Three more things...

Short post, But THREE topics of interest:

One:
If you're new to this site, start on the "About william ayres" tab. It has a broad summary of where things stand, with links to more information. The "In ayres' Own Words" tab has links to things that ayres said during his criminal trial, some taken directly from court transcripts.

Two:
A blogger on DailyKos.com by the name of SwedishJewfish has posted a tribute to victims of childhood abuse to counter the celebrations today honoring the life of Joe Paterno, who enabled child molester Jerry Sandusky to continue to abuse over the past decade. If you've read my posts in the past weeks, you know that this is an issue that has bothered me too.

Her idea for a tribute is FANTASTIC. You should go read it, and "recommend" it, if you're a member of the site. You should also donate to RAINN.org on her page, if you feel so inclined. (RAINN is the "Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network") and her donation page is right on RAINN's website. The money you donate goes directly to RAINN and is TAX DEDUCTIBLE. They will give you their federal tax ID on your donation receipt.

Her tribute is here: No One Spoke Up for Us: For The Children Who Had No Voice and For those finally finding Theirs

Her RAINN donation page on the RAINN website is here: http://rainnmakers.rainn.org/TreeClimbers you can also find that same link at the bottom of her post, if you don't want to get there from here. As I mentioned before, donations there are TAX DEDUCTIBLE and, they accept paypal and credit cards.

By the way, make sure you read the last section at the end of her post. It really does a great job of summing up every pain that needs to be understood, and that normally goes unsaid. 


Three:
Pennsylvania Governor Corbett has issued an official expression of condolences for the death of Joe Paterno, stating that "Joe Paterno confronted adversities, both past and present, with grace and forbearance." Further, the Governor has ordered the State Flag to be lowered to half staff in his honor.

In response I have written the below letter to Governor Corbett. Please feel free to lift, plagiarize, cut, paste,  bend, fold, and spindle the below, and use to send him a letter or email of your own.
[Update 01/27/2012]: No response from Governor Corbett, not even a form letter. Be shocked if a politician ever responded to this kind of email though.

Dear Governor Corbett,

I took a moment today to read your January 22, 2012 expression of condolences on the death of Joe Paterno, and your January 23, 2012 State Flag half staff order in honor of Joe Paterno.

I understand that Joe Paterno has meant a great deal to the State, in terms of fame and publicity, as well as in his “Generosity to Penn State as an institution.”

I would like to take a moment of your time to call attention to the grave damage that child molestation does to its victims. In most cases, children in such situations develop an intense mistrust of the very people who should be able to help them, especially when they perceive that people who should be helping them are failing to do so. These innate, learned responses persist well into adulthood, leading to a very difficult life for many victims of such crimes. In addition to feeling socially awkward our outcast, we typically suffer more health problems than the general population; we have greater odds of engaging in dangerous behaviors, acting out violently, and drug and alcohol abuse. We are often depressed, we have frequent suicidal thoughts, and sometimes, we follow through on those thoughts.

Child Molesters seem to have a unique ability to attach themselves to people who are financially, legally, and politically well connected, so that they have important people to defend them when they are exposed of their heinous crimes. This attachment often becomes insidious, pervasive, and inseparable without perceived sacrifice on the part of the persons defending the molester.

Mike McQueary, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz, Graham Spanier, and Joe Paterno are all people who fell into Jerry Sandusky’s trap, and they DID NOT “confront adversities” with “grace and forbearance.” Instead, they allowed colossal human damage to continue for a decade.  Those men were too afraid of damage to their own reputations to stop Sandusky, and it is likely that no one will ever know the number of children victimized.

The victims of such crimes are often very attuned to those people who child molesters use as character witnesses, and the very mention of these supporters opens up wounds anew, almost as painful as the actual abuse was.

Your celebration of the “man,” Joe Paterno, is undoubtedly causing additional pain and grief in those who have suffered, and those who care about them.

It is shameful that your office has issued these tributes without also acknowledging the atrocious damage that Paterno has allowed.

Your office has fallen victim to the same seduction that McQueary, Curley, Schultz, Spanier, and Paterno have fallen for: You gain more popularity by celebrating the hero, than you would in standing up strongly for those damaged. And in so doing, you re-enforce the victim’s distrust of everyone who should have the power to stop the damage.

I hope you will take some time to learn about the damage that child molestation does to people, short and long term, and take it to heart in the future.

Emails can be sent to governor@pa.gov
His meat-mail and telephone information are here:  http://www.governor.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/contact/2998

Fuck You, Joe Paterno

Heartless Coward: Deleted 1/22/2012

Buh bye, now. Satan will enjoy your services in Hell.

Read: Post on madmikesamerica.com; says it very well.

And for those who don't understand why this post is here: Go read "F**K Joe Paterno" on DailyKos. It hits the nail on the head, and drives it all the way in, all in one blow.

My earlier post on the issue: Click Here.

UPDATE 01/24/2012: The author of the "F**K Joe Paterno" Post on the Daily Kos site (which I linked to above) has decided to counter Penn State's memorial service for Joe Paterno with a tribute post for victims of child abuse. If you haven't read her original post, please do so now, it's really a VERY good article. She has this to say about creating a tribute page:

I had an idea occur to me this morning though. This was the part of my diary that I felt most impassioned about:


I'm one of the lucky ones. I am unlike the millions of kids who never escape from the cycle of psychological torture and self inflicted violence- the kids and adult survivors who kill themselves, either directly or indirectly. The ones who never make it out ok.


And when they die, they don't get photo layouts, or tributes. They are faceless. They are nameless. They are forgotten.


Well, this Thursday, I want to change that.
(SwedishJewfish / Dailykos.com)

She's also talking about setting up a fund for donations to RAINN. 

Go read her instructions for the tribute. Deadline to send her names/photos of people you'd like to include is some point tomorrow (1/25/2012) evening.  (Please do so ONLY with some level of anonymity, unless you are sure that you are qualified to use their names, photos, etc...) 

New Ayres Victim Comes Forward: Molested in 1966!

Last week a 58-year-old man bravely contacted this blog to let us know that he too, had been molested by Ayres -   in 1966 !  This makes him the earliest known victim of Ayres. 

That means that Ayres molested boys in San Mateo for almost 40 years.

This new victim told us that he was 12 years old and at Hillcrest Juvenile Hall when Ayres abused him. The assault took place before Ayres did his sex ed series on KQED called "A Time of Your Life" (  a  program that one of Ayres' former partners described to us as "disgusting" and said that it appeared to him that  that Ayres  had used the creepy program  to "procure" boys.)

In 1994, this victim wrote a letter to the California Medical Board stating that Ayres had molested him. They did nothing..... And then, when the San Mateo police were working to get their search warrant on Ayres in 2005-2006 and found out about this victim's complaint to the medical board, for some reason, they say they were unable to find the man, even though they knew the state where he lived, and he has a very uncommon name!

This victim did not know that Ayres had been arrested until last week, when he Googled his name. 
He thinks that his search on Ayres was likely prompted by the Sandusky/Penn State abuse case.
What is incomprehensible to him, he says, is that Ayres had gotten away with his pedophilia for so long. 

We told him that in San Mateo the culture of protectionism and conspiracy of silence in San Mateo concerning Ayres was even worse than it was in the Sandusky case. San Mateo  Children's Services, the medical community, juvenile judges like Marta Diaz who according to  San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe  warned the police who were investigating Ayres in 2002 Ayres to be "real careful with Ayres- because he and I are friends" and then continued to send boys to Ayres for the next two years - were all complicit. According to one reporter who worked for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005, Wagstaffe went so far as to tell him  that Judge Diaz had actively interfered with the Ayres investigation, and that back in 2002, there had been a "power struggle between Diaz and the DA's office", with Diaz telling the police, "Don't investigate Ayres."

It was just last month that a 90-year-old psychiatrist  named Dr. McClain Johnston in Menlo Park told us that he had been "hearing stories about Ayres and boys for the last fifty years - since the mid-1960s." Asked why he and other doctors hadn't reported Ayres, he stated, "No one wanted to get involved."


There have been media reports that because of the Sandusky scandal, there's been a fairly dramatic increase in the number of victims of sexual abuse reporting it to the authorities. We believe that this victim is not the only one whose memories of Ayres were jarred by the Sandusky case.


We urge the others out there to contact us at this blog. This includes victims in Boston from 1959-1963, and victims in Wisconsin, where Ayres attended the University of Wisconsin Medical School.  


This past March, I was contacted by a 71- year -old man who had been molested in 1949 by a child psychiatrist at Judge Baker, where Ayres worked. This child psychiatrist and Ayres were there at the same time.


We know there are victims who were assaulted by Ayres long before 1966, and we want to hear from every one of you. 


Leave a message on this blog, or emaildeepsounding@gmail.com,
or leave a message on our voice line:
650-762-9737 (650-76-AYRES)


Or email me: balfour.victoria@gmail.com

Interesting Point

Michael Stogner, San Mateo County resident, and frequent advocate against local government corruption has posted a letter to the San Mateo Daily Journal, pointing out that the organization Friends for Youth, Inc., a local San Mateo County Organization, while vocal about the recent Sandusky molestation case, was apparently strangely silent about the william hamiltion ayres molestation case that has dragged reluctantly through the courts only to end in a fizzle.

In a quick search of the internets for coinciding phrases "Friends for Youth" and "Ayres," I was only able to find two documents with references to both ayres and Friends for Youth, Inc.: The first document was an acrobat document published by the organization in 2009 with a brief mention of the ayres case:

While it appears that there are no cases involving a volunteer from a formal program abusing a child, San Mateo County has seen numerous incidents in recent years where trusted members of the community have committed sex offenses against youth in their professional capacity. The highprofile case of William Ayres, a child psychiatrist from San Mateo who allegedly molested numerous patients over many years, has been headline news.

It should be noted that while the article claims that "it appears that no cases involving a volunteer from a formal program abusing a child," ayres himself received a nomination in 2002 (before this report was written)  from now Assemblyman Rich Gordon for a "Lifetime Achievement Award" for his "service on the Children and Families First Commission, and his tireless efforts to improve the lives of children and adolescents." -- Read the post just below this one for my recent comment on this. Further, ayres is known to have been on the board of a local YMCA. And during his criminal trial, he mentioned wanting to renew his "medical license"so that he could volunteer for a local medical clinic that helps families in need.

The second document of interest is a Menlo Park council report from 7/16/2007, which mentions that $2,000 was paid to Friends for Youth, Inc. It also mentions that $1,091 was paid to a Barbara Ayres for "Dental" I believe this to be a co-incidence, as there is a Barbara Ayres (sometimes listed as Ayers) who is a police officer working for the City of Menlo Park. I am reasonably certain that this is NOT the child molester william ayres' daughter.

Apathy and Cowardice

People involved in the exacerbation of the Penn State Jerry Sandusky child molestation nightmare seem to be realizing the extent to which they allowed evil to influence them.

The charity that Sandusky founded (The Second Mile) and which he used to identify and select victims has realized that any good that it may have done can not survive the evil caused by Sandusky:

According to Fox News,  David Woodle, the chief executive of The Second Mile has said that "We're working hard to figure out how the programs can survive this event, We aren't protective of the organization that it survives at all costs."

Various collegiate and local political groups have realized that they probably even need to divorce themselves of Joe Paterno, the head coach, who was one of several individuals who supported Sandusky’s child molestation by deliberately and utterly failing to report Sandusky’s evil deeds over a period of many years:

Pennsylvania's two senators, Democrat Bob Casey, and Republican Patrick Toomey have put down their pitchforks and torches for long enough to come to agreement on something: they've both rescinded their support for their prior nomination of Joe Paterno for the nation's highest civilian honor: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. According to the New York Times, the senators issued the following statement in conjunction with rescinding their nomination of Paterno:

"Penn State is an important institution in our commonwealth, we should turn our attention to the victims of these atrocious crimes and ensure they get the help they need. Our hearts and prayers go out to them and their families."

According to the Washington Post,  Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl has written a letter strongly rebuking Franco Harris, a former Penn State star who spoke out against the firing of Joe Paterno. Harris is a member of the “Pittsburgh Promise” scholarship board. Ravenstahl and the board gave serious consideration to removing Harris based on his support for Paterno before ultimately deciding on the letter of rebuke.

Brown University is carefully watching the situation as well. Joe Paterno graduated from there in 1950, and the university awards a “Joe Paterno ’50 Award” to "outstanding first-year varsity male athletes." They are considering renaming the award, given Paterno's cowardly inaction. According to the article in the Boston Globe, Matt Kutler, a 2001 honoree, said it “wouldn’t be a bad idea’’ to remove Paterno’s name.


So what about the william ayres case?

In January of 2002,  ayres was nominated by then San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon (Gordon is now a California State Assemblyman)  for a "Lifetime Achievement Award" for his "service on the Children and Families First Commission, and his tireless efforts to improve the lives of children and adolescents."

The resolution was passed by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in spite of the fact that several reports of molestation had already been filed (and dismissed without investigation) with various county agencies. Board Members who approved the nomination unanimously: Mark Church, Richard S. Gordon, Jerry Hill, Rose Jacobs Gibson, Michael D. Nevin; County Manager: John Maltbie; County Counsel: Tom Casey


On several occasions San Mateo County Board of Supervisors members have been asked by victims and their families to move to revoke the “Lifetime Achievement Award” and nothing has happened.

Rich Gordon has been asked to do the same on several occasions by me and others -- four times by me, --through his office email, and in facebook posts, and even in person in some cases – emails have gone unanswered, and the facebook posts promptly deleted. In person requests were apparently greeted coldly, consideration promised, and promptly ignored.

I’d like to be able to say that our local politicians are not savvy enough to recognize their cowardice in the face of so much evil – that they are so afraid to call attention to their own shortcomings in supporting ayres, that they don’t want to raise the issue, but frankly the local press and the local authorities, and even the local citizens seem so apathetic to the damage done by child sexual abuse, that the local politicians can just continue to act in a cowardly manner with little fear of the kind of public backlash being experienced by those involved in the Sandusky case.

william hamilton ayres couldn’t have picked a better county in which to molest young boys.

Same Old Story

Penn State’s resident evil Jerry Sandusky did an interview with Bob Costas last night (these guys always want to talk about themselves and their interest in young boys:

There must have been a molester’s conference that both Sandusky and ayres attended:

COSTAS: What did happen in the shower the night that Mike McQueary happened upon you and the young boy?

SANDUSKY: Okay, we-- we were showing and-- and horsing around. And he actually turned all the showers on and was-- actually sliding-- across the-- the floor. And we were-- as I recall possibly like snapping a towel, horseplay.

For comparison, here’s from the transcript of the william ayres criminal trial for molestation of many young boys on July 8, 2009 :

Ayres’ Attorney DORON WEINBERG: … Did you ever use the results of a physical examination or observation to simply reassure the patient himself?

AYRES: Oh, Yes. Yes. There was – There’s a case in this issue of organic macula, which is a swelling of one – of one of the nipples. And in that situation you certainly would – first of all, is, you need to check to make sure that they’re – so that you know that it is a physiological condition, which is normal. Because it is quite normal, and you can have it bilaterally or on one side.
     On the other hand, they need to know – many, many boys are very, very anxious about it, and they need to start looking around. And, of course, now I’m finding out that when I was in High School we all were buck naked and ran around in the shower and snapped towels at each other, and then it was thought of as nothing. Now, I guess it’s people are not exposed as much as they used to be.
   But the idea of the nipple is difficult for a lot of boys, so you need to be able to say. “Well, we’ll check it again,”

The parallels between the cases are vomit inducing. There's so much evil to spread around...

Evil Breeds Evil

There is something very wrong with people.

We seem to collectively want to turn our heads and deny horrors when they happen around us. There is evil stalking us, and we let it in to invade any shred of reasoning capacity we may have, we celebrate its very existence, rather than face it down, and stop it.

To be sure, the real evil takes up housekeeping in the empty husks of bodies that were intended to house human beings.  Creatures like Jerry Sandusky and, indeed william ayres, roam the earth, creating suffering and damage that will perpetuate itself, generating fresh fodder for further exploitation and damage.

Sandusky of course, is the Penn State assistant coach who established “The Second Mile,” a charitable foundation to help provide “care” for foster children, and who now stands charged with anally raping a ten year old boy in the college facilities. There are at least 8 people who have officially come forward as victims. I would be shocked if his body count was NOT in the hundreds. It has been widely speculated (with good reason) that Sandusky founded the charity to help him obtain victims.

But here's the rub:
Penn State had a whole host of management who could have put a stop to the evil, but instead, they looked evil square in the eye, and invited it in to their house. It started with Mike McQueary who claims that he actually witnessed Sandusky anally raping a young boy in the facility’s shower.

Here’s what one of the mothers of the victims had to say about Mike:

“I don’t even have words to talk about the betrayal that I feel,” said the mom of Victim Six. “[McQueary] was a grown man, and he saw a boy being sodomized ... He ran and called his daddy?”

After Mike called his daddy, likely already fearful (and possibly advised by daddy) of the prospect of seeing his own career besmirched for reporting the beast, he again failed to do the FIRST thing he should have done: either beat Sandusky to death, or call the cops.

Instead he talked to other coaches, who talked to other university officials, and none of them had the courage to do the right thing. They all stared into the headlights of their precious careening reputations, and now, instead of being heros, the likes of Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, Vice President of Business and Finance Gary Schultz, coach Joe Paterno, and Penn State President Graham Spanier are just another line of cowards who gave up a bit of their soul in exchange for the privilege of running defense for tangible evil.

And we get to watch the evil continue to infect and infest, as dim-wittted Penn State students rally, and even riot on Paterono’s behalf, showing evil support for a coward too blinded by his own fame to see the damage he’s let be done.

As the rioting in Paterno’s behalf started, he made some statements:

He told a crowd of supporters: "Pray for the [sexual abuse] victims," he told the crowd. "We love you."

BUT: He also issued a statement, obtained by Fox News, saying that he was disappointed with the board's decision but would have to accept it.

Heroic statement of support and contrition it is not… It just shows that he clearly doesn’t understand the evil that was wrought while he ran defense for the Devil.

The impact that this kind of crime has is very painful and difficult to describe, but  Dr. Keith Ablow does a good job of hinting at it in his article in Fox News. It doesn’t deliver the full breadth and depth of the impact, but it touches upon the tip of the iceberg:

When a child is made to participate in a sex act with an adult, it leads to intense feelings of fear and guilt and betrayal, which can easily color his or her entire existence.

These feelings are often suppressed. Hence, they can crop up in devastating ways later on: in the inability to trust any authority figure, in a tendency to avoid feelings at all, in literally slipping away from reality (dissociating), in attempts to suppress memories and feelings using alcohol and illicit drugs, in attention deficit disorder, in major depression, in sexual disorders and in suicide.

The evil persists. 

There are similar players in the william ayres story as well: 

Family memebers Solveig and Robert ayres, Shrinks Etta Bryant,  Robert Kimmich,  Larry Lurie, and all of the others who asked for financial support for the Devil himself are all good examples of evil at work, There are others.  People who are supposed to defend against evil and alert the public about its reality look the other way, and twist the truth to distract from the damage done by evil.

The stench and decay spreads, and true heros are few and far between.

Evil always has the last laugh. After you willingly sell your soul protecting Evil, it exposes you for what you really have become.

BY THE WAY: Here's an EXCELLENT article about what TO DO if you encounter child sexual abuse, by Michael Reagan. He gets it EXACTLY right, and in the right order of priority. 

AND: another nod to Victoria Balfour for being one of the few and far between.

Word on the street

Johnny the Shoeshine Boy says that ayres checked himself into Napa last night (10/25/2011).

10/27/2011 Update: There is now an article in the San Mateo Daily Journal stating that the prosecution has been informed of ayres' surrender to Napa State.

New Article on ayres in the Times

There is a new article on the ayres story posted in the San Mateo County Times. Have a read:
http://www.mercurynews.com/san-mateo-county/ci_19191510


And a second article today: this one about the animosity between victim's advocate Victoria Balfour, and the prosecutor Melissa McKowan:

http://www.mercurynews.com/san-mateo-county/ci_19194847

Important point from comments about the above news article:


According to the article, McKowan placed Amati Mehler and another person who trained at Judge Baker, Dr. Joseph Mullen, on her witness list for the 2009 criminal trial, but she didn't call them to the stand.

BUT: look at what she says about the SAME witnesses on her blog comment.

Blog comment made by San Mateo prosecutor Melissa Mckowan. Confirmed as Mckowan’s by her supervisor, Assistant District Attorney Karen Guidotti:

http://williamayreswatch.blogspot.com/2009/12/yale-debunks-ayres-our-child.html

Melissa McKowan said...

But take my word for it, any "credible" tip that has come in has been looked into. So far, until this particular unattributed blog entry, I have never seen any "independent investigation" that has led to the discovery of an actual witness. For instance, the three (not four) Judge Baker Graduates who would allegedly have debunked Ayres' statements about being trained there--did NOT confirm to the police or the DA what it was alleged in the blogs that they would say. One told me that she had told the reporter who talked to her that she didn't know anything about Ayres and was in school later than him and that although she could say SHE was never trained to give exams, she "couldn't say for sure what his training was." That is NOT helpful. Another one refused to testify and the last one is physically unable to travel and lives in Europe.




Note that today (10/26/2011) is the deadline for william hamilton ayres to be admitted to Napa State Hospital, for an undoubtedly short stay before he is most likely released back into the community; the San Mateo County District Attorney having utterly failed to obtain any significant time in lockup or even registration for yet another child molester.

If ayres does manage to get himself admitted, then by this time next week (November 2nd, 2011) he will be receiving his $750,000 in bail money back.

San Mateo County - Come have sex with our children!

Armando Lopez-Galvez

It seems that Armando Lopez-Galvez likes to have sex with young girls. Good thing he lives in Redwood City, which is part of San Mateo County!

He was apparently able to enjoy a young girl, and when the Belmont Police caught the man and told the San Mateo County prosecutors about 5 or six months ago, they reacted swiftly, and with great focus to make sure that the disruption to the poor, misunderstood man's life was minimized.

Between the San Mateo County DA, and the San Mateo County judges, they managed to bargain the fine citizen's charge down to a no-contest plea on only one count, sparing the man from potentially serving 10 to 12 years in prison on multiple charges.

They managed to get him down to a 308 day sentence with credit for time served! He does have to suffer through 3 years of probation, and will have to refrain from contacting the young girl, but thankfully, and as per usual, San Mateo County will NOT be burdening him with having to register as a sex offender. The County understands that a man should be able to violate 13 year old girls if he needs to!

If only the Belmont Police would quit pestering citizens who want to have sex with children, then the County would finally have some peace!

</sarcasm>

By the way, AS USUAL, The San Mateo Daily Journal seems to confuse the phrase "illegally fucking children" with "sexual relationship."   Talk about being a mouthpiece for San Mateo County's strange predilections.

This has been YET ANOTHER unfortunate edition of: San Mateo County - Come Have Sex With Our Children!

Another Blog Covers ayres Story

Another blogger covers the story about the DA and court allowing ayres to continue delaying and running around free.:

The blog PRACTIKEL: The only website worth visiting! has some rather strong opinions about the justice system as it applies to child molesters. The blogger would rather not have them taking up space in our public institutions - they offer up a rather more permanent solution -- a solution that Random Task would probably agree with.

Oh, Behave!

DA Backtracks on ayres Lockup Delay

There is a new article in the San Francisco Examiner about the delay to william ayres' commitment to Napa State Hospital to "treat" his alleged dementia, which allowed him to escape retrial on charges that he molested many young boys under the guise of providing psychiatric care.

The news article talks about the fact that prosecutor McKowan made one claim to the press -- The Court didn't provide necessary paperwork -- while DA Wagstaffe made an entirely different claim about availability of bed space. It also mentions that the DA claims that the judge denied a prosecution request to lock ayres up while awaiting a bed at Napa State.  (How did Wagstaffe know that this was requested, if he didn't know that McKowan had claimed that the court was responsible, or that the judge had threatened contempt?) The article also repeats the 11-1 guilt vote on ONE charge for the criminal trial, even though news stories at the time reported that this was the case for SIX of the charges.

NOBODY seems able to get their story straight.  At least they could all make an effort to tell the same lies.

Note: Reports from private investigators seem to show that ayres is in fact competent, at least as far as his defense at trial is concerned: competent enough to joke with medical colleagues about his alleged dementia and its relation to his defense maneuvers. (The medical colleagues who were enjoying the big joke with ayres and his vapid wife Solveig were:  Larry Lurie, M.D., and Robert Kimmich M.D, both San Francisco shrinks and past presidents of the Northern California Psychiatric Society, a pathetic organization from which a great number of past officers were signatories of a letter pleading for financial help for child molester ayres while he was on trial.)