COPS RAISE POSSIBILITY OF BAY AREA SHRINK’S PROSECUTION IN BOSTON ON CHILD MOLEST CHARGES

Joel Silver can still remember his private sessions with child psychiatrist William H. Ayres at a renowned Boston guidance center decades ago, the Boston Herald reports (image, second to the left front-page column-below-the-fold).

“I thought he was going to ask me why I didn’t like school. That’s why I whas there. But everything was sexual.’’

Ayres’ alleged misconduct as a Harvard affiliated psychiatrist 50 years ago is relevant because in 30 days the San Francisco Bay Area child psychiatrist will be retried on allegations that he molested several patients in his San Mateo, California practice over the last 30 years; Ayers' criminal trial last year on the decades old allegations ended in a hung jury.

Ayres, who is 78 and a former president of the American Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, insists he is innocent of the charges he is facing. “He has spent almost all his life working with children and being dedicated to the community, so he’s anxious to clear his reputation and his name,’’ said Jonathan D. McDougall, Ayres’s lawyer—who took over for Ayres after the embattled shrink’s first attorney, Doron Weinberg, bowed out of the case after the first jury refused to unanimously convict on the decades old evidence presented.

Five years ago, Ayres paid $395,000 to settle a civil suit filed by a California man who was barred from pursuing criminal charges only because his allegations of abuse were too old to prosecute. The settlement expressly provided that Dr. Ayres admitted no wrongdoing—but questions remain.

According to the Boston Globe article, officials at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital acknowledged that Ayres was an instructor at Harvard and a resident child psychiatrist at the Judge Baker Guidance Center, from 1959 to 1963. Since then, the Center has been renamed the Judge Baker Children’s Center, located on Mission Hill.

Officials at Harvard and Children’s also stressed that they have no complaints on file against Ayres.

Boston area law enforcement officials are interested in Ayres in part because they might be able to prosecute him if they can show he committed crimes against children while living in Massachusetts. That’s because the clock in the state’s statute of limitations - the period after a crime during which prosecutors may file charges - would have stopped when Ayres crossed state lines to begin a new life in California. Normally, civil and criminal statues of limitation are “tolled” (the time clock to sue or prosecute is halted) during the time period that an alleged wrongdoer is outside of the state where the alleged offenses occurred.

Meanwhile, scores of now adult men (and their families) who consider themselves alleged victims of the now notorious child therapist eagerly await the upcoming San Mateo molest trial as promising some form of “closure”.

Ayres at age 77 and in ill health, in the meantime, has literally become a an infirm shell of his former self and it remains to be seen what satisfaction (if any) can be afforded his many alleged bicoastal victims through his incarceration—should he be convicted of the charges (which appears likely) and should he live long enough to be punished for his alleged crimes—let alone remember them—(which appears less certain).