter Victoria Balfour does a rigorous fact checking over at the San Mateo Daily Journal Forum on these two key points that were never challenged by the prosecutor.

"Fact Checking the Training of Dr. William Ayres at Yale"
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1239

People who have been following the Ayres case believe that the prosecutor failed to score a win in 2009 because she didn't investigate or challenge Ayres' training in Boston or at Yale at all.

At least several jurors believed Ayres' lawyer's bogus statement that physical exams in therapy were the "therapeutic model" when Ayres was training in the 1960s. Because they believed this, the prosecutor failed to get a conviction and the case ended in a mistrial.

Supposedly there will be a retrial. We hope it will not be the same prosecutor on the case.

In 1997, Etta Bryant - the doctor who is a longtime supporter of Ayres - and who according to the San Mateo Daily Journal Forum- failed to report an incident of abuse of a victim last year to authorities - and William Ayres were on a committee
that wrote "Practice Parameters For Children Who May Have Been Sexually Abused" for the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry."

Pages 37S-56S (October 1997) http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.c...25934/abstract

Practice Parameters for the Forensic Evaluation of Children and Adolescents Who May Have Been Physically or Sexually Abused

These practice parameters describe the forensic evaluation of children and adolescents who may have been physically or sexually abused. The recommendations are drawn from guidelines that have been published by various professional organizations and authors and are based on available scientific research and the current state of clinical practice. These parameters consider the clinical presentation of abused children, normative sexual behavior of children, interview techniques, the possibility of false statements, the assessment of credibility, and important forensic issues.


These parameters were developed by William Bernet, M.D., principal author, and the Work Group on Quality Issues: William Ayres, M.D., and John E. Dunne, M.D., Chairmen. Members: Elissa Benedek, M.D., Gail A. Bernstein, M.D., Etta Bryant, M.D.

And yet Bryant won't report an incident of child abuse by Ayres reported to her in June 2009, because as she told the mother of the victim who reported it to her, " Ayres and I are friends."

The William Ayres blog reports that there's a growing controversy over statements made by Ayres prosecutor Melissa Mckowan about the case:

"The Judge Baker Doctors' Word Against the San Mateo District Attorney's Office: The Controversy Deepens"
http://williamayreswatch.blogspot.com/2010/09/judge-baker-doctors-word-against-san.html

One marvels at how stupid the educated can be. Maybe its the callousness that thinking oneself superior to others breeds. Her replies certainly speak of a dismissiveness that is hard to explain otherwise.

Prosecutors in criminal cases have been accused of withholding exculpatory evidence to the defense, as Mike Nifong did in the Duke rape case. But the prosecutor in the Ayres case- may have been excluding inculpatory evidence that may have been favorable to her case.

Let's say, for example, that she called the Boston doctors who trained with Ayres that the reporter Victoria Balfour found in 2006. Let's say that the doctors reconfirmed to the prosecutor what they told the reporter- that they were not trained to give genital exams to boys in therapy, and did not do it themselves. Let's say then that the prosecutor chose to ignore this and did not include it in the trial.

After the mistrial, the reporter has gone back to three of the doctors , who reconfirmed that Ayres was not telling the truth about his training.

Is it possible that the prosecutor didn't want to hear what the Boston doctors were telling her about their training?

Just a hypothesis, but not out of the realm of possibility.

But also bear in mind that to date none of the doctors can actually confirm that they were ever contacted by the prosecutor.

Some who are following the Ayres case - like the ones over at Websleuths, are openly wondering whether prosecutor Melissa Mckowan botched the case, which ended in a mistrial.

Some have written to her boss, Steve Wagstaffe, on this matter:

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105573&page=12

That is an interesting website. Keep up the good work Pluck!