Conference Reminder: Saturday, March 20th 2010

[Original: 03/19/2010 10:33am PST]
[Update: 03/20/2010 03:45pm PST]
Victoria Balfour, who won the "Excellence in the Media" award for Meritorious Public Service from the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma last September for her efforts related to stopping william hamilton ayres, who now faces many criminal and civil trials for his molestation of many young boys, will be giving a talk at the "MaleSurvivor 2010 International Conference" at John Jay College in New York City. [Update: Read her report back immediately below the photographs of ayres below.]

The conference runs March 18th through 21st. Victoria will be speaking on March 20th, from 10:30a until 12p. She will be speaking specifically on the william ayres case.

We wish her the best, and know that she will knock them dead, as she always does. There will be a time for questions and answers immediatly after her talk.

Below are a few photos of ayres over the years, the third is his mugshot from when he was jailed on charges of molestation:

UPDATE [03/20/2010 3:45PM]: Victoria Balfour has sent us this message updating us on how her talk went today:

This is Victoria Balfour reporting back from the Male Survivor Conference in NYC. Surprisingly, the majority of people in attendance at the presentation on Ayres were therapists.

Most popular question from the audience: "Has anyone been keeping Ayres under surveillance since he's been out on bail?" One therapist said that people like Ayres gravitate towards playgrounds,etc and that the police should be watching him.

The consensus among the audience was that historically, the public has always been too focused on what makes a pedophile tick. Instead, they said, there should be way more emphasis on the male victims and the impact of the abuse on their lives.

Another key point from two male therapists from Chicago: Ayres is a "narcissist" who carefully designed each stage of his life and his work relationships - i.e. friendships with judges(Are you listening,Marta Diaz?)so that he could get access to boys. One of the therapists said he probably moved to San Mateo to be a big fish in a small pond and purposely made friends with those in power so that when boys came forward over the years, they would not be believed.

Another male therapist from Chicago said that by molesting many sons of his medical colleagues, Ayres seemed to revel in his dangerous, on-the-edge behavior. They said that he had been playing Russian Roulette all these years by molesting kids like the son of pediatrician Dr. Gross and that it was only a matter of time before it all caught up with him - and that he probably knew it.

Someone wondered if Ayres had been molested as a kid. But some victims in the audience as well as the therapists said that most victims do not go on to molest other kids. Otherwise, there would be a massive epidemic of sexual abuse in this country.

Members of the audience calculated the probable number of Ayres victims to be in the "four digits." This total would include victims in Boston and in New Haven, CT, where Ayres did his residency, as well as victim in California

Finally, as the session was wrapping up, a woman psychoanalyst remarked " It sounds as if Ayres is afraid of women - particularly strong women."

There are many people out there who would agree with that.