Ayres' Boston Records: The San Mateo DA Says They Don't Exist, But Children's Hospital and the Boston Globe Say They Do!!

Judge Baker told ME, unlike whoever keeps talking about what their records will show, said there are no records from that time period.

-San Mateo prosecutor Melissa Mckowan in comment on this blog, January 29, 2010
_______________________________________________________________________

It's puzzling to me why the administration at Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston, where Ayres trained from 1959-1963, would have told the prosecutor on the Ayres case that " there are no records from that time period."
Because when I met with Judge Baker Chief Operating Officer Stephen Schaffer in August 2009 to discuss the Ayres case, he told me that records of Ayres' work at Judge Baker did exist . Furthermore, Schaffer said he had never received a call from anyone in the San Mateo District Attorney's office about Ayres' records. "Why didn't someone from the San Mateo District Attorney's office call us? " he asked. " We could have helped them look for them."
Granted, it is possible that either the San Mateo police or someone from the district attorney's office called someone else at Judge Baker about Ayres' records. But given the seriousness of the criminal case, one would have thought that Schaffer would have gotten wind of the request. But he told me last year he'd never even heard of the Dr. Ayres case.

Furthermore, in January, 2010, I was able to confirm that records of Ayres' work at Judge Baker DO exist. All of the case histories and notes on the boys who were inpatients when Ayres was there in the 1960s, are housed at Children's Hospital. This was confirmed to me by a staff member at Children's Hospital named Linda Lebel. These would include notes by the social workers' interviews with the children who were Ayres' patients and their parents; with the child care workers at Judge Baker; with the boys' teachers at the Manville School at Judge Baker; and notes by  Ayres himself.

In my interviews with 19 child psychiatrists and pscyhologists at Judge Baker as well as  four people who had worked as social workers when Ayres was there, I learned that if any child had complained about Ayres sexually molesting him, the complaint would be included in  these case histories, now at Children's Hospital. Many of the former Judge Baker personnel I talked to suggested that it was possible that a boy might have complained to a social worker that Ayres had touched him and that this would have been included in the notes.

Incidentally, Children's Hospital Archives  also has some interesting documents on other pedophile doctors who worked at Judge Baker and Children's Hospital. I saw an evaluation of Dr. Donald Lee Rife - another Judge Baker and Children's Hospital alum who would go on to molest boys - by his supervising physician when he was a resident at Children's Hospital("Rife is always available to work at all hours," it said.)

In January, 2010, I notifed Boston Globe reporter Mike Rezendes of the existence of Ayres' case histories at Children's Hospital. Rezendes included this in his front page story on the Boston hunt for Ayres victims, "California Sex Abuse Trial Spurs Hub Queries"
At the Judge Baker Children's Center, chief operating officer Stephen Schaffer said the organization does not have personnel records for Ayres because he was an employee of Children's Hospital when he was working at the Center. He said the same thing about another resident child psychiatrist, Donald L. Rife, who practiced at the Center immediately following Ayres, from 1964 to 1966. Rife has had medical licenses revoked in Massachusetts and Vermont, and has been reprimanded in Florida, because of child sex abuse allegations.

Schaffer said that the Center has the clinical records of children who were treated by the two child psychiatrists, but that privacy considerations prevent him from examining them without a specific patient request to do so.

____

So, now we know that ARE records of Ayres' work  from that time period, what I would like to know is how the prosecutor was given a story about the records that is at odds with the story that was given to myself and the Boston Globe reporter. Why would someone from Judge Baker tell her one thing and everyone else another? Furthermore, why does the prosecutor seem more intent on DISPROVING everything about Ayres' time at Judge Baker rather than trying to get to the truth and find out more about it?  Where is the curiosity about Ayres' training? Why has so much energy been spent in trying to beat down other people's discoveries about say, how doctors were trained at Judge Baker with information that is not just inaccurate, but just plain wrong? Why turn a blind eye and slam the door on inculpatory information that could help win the case?

To that end, I am calling for the San Mateo District Attorney's office to conduct an internal investigation on what was actually done to investigate Ayres' training in Boston.

The public is owed answers to these questions:

- Who called the four doctors I found in Boston: Stanley Walzer; Dan Ditmore, Joseph Mullen and Jacqueline Amati Mehler?
-When were these calls made ? What was asked ?
- In her January 29, 2010 comment on this blog, why does the prosecutor only mention speaking with two doctors instead of four? (She says there were three, but she made two doctors out of one doctor)
-Why did she get the doctors muddled and confused in her blog comment?
-Why did the prosecutor say that Dr. Amati Mehler was "physically unable to travel" when this has never been the case and is indeed a falsehood?
- Why did the prosecutor say on the blog that none of the doctors could confirm to her what they told me- that they were NOT trained to give physical exams to her but then in the same comment go on to CONTRADICT  her own statement and admit that one doctor confirmed she was not trained to do physicals?
- Why has the prosecutor given so many different stories to so many different people as to why she didn't call the Boston doctors? Stories such as "Ayres didn't talk about his training at Judge Baker" (which is false) or "Ayres lied about where he went to medical school and by the time we found that out it was too late to call the Boston doctors"(highly implausible story)
-On the issue of Ayres' records at Judge Baker, who from the San Mateo Police or the DA's office originally contacted Judge Baker?
- Who was their contact at Judge Baker? When was the call placed to Judge Baker about the records?  What were they looking for?
-Why has Judge Baker Chief Operating Officer  never heard of the request from the San Mateo DA's office about Ayres' records?
- Why did the prosecutor say that Judge Baker told her that "there are no records from that time period?" when in fact there are records?
-Why did Judge Baker Chief Operating Officer Stephen Schaffer tell me and the Boston Globe reporter that records did exist?

And finally, why did the prosecutor tell the mother of a victim that she had called Dr. Bert Brown, one of six doctors who trained with Ayres in that first key year of Ayres' residency at Yale, when in fact she never has? Why did the prosecutor then complain that Brown "never called her back " when in fact he has never been contacted by her in the first place ?
- Why would the prosecutor then,after saying she had contacted Dr. Brown, then go out of her way to try to make this prominent doctor who says he wants to help the victims and can help her win the case - look bad by falsely accuse him of doing something he has never done?

Again, I urge people who are interested in this case to contact San Mateo Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe and urge him to conduct an internal investigation. We are owed the answers to these questions. Wagstaffe's number: 650-363-4752.  Email:swagstaffe@co.sanmateo.ca.us