In 2007, East Bay Times reported on the glaring signs that Ayres was a pedophile, many years before his arrest, in an article entitled “Red Flags Surfaced Before Doctor’s Arrest.” Here is an excerpt from that article:
“On Friday, Ayres, now 75 and retired, stood before a judge to face 14 charges of lewd and lascivious conduct in the molestation of three young male patients from the ages of 9 to 12 at the time. Long before the charges were leveled against Ayres on Friday, alleged victims said they’d raised the red flag about Ayres’ behavior. “This all could have been settled 20 years ago, and God knows how many kids he’s seen,” said Gregory Hogue, a 37-year-old former patient of Ayres who, in a MediaNews interview last year, said the psychiatrist molested him. “Twenty years ago, I thought it was just me.”
But, as another former patient who sued Ayres in 2003 and settled noted Friday, it’s hard to believe former juvenile delinquents. “I can only think that a lot of people were like me,” said the 43-year-old man. “They were embarrassed and ashamed about what happened. A lot of them were delinquents, referred by the county, and nobody would believe them anyway.”
During the last 40 years of Ayres’ career in California, there have been at least two known police reports filed by former patients who said Ayres molested them, and there was the civil suit brought against Ayres in 2003. As part of the civil suit, it came to light that a Folsom County inmate filed a police report alleging molestation by Ayres in the 1990s.
It’s unknown what happened to that report. Attorneys on both sides have declined to release the details of the settlement, which does not admit guilt on Ayres’ part. After the civil suit, men came forward alleging molestation dating to the ’60s, but their cases were too old under the state’s statute of limitations.
Childhood sexual assault charges can be brought only by victims who are younger than 29, or if the alleged abuse occurred after Jan. 1, 1988.
Asked why the county and the courts continued to utilize Ayres’ services when red flags were raised as far back as 1987, County Counsel Tom Casey said departments often don’t know what the police and District Attorney’s Office do. “It’s always difficult when there’s allegations,” Casey said.
The San Mateo Police Department was finally able to proceed with an investigation last year after obtaining a search warrant for Ayres’ records, said San Mateo police Capt. Mike Callagy.
Among the formidable challenges of the investigation, he added, was locating possible victims willing to face the ghosts of abuse and whose allegations would fall within the legal statute of limitations.
Hogue, now a resident of Santa Rosa, was one of the men who approached the police in 2005 with allegations of molestation. He told MediaNews last year that his school district sent him to Ayres in 1985 when he was 15, after he wrote a note to a classmate that was misinterpreted as a suicide threat.
In a police report, Hogue said Ayres once pulled down his pants and touched his penis, saying he wanted to see how “developed” he was. Hogue said he told his mother what happened, and she informed her therapist, who made a report to the county’s Child Protective Services in 1987.
According to the CPS report, the case was referred to San Mateo police, who deemed the complaint unfounded. Hogue showed the original CPS report to police when they re-interviewed him in fall 2005. Hogue filed a complaint against Ayres with the Medical Board of California in 2005. It’s unclear what happened to that report.