Former President of American Academy of Child Psychiatry arrested for molesting children

Child psychiatrist faces new molest charges, is barred
from seeing patients

By John Cote, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, April 11, 2007

(04-11) 15:57 PDT Redwood City - A San Mateo psychiatrist
who once headed the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry will face new charges of molesting
former patients, prosecutors said today, broadening a
case in which at least 30 men have accused the doctor of
abuse dating back to 1969.

The new charges against Dr. William Ayres, 75, will be
filed Thursday, prosecutor Melissa McKowan said. They
involve new victims, but McKowan declined to state how
many.

"We have received a lot of phone calls from people this
last week," McKowan said. "There's still a lot of people
to be interviewed."

Prosecutors last week charged Ayres with 14 counts of
lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 years old.
The charges accuse the psychiatrist of masturbating three
boys between 1991 and 1996 starting when the victims were
ages 9, 11 and 12, court documents show.

Those victims are all now in their 20s, court documents
show. Charges could not be brought in other cases because
they fall outside the statute of limitations, prosecutors
said.

California law requires that such accusers file charges
by the time they turn 29 years old -- or that the conduct
occurred after Jan. 1, 1988.

The aging psychiatrist, once lauded by county officials
for "his tireless effort to improve the lives of
children," was arrested Thursday at his San Mateo home.

A San Mateo County Superior Court magistrate today
ordered Ayres to have no contact with a list of alleged
victims that prosecutors submitted. The document was
ordered sealed at prosecutors' request, but McKowan later
said it contained 30 names, including the alleged victims
in the current charges, the men Ayres will be charged
with tomorrow and Ayres' accusers whose cases fall
outside the statute of limitations.

All of the alleged victims are male, McKowan said.

Ayres, who was released from jail Monday after posting
$250,000 in bail, said little during a brief court
appearance today in a Redwood City courtroom. He did not
object to a request from the state Medical Board that he
be barred from seeing patients until further court order.

The psychiatrist, in a gray suit and walking with a
twisted wooden cane, was accompanied from the courthouse
by his wife and another woman.

For decades, the bearded Ayres was a prominent figure in
San Mateo County mental health circles.

He served with San Mateo County District Attorney Jim Fox
and Supervisor Richard Gordon on the county's Children
and Families First Commission, and received dozens of
patient referrals from the San Mateo County juvenile
justice system, records show. One retired juvenile court
judge estimated she had referred up to 200 cases
involving juvenile sex offenders to Ayres during her
years on the bench.

-From 1993 to 1995, Ayres served as president of the
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the
leading professional medical association for child
psychiatrists with more than 7,500 members nationwide.

In a civil lawsuit brought in 2003 against Ayres and his
medical group, Peninsula Psychiatric Associates,
attorneys for the former patient accused the psychiatrist
of exploiting his position of power and trust to prey
upon young boys who were patients.

Ayres told one of the men he is charged with molesting
that no one would believe him if he complained about the
psychiatrist's conduct, according to prosecutors.

Ayres' arrest follows years of accusations against the
doctor that raised red flags but never amounted to a
criminal case. It was only after New York journalist
Victoria Balfour persuaded a friend to go to San Mateo
police after telling her Ayres had molested him that the
case began to get traction.

Balfour tracked down other alleged victims and turned
that information over to police. Ultimately, authorities
obtained a search warrant in March 2006 for Ayres'
medical records.

The records produced a list of 800 names of former
patients whose contact with Ayres could fall within
current statutes of limitations, police said. Police
interviewed the patients and identified alleged victims,
which led to the current prosecution.

Some of the other accusations, documented in public
records but which never led to criminal charges, include:

o  At least five men, none of whom is an alleged victim
in the criminal case, have claimed that Ayres molested
them in their youth, according to police reports, civil
depositions and a Child Protective Services report.

o  One of those former patients sued Ayres in December
2003, accusing the psychiatrist of masturbating him under
the guise of a medical exam on multiple occasions in the
late 1970s when the patient was 13 years old. The case
was settled confidentially in 2005.

o  Police investigated at least two other molestation
reports against Ayres before the 2003 lawsuit, records
and deposition transcripts show. One was determined to be
"unfounded" in 1987, and the alleged victim in the other
didn't cooperate with police, according to those records
and statements.

o  At least two other men came forward separately in
2005 saying Ayres had also molested them as teens in the
1960s and 1970s, but the cases could not be prosecuted
because the statute of limitations had expired, police
reports show.

One of those former patients, whose name was redacted
from the report, told San Mateo police he arrived early
for an appointment one day and saw another teenage boy
emerge from Ayres' office.

"The victim said the look on the other boy's face was
like, 'He's going to do it to you, too,' " the report
read.

The lawsuit contended the alleged victim, referred to in
court documents as James Doe, was not Ayres' first
molestation victim. The lawsuit alleged "there were at
least four others, and possibly more."

The two sides reached a confidential settlement in July
2005, after which Ayres' attorney said the psychiatrist
did not concede any wrongdoing.

Ayres said under oath that he didn't remember the alleged
victim and denied molesting him, according to a
transcript of his deposition in the lawsuit.

"It is very common that I'll be having lunch and a person
in their 30s will come up to me and say, 'Aren't you Dr.
Ayres? I wanted to thank you again for the help,' " Ayres
said in his deposition. "I'll look at them, and I won't
know who the hell they are. It turns out I saw them when
they were in seventh grade."

Ayres also acknowledged he sometimes conducted physical
examinations of juvenile patients, according to the
transcript.

"I do not think there is any standard of care that says
it's inappropriate for a physician who is a child
psychiatrist, that they should not do physical
examinations," Ayres said, according to the transcript.

He said the county's juvenile justice system, its court-
appointed attorney program, pediatricians and social
workers all referred patients to him for years, and he
estimated in 2004 that he had seen about 2,000 patients
in 40 years of practice in the county.

He evaluated a patient referred by juvenile court Judge
Marta Diaz as recently as March 2003, even though San
Mateo police or the county social services department had
received at least three complaints of molestation by that
time, records show.

More at:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/11/BAG32P6O4H12.DTL

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