In our previous post, we quoted Richard Johnson, who recounted the sexual abuse he and other boys suffered at the Reception-Detention Center For Boys in Boston, where Ayres worked in the early 1960s. Johnson has just sent us a post-script about the juvenile justice system in Massachusetts:
"During the late fifties and early sixties reform schools, detention centers, institutional foster homes, and mental institutions dealing with children attracted perverts to their employ. It was well known and I am surprised by the recent revelations, not because of their substance, but because the public seems to have had its head in the sand during the past fifty or more years. Surely, everyone knew about the abuse by police, priests, child psychiatrists, and child councilors of various kinds, guards at detention centers and others who were dealing with the “throwaway children.”
The facts are that nobody cared. It is just that simple. People like Mark Devlin who were abused by the system expected to have their abuse reconciled in some manner. At the very least, they expected some kind of public apology because it was well known by everyone from the lowest level laborer to the Governor and beyond. It is just that nobody cared. The purpose of society’s throwaway children was to provide physical and sexual objects for the perverts who worked in the business of “disposing of them.”
We wonder if Ayres got the word through some underground perv network when
he was in Boston that it was a free-for-all for pedophiles over at the Reception-Detention Center- that young juveniles were ripe for the picking.
Ok, so we know now that child sexual abuse was rampant at one of the places where Ayres was employed in Boston in the 1960s. Word is that over the years a fairly large number of child psychiatrists who went through Judge Baker Guidance Center were also pedophiles.
ReplyDeleteGuess we shouldn't be shocked. Pedophiles will gravitate to any job that will give them unlimited access to children.
They werent really throw away-they were someones brother, cousin, husband, neighbor, co-worker. Based on that simple fact alone these institutions, including the state government, are better off with transparency then attempting to cover it all up. I mean come clean-open up the records. Apologize-it may not change the outcome of these peoples lives, but it will give some the peace they so richly deserve.
ReplyDeletewhat about the catholic boys guidance center boston in the 60s any reported abuse?
ReplyDeleteJudge Baker Guidance Center was not Catholic. It was a child psychiatry training center affiliated with Children's Hospital and Harvard.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, according to child psychiatrists I have interviewed, a number of child psychiatrists have been fired over the years for touching boys.
One child psychiatrist recalled that in the 1960s (this was after Ayres left) a janitor found a child psychiatrist showing a porn movie to a young boy.