CA - Dr. William Ayres for child molestation, San Mateo, 2007 #1

[Mercyneal]

Whoa, Silverman has quite a history. Makes one think that someone better be reaching far, far back into Ayres' personal history

 

[Mercyneal]

Many people have long wondered if Ayres and child psychiatrist Dr. Donald Lee Rife - who also trained at Judge Baker and Children's Hospital in Boston in the 1960s- knew each other and exchanged information on children.

Alicia Olazabal, who worked at the St. Petersburg Times for 32 years, was instrumental in getting a story into the paper in 2006 about how Rife - who'd had his license revoked in three states for molesting boys - was working with children again at the Dali Museum in Florida. Alicia fought with her editor to get into the paper.http://www.sptimes.com/2006/02/18/Southpinellas/I_m_no_pedophile__Dal.shtml As a result of that story, Rife was fired from the museum.

Since then, Alicia has been following the cases of Ayres and Rife closely. However, I just received word that she died in January of a brain aneurysm at the age of 57. I am sorry that she is no longer around. She was one of the best victims' advocate we had.

 

[OnbekendeBron]

"A psychiatrist, Dr. Kjaer, who evaluated defendant at the request of his attorney, also provided a report. That report indicates that defendant had sexual experiences with adolescent males when he himself was an adolescent and that he was arrested at age 21 for inappropriate sexual contact with a male, after which he received several years of psychotherapy.

According to the fact sheet on pedophilia published by the APA (emphasis mine):

"Pedophilia usually begins in adolescence, although some individuals report they did not become aroused by children until middle age."

 

[Missizzy]

I've made no secret that I don't watch TV due to my disability but I was able to watch Oprah Winfrey's recent "Conversation with Child Molesters" on the web. I've been ill for 6 years so really had no basis from which to judge Ms. Winfrey. However, I found the interview to be quite interesting and her demeanor to be right on. My son, who is a survivor, watched it for his Criminology class and it was brutal for him. He kept texting me, "But they look so normal." Hmmm.

Anyway, the thing that struck me most about the entire interview was the younger long-haired man who spoke of molesting his friend at age 8, when she was 5. He denied any prior abuse of himself and I tend to believe him as his therapist (who would be privy to his disclosure polygraphs) did not contradict him. The abuse continued with a definite balance of power issue throughout their teens years.

Isn't it interesting that they were engaging in sexual play albeit with far too great an age difference and long before you'd think that a boy could achieve arousal. Very intriguing. I happen to believe that this sort of revelation just reinforces that rape is about power with a dollop of sexual arousal thrown in for good measure.

 

[believe09]

Pedophilia starts in adolescence-is that because that is when sexual preference seems to be formed?

I have always believed sexual preference is part of your own personal biology-as a child I suppose most of your attractions concern other children as unformed as those attractions might be. For example my toddler son used to kiss and hug everyone because he was and is really affectionate....by everyone, I mean his friends of the same age.

So On, the report you quoted seems to indicate that if you attain adolescence and you are still attracted to non adolescent children, that is when the definition of pedophilia takes over.

I do not get being attracted to children, but I certainly understand why someone would be attracted to the imbalance in the power structure. This is where my understanding of pedophilia get's stuck-it is hard for me not to believe that the primary motivator is the power thing...rather than a true attraction to the child.

Ayres had the ultimate say over his patients and their parents-to me his sex ed series was simply an attempt to groom a generation of children....he is both pathetic and hateful in my eyes fwiw.

 

[OnbekendeBron]

Pedophilia starts in adolescence-is that because that is when sexual preference seems to be formed?
So On, the report you quoted seems to indicate that if you attain adolescence and you are still attracted to non adolescent children, that is when the definition of pedophilia takes over.

The guide (a copy is here: http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Pedophilia (American Psychiatric Association).pdf) is a "Fact Sheet" based on the DSM-IV from the APA. According to the DSM, one of the criteria used to diagnose someone as a pedophile CAN BE: that the person is at least 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children" [for which they are having fantasies or sexual activity]

So to me, I think that they're trying to eliminate that childhood experimentation and curiosity from the mix. A 10 year old "playing doctor" with another 10 year old is PROBABLY not an indication of a problem, but if the 10 year old STAYS interested in 10 year olds, then at some point not to far down the road, there is a problem.

I have always believed sexual preference is part of your own personal biology-

I personally don't know what to think about this. There doesn't appear to be any clarity. In some ways I've kind of decided that it really doesn't matter whether it's biological or environmental. Politically there are ramifications if it is a matter of "choice" but I don't know that that's the case either. You could argue that a person who has "truly" made that choice one way or the other" was genetically or environmentally predisposed to be attracted to more than one gender/age, etc, and therefore they're just zeroed in on one of them for the moment. For me, at that point the argument becomes moot.

I do not get being attracted to children, but I certainly understand why someone would be attracted to the imbalance in the power structure. This is where my understanding of pedophilia get's stuck-it is hard for me not to believe that the primary motivator is the power thing...rather than a true attraction to the child.

Ayres had the ultimate say over his patients and their parents-to me his sex ed series was simply an attempt to groom a generation of children....he is both pathetic and hateful in my eyes fwiw.

I believe that in cases of forcible, violent rape, power and rage is a strong component.

I think it's much more complex than that in cases like ayres. I believe that there is a STRONG component of extraordinary social and sexual immaturity in the pedophile, so extreme that power may not really be an issue at all. The Fact Sheet listed above says this: "Often the pedophiliac behavior increases or decreases according to the psychological and social stress level of the individual." While this does not directly address the issue of power, I do believe that it relates to the inadequate feelings of maturity in the pedophile. Pedophiles may simply be seeking their own social/sexual maturity level. (NOTE: Definitely not saying that that's OK, here...)

Having said all of that, I do think that in ayres' case, there is a component of "danger" to which he is attracted. This manifests itself in the types of victims he chose, and the risks he took, as well as to his insisting on testifying in court, and then making statements that frankly VERY CLEARLY identify him as a pedophile. In fact, his attorney had to work very hard to keep the prosecution from being able to define a pedophile to the jury, and when she attempted to do it anyway, the judge instructed the jury to disregard.

I get the feeling that he thrills to be able to talk about how much he enjoys little boys. I'm not convinced that that equates directly to a "power" issue, but maybe it approaches that general theme.

 

[believe09]

Your response was incredibly thoughtful and helpful, On!!

 

[believe09]

So now it makes a little bit of sense to me-the possible immaturity of the pedophile so that there is a relatedness to the child that they are attracted to...if I have that right.

I agree that Ayres appears to be a thrill seeker, but the man is also clearly compulsive. He wants to tell the world about this view he has-he is energized when he discusses any aspect of it....

 

[OnbekendeBron]

So now it makes a little bit of sense to me-the possible immaturity of the pedophile so that there is a relatedness to the child that they are attracted to...if I have that right.

I agree that Ayres appears to be a thrill seeker, but the man is also clearly compulsive. He wants to tell the world about this view he has-he is energized when he discusses any aspect of it....

Yes, exactly that. It's my opinion that in the "non-violent" offenders, they are seeking a relationship with their social/sexual equal.

AND they are politically motivated (to save their hides) to advocate for "normalizing" these kinds of "relationships" - Hence, you get organizations like NAMBLA. They have even managed to elevate these issues to the point that every time they do a revision of the DSM, there is serious debate over whether or not to remove pedophilia as a clinical diagnosis.

Disgusting, no?

By the way, I'm using "quotes" all over the place here. Most of these indicate my own violent disagreement with the words I'm using.

 

[believe09]

I think we expect adults to heal themselves from this. Adults have self control, know right from wrong. With Ayres there is something more underlying all of this-I have this distinct feeling that he believes he was entitled to do these things because of who he was-the mighty William Ayres. As you have said, combine that with the thrill seeking and you have an ungodly number of wounded children.

I wish the law would look on abuse like this the same way they look at maiming. It shouldnt get a pass. But then again how would we quantify what this set of experiences has cost you On??

 

[Missizzy]

I worry about wading into this as I realize that it's a touchy subject. However, I seem to remember reading in "Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, And Other Sex Offenders" by Anna Salter (one of my favorite resources) that there is also the developmentally delayed or stunted pedophile. I have to say, from my experience, that it makes sense. If a grown man is "stuck" at an adolescent (or even younger) level due to cognitive impairment or a trauma at a certain age, that seems to be the age friend, partner and victim he will choose. We believe this to be true of our children's rapist. He raped them at ages 6-12. We think that he was probably victimized around that time himself.

We also are seeing this happen, to a huge degree with our children with DD. Some of the boys are drawn to much younger girls--12 or 13--while they are all around 20. It has been an uphill battle teaching them that this is not OK. But when you have the psych eval in front of you showing that your son functions at an 8 year old level albeit with raging adult hormones and a full grown adult body, it starts to make sense.

If anyone watched Oprah's interview, the man at the far right, who spoke the least, seemed to fit this profile for me. He seemed very immature...possibly slightly DD. He struck me as seeking out girls at his own developmental level. His behavior with his victims seemed to be that of a slimy and slick 13 year old. These guys actually pull at my heartstrings as they are pretty much out of luck when it comes to finding an appropriate sexual partner. I happen to believe that this unfulfilled need fuels an obsessive interest in and public indecency/inappropriate masturbation.

We also have a young lady who is 21 but functions at a 6 year old level. She's beautiful and has gracious manners. She enjoys a glass of wine with her Dad when they go out for dinner. The young men in our town all know her well and are very protective of her but is she forever out of luck? Can she never get a kiss? She was OK'd to testify that she'd been raped. Can she give consent now? If a young man of normal intelligence had a consensual sexual relationship with her, I would say that he had pedophiliac tendencies but does he? Sexual freedoms and sexual boundaries are a slippery slope. And one I slip around on a daily basis.

I realize that none of these profiles really fit any of the men who we are speaking of but I think that pedophilia can take on many guises with much underlying pathology. I often wonder if it's like so many other disorders.....a spectrum?

BTW, another really interesting book is "The Socially Skilled Child Molester: Differentiating the Guilty from the Falsely Accused" by Carla Van Dam

 

[kbl8201]

i think if people are developmentally disabled (i assume thats' what DD means) there is a diffrent criteria.....if someone is 40 and has the mental capacity of 12, if they like other 12 year olds what is the standard of what happens?

 

[Missizzy]

Actually, that's not correct kbl. Age is the only criteria used in criminal trials--unless serious "mental defect can be proved". We have a young man who is DD doing 10 years for attempted rape of a 16 year old when he was 18. They are both DD. He actually has made friends with a young man in for rape who has Down Syndrome. And remember, because of the ADA, all people with disabilities have full sexual freedom--exactly the same as you and me. If our daughter consented to sex, a man would be doing nothing illegal by having sex with her. The same issue applies to our daughter who is a prostitute with an IQ of 63--free will.

It goes both ways, many more freedoms but far less protection for those with DD.

This is O/T, however, and let's get back to Ayres. I wanted to say that the arrogance and glee with which Ayres discusses male genitalia and sexual development reminds me so much of Gajdusek. They are zealots and act as it they have found the "one perfect truth". They act anxious to share their find with us and bemused that we are not delighted.

Their behavior reminds me of an infant who has discovered what happens when one takes one's diaper off and nature takes its course. Most adults are not amused. But the baby is over the moon with his discovery.

 

[OnbekendeBron]

BTW, another really interesting book is "The Socially Skilled Child Molester: Differentiating the Guilty from the Falsely Accused" by Carla Van Dam

http://books.google.com/books?id=jJ...resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Go to page 23 "The Saint" That's "ayres light" that they're describing.

 

[OnbekendeBron]

I think we expect adults to heal themselves from this. Adults have self control, know right from wrong.
I wish the law would look on abuse like this the same way they look at maiming. It shouldnt get a pass. But then again how would we quantify what this set of experiences has cost you On??

Well, I'm biased, but I think that the law in this area is woefully inadequate. I tend to be a bit of a conservative hardliner on all crimes of malice (probably because of my experiences). I tend to believe that people who are deliberately causing physical or mental abuse to others for the purpose of their own enjoyment should be removed from society until they no longer have the desire to do this. How you prove that they no longer have the desire, I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t care. Let them rot in prison forever, send them to an island, or toss their carcass in the ground. I don’t care. (Instead, we slap them on the wrist with 3 years in prison, then let them out "on probation" so that they can do it again and again until they're caught the next time.) I have no idea how you address the developmentally disabled side of this... I think my feeling is that this is an entirely different issue, and really has nothing to do with pedophilia. On the flip side of it, I think that a NON-developmentally disabled person taking advantage of an adult DD person is really doing the same thing that a pedophile does.

How do you assess the damage? I have no idea. If you want to look at it from a strictly financial damage standpoint (in my specific case): Well there’s the cost of the original fraudulent “treatment” provided by ayres (no idea how much this cost my parents...) The years of wasted time and money on therapy that I spent as an adult (Maybe $30,000) in which I deliberately avoided any mention of what happened. Not to mention the fact that I was taking about an hour off of work time each week (varied by appointment time)

More vague financially that I think might be considered: my focus in college was not great and I dropped out, losing the remaining benefit of a full scholarship, and then having to take out $20K in loans to finish much later. .. Maybe consider some part of money wasted on stupid things that I was doing to distract from focus. How do you do the split? Everyone has some degree of these wasted time/distraction from reality type issues going on. Maybe I cope particularly well, and my levels are within the range of “normal.” I just don’t know.

Even more gray, and non-financial: Without getting too personal, I’m not so great at trust/personal closeness, and it's gotten worse as I've gotten older. This is not fair to my family. There are periods of time that my level of distraction (focus on the past) is quite high. (For example, I’m spending time writing this, and frankly I have a strong NEED to write this. I should be focused on other things right now.) I can’t tell you how many times I thought to myself that I’d MUCH prefer to be one of those people who just doesn’t care at all about this stuff…. That I’d LOVE to be one of those people who says: “stop whining about it, and get on with your life.” This all negatively affects many aspects of life.

There is much deeper, darker stuff… I won’t talk about that too much, but a small example is that when I drive down the freeway, alone, in my car, the cement pylons that hold up the overpasses have bright targets painted on them. They are like the Sirens… I intend to keep resisting, but I don’t get the impression that “normal” people have to put up with that. Frankly I’ve never asked anyone. Maybe I’m just normal.

So am I going for the sympathy here? A bit I suppose... I want people to understand that this is a critical issue. The way I see it though, is that the people who "Get it" already "get it." I don't know how to open everyone else's eyes that it's a really, really bad problem.

 

[Mercyneal]

I have come late to this today. I do want to say that I believe - and I have also talked to psychiatrists who know him personally who believe this as well - that Ayres is stunted psycho-sexually at around age 12. However, he is an adult male who at one time had an extraordinary amount of power. Doctors have power by virtue of their trade. We go to them for help. Parents entrusted their boys to Ayres because they thought he had the power to help them get better. Ayres abused his power by dominating, intimidating and manipulating boys. He picked boys who were skinny and small and undersized. He was a big fat porky obese hulking tub of lard. Can you imagine how he would have towered over these boys? And he kept reminding these boys that he was a doctor. Little boys are trained to believe that the doctor knows best. Hence, his disgusting misuse of his professional and personal power over little boys.

I am angry at the juvenile lawyers, medical doctors, his partners and others who gave Ayres all this power as well. I haven't heard of a single boy patient who has said that Ayres did any therapy with them. Yet Ayres snookered the community of San Mateo into thinking he was doing talk therapy. He threw around a lot of big words and medical catch phrases and they fell for it. Why didn't anyone stand up to him?

 

[Missizzy]

Mercyneal, read your post back and notice in how many ways you describe Dr. Earl Bradley!! Bradley's target victim was a much younger girl, but the MO and profile is identical. Both men were successful in separating their victims from the parents/caregivers and going about their abuse--almost unfettered. They both, through slightly different means, were able to move about the medical community without scrutiny. Ayres used bluster and Bradley used eccentricity. The outcome was very similar, though, wasn't it?

I almost wonder if Ayres was kind enough to offer a piece of candy at the end of sessions as Bradley did.

 

[Missizzy]

The Blankenburg twins offered prescription drugs, , and pot as they were also after a bit older target. Anything to confuse the kids and blur the lines as to what is right and wrong, painful or pleasurable.

 

[believe09]

On-I live in the epicenter of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. I have known and read about many male victims who describe to a letter everything you shared...right down to the siren song of the concrete pylons and the trust issues. Especially as they age. You spent the first 40 years or so trying to survive these terrible crimes and with age comes reflection on what was lost with so much energy spent on trying to live down those moments.

I am not a professional, just a civilian-but I can say this to you from the heart...you are a survivor and a sucessful one. What makes you sucessful is that you are still fighting the call of the concrete, that you have managed to love and work in spite of being robbed of something essential. I dont know what might help you know that deep in your soul-I hope that you have the love and support of people who get it and who will take this ride with you until the end.

It's funny-I was on the periphery of a criminal prosecution for child sexual abuse crimes with a loved one several years ago. Once the defendant went to prison, my loved one had nothing left to fight except herself so to speak because she was the sole reason the monster was put away. She had been completely stuck in the years leading up to the prosecution, and was suddenly free to a certain extent when her boogeyman went away. It wasnt easy, but she is far more at peace now-her life is centered on progressing forward. She did it, and so can you and so can the rest of Ayres victims whether or not they come forward.

You will find peace, and it doesnt have to come because of eternal rest either-and you will WIN when you do. Because Ayres will always be what he is, but you will have evolved into something much more than just one of his victims....jmo.

 

[Mercyneal]

Ayres bought presents for the boys - chess sets, superhero comic books, toy action figures, record albums. He gave codeine to one boy who already had a drug problem, whenever the boy asked for it.

He also prescribed a drug to a 14-year- old boy and said laughingly, "You know, people become addicted to this drug."

I believe that like the Blankenburgs, Ayres offered drugs and money to juveniles in exchange for being able to perform certain sex acts on them. It's going to be hard for those boys to come forward. They probably think they'll be put in jail - if they're not already there.

There's a much deeper, darker level to what Ayres did that has not yet come to light

Adding to this is that Ayres became pals with a San Mateo juvenile judge named Marta Diaz. She sent hundreds of boys to be evaluated by Ayres.
Word is that when the police started to investigate Ayres eight years ago, Judge Diaz got word of it and warned the police to be "real careful, because Ayres and I are friends." Where was her concern for the boys he molested? There is some indication that Diaz might have actively tried to prevent the police from going forward with their investigation. This information on Diaz and Ayres comes from the San Mateo District Attorney's office. Word is that some more damning information about the deep and weird "friendship" between Ayres and Diaz may be coming out soon.

Stay tuned.