No plea deal in works for psychiatrist accused of molesting patients

San Mateo County Times

08 June 2009

By Elizabeth Pfeffer

Posted: 06/08/2009 06:23:11 AM PDT

Updated: 06/08/2009 06:23:22 AM PDT

With jury selection set to begin today in the long-awaited trial of accused child molester Dr. William Ayres, both the prosecution and defense are denying rumors that the prominent child psychiatrist could avoid a criminal trial with a plea bargain.

"We've never sought to plea bargain the case, we don't plan to plea bargain the case, and we're ready for trial," said San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

Doron Weinberg, Ayres' defense attorney, said Friday there have not been "serious discussions" of a plea deal for the former San Mateo doctor.

Ayres, 77, is accused of molesting dozens of preadolescent male patients from as far back as the 1970s, though just seven accusers fall under the state's statute of limitations, which requires such charges be brought by victims who are younger than 29 or born after 1998. He is facing 20 counts of felony molestation.

Deputy District Attorney Melissa McKowan, the case's lead prosecutor, said earlier this week that the defense had approached her with a plea deal a few months back. The prosecutor said that Weinberg was only interested in a pretrial settlement if Ayres remained free on an appeals process.

For most of his career, Ayres was one of San Mateo County's most respected child psychiatrists, receiving a lifetime achievement award in 2002 from the Board of Supervisors for his work with youth. He served for more than a decade as president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Ayres admitted to performing physical examinations on juvenile psychiatric patients, sometimes of their genitals. His defense attorney has argued that these examinations were legitimate and routine practice that has been misunderstood by prosecutors and misinterpreted by the accusers.

"Dr. Ayres has had a distinguished career and he is not a child molester," Weinberg said. "He has declared his innocence of all these charges and we hope that he will be vindicated at trial.

"One of the out-of-statute witnesses slated to testify for the prosecution spoke with Bay Area News Group several months before Ayres' arrest, claiming he was molested by the psychiatrist in 1985 when he was 15 years old. Greg Hogue was one of the alleged victims who cooperated in the yearlong investigation leading up to Ayres' April 2007 arrest.

Hogue told police in 2006 that his school district referred him to Ayres after a note he wrote to a classmate was misconstrued as a suicide threat.

In the police report, Hogue said Ayres unbuttoned his pants and performed a physical on him during their first session. During another session, he said Ayres sat in a chair in front of him, made him pull down his pants and touched his penis.

Hogue said he told his mother what happened and she informed her therapist. The therapist made a report about the incident to Child Protective Services in 1987. After an investigation, the complaint was deemed unfounded.

Ayres remains out of custody on $750,000 bail. He is expected to return to court Monday for the continuation of pretrial motions. Opening statements are anticipated to start the week of June 16, according to Wagstaffe.

Staff writers Michael Manekin and Amy Yarbrough contributed to this story. 

Juror Thirteen - Justice Interrupted – Blog Talk Radio

http://www.jurorthirteen.com/JusticeInterrupted/tabid/908/Default.aspx 

31 March 2009 

Vicki Balfour--Victoria Balfour, a New York City-based journalist, spent five years working to expose Dr. Wiliam Ayres, a former President of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as a child predator. Balfour first learned about Dr. Ayres when she happened to cross paths with one of his victims in 2002. Outraged she vowed to help the man find justice. In addition to making the first whistle-blowing call to the San Mateo Police Department in California about Dr. Ayres, on her own Balfour tracked down other victims and evidence and turned it over to the police, which they used as the basis for their search warrant against Ayres. When Dr. Ayres was finally arrested in 2007 for molesting young boys sent to him for therapy, the San Francisoc Chronicle cited Balfour's efforts as the "catalyst" for the criminal investigation. To date, 41 victims have come forward and Dr. Ayres will stand trial on May 11, 2009. His lawyer Doron Weinberg is currently representing music producer Phil Spector in his murder re-trial. Balfour is a former staff reporter for People magazine. Her articles and essays have bee published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vogue, Glamour, Elle, and many other publications.

Warrant upheld in doc’s molestation case 

The San Mateo Daily Journal

By Michelle Durand

Prosecutors can use evidence uncovered through an inspection of more than 800 patient records in the molestation trial of former child psychiatrist Dr. William Ayres, a judge ruled Monday, despite his attorney’s contention the search warrant was an invasion of doctor-patient confidentiality.

Ayres, 75, is accused of fondling dozens of former male patients under the guise of conducting medical examinations. He is charged with 20 felonies stemming from seven alleged victims but prosecutors maintain there are a number of others who fall outside the statute of limitations.

In his decision, Runde added although he denied the motion it could be revisited during the criminal trial.  

Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Doran Weinberg vowed to appeal the ruling.

Weinberg had argued law enforcement had no proof of probable cause when they obtained a search warrant for Ayres’ home and office and a subsequent warrant for the doctor’s storage locker.

The request was “stale” at the time because so much time had passed between then and the last allegation against the doctor, Weinberg said.

The search, which resulted in approximately 600 of the 800 patients being contacted and questioned in hopes of locating victims, only turned up one possibility and needlessly caused the others mental anguish by violating their right to privacy, Weinberg said.

After nearly three hours of argument, Runde sided with prosecutor Melissa McKowan that probable cause existed to issue a warrant. Runde also ruled that the search didn’t violate state or federal constitutional rights to privacy.

A primary problem, Weinberg said, is that the warrant should list specific evidentiary items it seeks rather than general listing like patient files.

“Names and contact information of patients are not evidence of a crime,” Weinberg said.

McKowan conceded the files were never going to state something as blatant as “I molested John Doe,” but said the records can be used to discount Ayres’ previous testimony that he conducted medical tests of the alleged victims as part of his psychiatric practice.

The files show no reference to those tests, McKowan said — proof perhaps that they were not in fact standard procedure.

During the hearing, Ayres sat quietly with his eyes often downcast. He made no comments during or after the hearing and Weinberg said he is doing well considering.

Ayres is currently set for a pretrial conference Jan. 15 followed by a March 10 jury trial but both days could be thrown into question by Weinberg’s appeal of the search warrant ruling.  

Weinberg also plans motions challenging evidence introduced at the preliminary hearing in August.

During the day-long hearing, officers went one by one through some of his former patients, detailing their ages, the time they saw Ayres and various recollections about their appointments and why they didn’t tell anyone about being asked to stand naked or being touched inappropriately.

Accusations against Ayres have swirled since a former patient accused him of child abuse in 2003. Ayres settled the case in 2005 for an undisclosed sum and he was never charged criminally until the March 2006 search of his home and storage locker turned up 800 patient names.

After investigators spent months phoning those individuals, police arrested Ayres April 5 on suspicion of fondling three former patients — ages 9, 11 and 12 between 1991 and 1996.That search, and its subsequent role in the case, was the focus of Monday’s hearing.

According to Weinberg, the warrant not only posed a constitutional violation but was rife with errors. He implied San Mateo police Capt. Mike Callagy lied to the court to obtain the warrant, including misrepresenting Ayres as still occupying his San Mateo office a year after he stopped paying rent.  

Weinberg also argued the warrant was too broad and came too late because there is no sign the doctor might be offending at the time it was signed.

A forensic psychiatrist reportedly told authorities Ayres could still have the impulse to molest but has since recanted, Weinberg said.Runde refused to let Weinberg call the doctor as a witness but said his statements were not necessary to meet the probable cause threshold. 

Based on the statute of limitations, Ayres can only be charged for crimes involving individuals less than 29 years old or occurring after Jan. 1, 1988.

Ayres’ practice included private clients and referrals from both the juvenile justice system and school districts. He also became known as president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and for hosting the sex education series, “Time of Your Life.”

Ayres received juvenile court referrals up through 2004. San Mateo police first began looking at Ayres in 2002 after a former patient accused him of molestation during the 1970s when he was 13. After a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the statute of limitations nixed criminal prosecution, the victim and Ayres reached a confidential settlement in July 2005.

Ayres is free from custody on $750,000 cash bail.   

Michelle Durand can be reached by e-mail: michelle@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 102. 

Case against psychiatrist took years to assembleWriter and advocate for alleged victims pushed molest probe 

San Francisco Chronicle 

Monday, April 23, 2007 

John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writer 

But some of the alleged victims couldn't be found or wouldn't cooperate, and Ayres continued to receive scores of referrals from San Mateo County's juvenile justice system for years, according to police reports, court records, other documents and interviews.

When a criminal case against him was finally filed earlier this month, it was partly the result of years of digging and prodding by a 52-year-old freelance writer from New York City who had never met Ayres, but became the most dogged advocate for many of his alleged victims.

Ayres, now 75, was treating boys sent to him by juvenile court judges as late as 2003, 16 years after the first complaint about him was filed with county officials. From 1987 to 2002, government agencies received at least four complaints involving allegations that Ayres was molesting male patients, according to records and police officials. Authorities alerted juvenile court judges after the fourth complaint was filed, police said.

"He continued to be a primary care provider for years," said Jeff Lugerner, who was a licensed clinical social worker when he brought a complaint to authorities in 1987 after one of Ayres' former patients told him the psychiatrist had fondled him at age 15. "That's what I'm really floored by."

Authorities said there were plenty of impediments to building a case. Not the least was the difficulty of verifying accusations brought by once-vulnerable or troubled youths against a former president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry praised by county officials in 2002 for his "tireless effort to improve the lives of children."

"We took quite extraordinary measures in this case because there was so much out there, but nothing we could substantiate for a long time," said San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer, whose agency has investigated Ayres several times since 1987.

"By the time it became apparent to us it was real -- there's smoke here, and now it's fire -- once we determined that, we took very aggressive steps," said Manheimer, who became chief in 2000.

Ayres was charged this month with masturbating five boys in his private, soundproof office from 1988 to 1996 under the guise of giving them medical exams. The psychiatrist, who is married and has adult children, has declined to comment about his case other than to say, "These are all very complex situations."

He acknowledged under oath in 2004 as part of a lawsuit filed against him that he sometimes conducted physical exams of patients, but he denied ever masturbating them, according to a transcript of his deposition. He has not entered a plea on the current charges.

At least thirty-seven men have accused Ayres of molesting them as boys dating to at least 1969, but most of the cases fell outside the statute of limitations and couldn't be charged, prosecutors said.

The first known complaint against Ayres was filed with the county social services agency in 1987, six months before the psychiatrist allegedly fondled the first of the boys he is now charged with molesting, records show. San Mateo police determined the report was unfounded, and the case was never formally referred to prosecutors.

The original police file, including a copy of a $1,000 check that Ayres allegedly sent to the boy's mother in 1985 because of an "accounting error" after the youth refused to go to more sessions, is missing, according to a 2005 police report.

The case probably wouldn't have been prosecuted without a corroborating witness or other evidence, said Deputy District Attorney Melissa McKowan, who is handling the current charges against Ayres.

"You have a prominent psychiatrist saying, 'I didn't do it,' and a troubled youth who's seeing a psychiatrist," McKowan said. "You have to be able to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt. ... It doesn't mean I don't believe that boy today."

Two other complaints were received in 1994, including one from a former patient who told the state Medical Board that Ayres had molested him in 1966, San Mateo police Capt. Mike Callagy said. Board investigators could not find that man, however. The other accuser -- a Folsom State Prison inmate who told a nurse that Ayres had molested him as a boy during court-ordered sessions -- refused to cooperate with police, according to records and police officials.

Ayres, in his civil deposition in 2004, said the county's juvenile justice system, its court-appointed attorney program, pediatricians and social workers all referred patients to him for decades. He estimated that he had seen about 2,000 patients in 40 years of practice in the county.

Police and later the district attorney's office were under no legal obligation to report the allegations to people who were sending boys to Ayres for counseling, said San Mateo County District Attorney Jim Fox.

"Obviously, you want to minimize the harm; you don't want people to be put in a position that we believe is dangerous," Fox said. "If we had known about it and there were still referrals, we would probably have taken action, but obviously hindsight is 20/20."

In September 2002, a complaint to San Mateo police from a man who said Ayres had molested him starting in 1976 resulted in a criminal investigation. County referrals to the psychiatrist continued, however, and payments from juvenile courts were not cut off until December 2003, after police alerted court officials and social services.

Juvenile Court Supervising Judge Marta Diaz, who records show referred a patient to Ayres as recently as January 2003, declined to comment about the psychiatrist or the juvenile court referral system, citing judicial guidelines against discussing pending cases.

Police considered the case reported by the man in 2002 a solid one, but their investigation ended abruptly when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a state law in June 2003 that had retroactively extended the statute of limitations for filing child-molestation charges. The alleged victim then sued Ayres in December 2003; the psychiatrist agreed to a confidential settlement about a year and a half later.

Criminal charges against Ayres might never have been brought if not for a chance contact that the 2002 accuser made with a New York freelance writer and victims rights advocate, Victoria Balfour.

A mutual friend had suggested that the man call Balfour about tips for finding writing work. Among Balfour's credits was a 1999 piece in Vogue magazine about eating disorders, in which she wrote of having been molested as a child. During their conversation, the former patient mentioned that Ayres had abused him.

Over the next four months, Balfour urged him repeatedly to call police, she said in an interview. The man finally did so, but after the Supreme Court ruling that killed his criminal case, investigators' interest in Ayres flagged, Balfour said.

On her own, she pursued leads from the civil case, placed postings online and took other steps, compiling a list of 15 possible victims by 2005. She pushed authorities to prosecute the psychiatrist.

"It was like treading water," Balfour said. "I felt like the police didn't know how many victims there were."

One alleged victim sent an e-mail to Balfour in the fall of 2005, in which he wrote, "I'm not strong enough to pursue anything. It makes me very depressed. The (San Mateo) police, courts, city officials will never tell the truth. It will make them look bad. No way will they do that for me."

Two weeks later, the man was killed in a motorcycle crash. Balfour called it the catalyst for her. She sent Callagy, the San Mateo police captain, an e-mail saying, "I think the time has come to figure out a way to find new victims."

Callagy responded later that day, saying he was prepared to take a "real long shot" to obtain a search warrant for Ayres' patient records and seek victims whose accusations would fall within the statute of limitations, e-mails show.

"I am willing to do everything I can to make sure justice prevails," Callagy wrote.

Callagy asked Balfour for the names, phone numbers and dates of alleged molestation victims she had compiled to "show a sustained pattern of cases," e-mails show.

"I know the amount of work that you put (into) this has been unbelievable," Callagy wrote to Balfour a few days later. "I am personally going to write the search warrant."

Police served the warrant on Ayres' home and a storage locker in March 2006, seizing records for more than 800 former patients, authorities said.

After trying to track down those former patients, police came up with three alleged victims, a process Callagy called "a little like looking for a needle in a haystack." After charges were filed, more than a dozen additional accusers came forward, and prosecutors have added two of them to the criminal complaint against Ayres.

Callagy said police worked the case "pretty steadily" for years, but he acknowledged that Balfour's efforts really helped.

"What is most important is that these victims came forward," Callagy said. "I don't know if the victims would have come forward without her encouragement."

E-mail John Coté at jcote@sfchronicle.com.

Doctor held in sex abuse cases 

Los Angeles Times 

April 06, 2007  

By Scott Gold, Times Staff Writer

A prominent California child psychiatrist who created a controversial sex-education program and treated scores of youths referred to him by schools and social services programs was arrested Thursday evening and accused of sexually molesting former patients.……………………………..

Dr. William Ayres, 75, a former president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, was arrested without incident at his home in Northern California, said San Mateo Police Capt. Mike Callagy. He was charged with 14 counts of lewd and lascivious acts on children under age 14. The alleged victims are male, Callagy said, and are now grown men. 

Ayres was being transported to the San Mateo County Jail at about 7 p.m., where he will be held in lieu of $1.5-million bail, Callagy said. 

Ayres, who has practiced in the San Mateo area since the 1960s, was considered a leading expert in numerous facets of child psychiatry. At one time, a former associate said, he was considered "the leading adolescent psychiatrist in Northern California."He was trusted by officials who administered social services, many of whom sent child after child to be treated by him. He served on a Bay Area commission on children and families and received a lifetime achievement award five years ago for his work on behalf of children. 

A tall, charismatic man, Ayres also generated a fair amount of controversy during his career. He wrote and narrated a widely disseminated, 15-part educational television series for pre-teens on sex and relationships called "Time of Your Life," which was praised in some quarters as an honest and nuanced portrayal of love and sex and lambasted in others as overly explicit. 

The series reached some 100,000 public school children and became a focal point of a raging debate over sex education in the late 1960s that spilled into the courts and Legislature. By today's standards, much of the text seems almost quaint; it described how a man and a woman who are preparing to have sex typically lie "very close to each other and usually in a bed." But some parents were outraged; one mother complained at a public meeting that the series was "teaching 9-year-olds how to 'do it.' " 

The 14 charges do not mean there were 14 victims, Callagy said; some alleged victims' cases warranted more than one charge. Callagy declined to reveal how many individual cases the counts represent. But he said there were "several" victims whose cases could be brought under the limits of statutes of limitations -- laws that incorporate the age of the victim and the year of the alleged offense -- and "multiple victims" whose cases were too old to qualify. 

The older cases will be important, he said, because some of those alleged victims are expected to testify if the case goes to trial. 

 "What's so tragic about this case is that these parents trusted this doctor to treat their children," Callagy said. "He violated that trust and violated these children. That is reprehensible." 

Ayres' attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment. 

When Ayres was taken into custody at his home his family was not present, Callagy said. Ayres' former colleagues said he is married with two adult children. Ayres' former associates said they were deeply disturbed by the allegations. 

"It's a very disturbing situation when a physician takes advantage of the trust that he has," said Hugh Wilson Ridlehuber, a retired child psychiatrist who lives in Burlingame and once worked in the same San Mateo group practice as Ayres. "I always thought of it like a wolf in sheep's clothing, because physicians have access to the insides of people. A dentist can examine your mouth 

Ridlehuber also said he was concerned that cases like this one could hurt the "standing of psychiatrists in the community." 

Ayres' arrest comes nearly two years after the doctor, without admitting wrongdoing, reached a confidential settlement in a lawsuit brought by a former patient who said he had been molested as a patient in the 1970s, when he was 13. 

That case, in part, prompted the criminal inquiry that resulted in Thursday's charges.Numerous law enforcement agents -- including the San Mateo Police Department and the U.S. Department of Justice -- spent more than a year investigating Ayres' conduct.A "special master" was appointed by a judge to oversee the delicate complexities of the case, particularly the confidentiality issues raised by looking into Ayres' former patients. Eventually, officers were given the names of 800 former patients -- all now men -- who were treated by Ayres as boys or young teenagers, officials said. 

Officials have stressed that the high number of patients they attempted to contact does not mean that there were that many victims. 

One alleged victim, a 48-year-old electronics technician in the San Diego area, said in an interview that Ayres gave him a physical examination during one session and fondled him. Ayres then asked him if he masturbated, the man said; the man said that he replied that was "none of his business." 

The man said he has been told he may be called to testify in the case against Ayres, but no charges were brought in connection with his alleged fondling, which occurred too long ago to fall within the statute of limitations. 

scott.gold@latimes.com 

Child psychiatrist charged with molesting patients

 Examiner.com 

06 April 2007 

Kay Williamson, the Examiner 

SAN MATEO, Calif.  

A respected San Mateo child psychiatrist who once did business with the county government was arrested Thursday at his home on charges that he molested patients.

William Ayres, 75, was arrested at approximately 6:25 p.m. at his home by San Mateo police officers without incident, Capt. Michael Callagy said. He is charged with 14 counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under the age of 14, Callagy said. Ayres was booked into county jail and is expected to be arraigned today.

Callagy did not release the number of alleged victims. All of the alleged incidents involved boys and took place in Ayres’ office, according to the captain.

The arrest is the result of a year-long investigation that began after the 2005 settlement of a civil suit in which an unnamed former patient accused Ayres of molesting him in the late 1970s, according to court records. That case began as a criminal investigation in 2002, but was dropped after a court ruling put the alleged crime beyond the statute of limitations.

The alleged victim settled for an undisclosed sum without Ayres admitting any wrongdoing. However, the suit prompted several other men to come forward and claim that they too were alleged victims of molestation, accusations that stretched from the 1960s through the mid-1980s. The California statute of limitations presently forbids prosecution of alleged child molestation crimes that date back beyond 1988.

In an August 2006 telephone interview, Ayres told The Examiner that he has never molested patients, but said he has conducted full-body examinations of them as a medical doctor.

“Child psychiatrists are physicians. Physical examinations are things that we are trained to do,” he said. Responding to a question, Ayres acknowledged that the examinations sometimes included contact with patients’ genitals.

The men who came forward and their families told The Examiner last year that they were frustrated by the settlement of the suit. The alleged victims and their spokeswoman, Victoria Balfour, urged police to open a case against Ayres and seek more recent alleged victims whose molestations would have occurred within the statute.

“It took some brave individuals to come forward and really get this ball rolling,” Callagy said, adding that police are still seeking other alleged victims. “We’re encouraging anybody with information on this case to come forward.”

More than a year ago, San Mateo police seized Ayres’ patient records under warrant. Working with the courts and the California Department of Justice, they winnowed through the files and contacted male patients within the statute of limitations to determine whether they, too, claimed to be molested, Callagy said. Detectives Rick Decker and Pete Bahmueller were SMPD’s investigators.

The alleged victims named in the criminal complaint are the result of that investigation. Their names are not being released by police.

“The real tragedy is that parents brought these children to Dr. Ayres for treatment, and they were victimized by this doctor,” Callagy said. “This was the ultimate violation of trust. He was in a position of trust.”

Callagy encouraged those with knowledge of the case to call police at (650) 522-7652.

Suspect has long history with county

Dr. William Ayres worked with San Mateo County government for nearly 50 years, almost as long as he was a doctor.

A 1956 graduate of the University of Wisconsin Medical School, he began work in San Mateo in 1963 at the Child Guidance Clinic of the San Mateo County Mental Health Department, according to his own testimony in a civil court deposition.

He started his private practice in 1965. His group, Peninsula Psychiatric Associates, built its own, now-former office at 215 North San Mateo Drive in 1968.He received frequent referrals from the San Mateo County Juvenile Court and the juvenile probation department, according to records obtained by The Examiner. In 2004 court testimony, Ayres estimated that the court and probation’s referrals accounted for 5 to 15 percent of his work in any given year.

Between 1997 and 2002, the court paid him more than $26,000 for forensic psychiatric examinations, according to court financial records.

He was also paid $975 by the County Child Welfare Services Department in 2003 for a court-ordered psychological evaluation of a boy and his family in a juvenile case.

He also served on the San Mateo County Children and Families First Commission in the early 2000s, and was president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from 1993 to 1995.He received further referrals from school districts. Greg Hogue, a former Foster City resident now living in Santa Rosa, alleged in an interview with The Examiner that he was abused by Ayres in 1985 at age 15. He claimed he was originally referred to Ayres by a school recommendation.

Hogue lodged a complaint against Ayres with San Mateo County Child Protective Services in 1987. The complaint was forwarded to police, who marked the complaint as unsubstantiated, according to a photocopy of the record viewed by The Examiner.

 It was not the only complaint against Ayres. In 1992, a prisoner undergoing mental evaluation at Atascadero State Hospital claimed to staff that he had been molested by Ayres, but later refused to talk to police, according to the 2004 civil deposition of San Mateo County District Attorney’s Inspector Randy Billingsley.

Ayres received these referrals in spite of his controversial early years.

In 1968, local school districts became ideological battlefields in a debate about whether sex education was a proper subject for school. In few places were the arguments as loud as in San Mateo County, where parents boycotted school bond issues and filed a lawsuit to keep “family life” education out of the classroom. And at the center of the debate was child psychiatrist William Ayres, a nationally quoted expert portrayed in many articles as a beacon of reason, accuracy and science.

Ayres achieved national fame in 1968, after he co-scripted and helped narrate “The Time of Your Life,” a 13-part television series produced by KQED for use with fourth- through sixth-grade students that teaches the broad topic of family life, including candid sexual discussion. It was praised by educators and doctors, according to San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle newspaper articles of the time, but a number of parents objected loudly, declaring it “pornographic.” Ayres himself said the series was helpful to children.

“For many years, kids have been coming into my office knowing some of the ‘facts of life,’ but with many facts left out. They wind up being bewildered, with a great many concerns and anxieties resulting from their lack of knowledge,” he told The New York Times in 1969.

School officials at the time praised Ayres’ approach.

“Our only disagreement is on the depth he went into on masturbation and the details of human intimacy,” Assistant County Superintendent of Schools Armin Weems said in August 1968.

But in the face of opposition, the San Mateo County Board of Education stopped requiring use of the videos in September 1968 after a trial run with its pilot family life education training, news articles indicated. San Francisco schools dropped using the videos in their own family life program after showing them in the fall of 1967. Both areas still kept sexual education as part of the curriculum, spurring a parents’ group to file a lawsuit against the San Mateo County board. The group lost, and the United States Supreme Court dismissed its appealed suit in 1976, according to news reports.

kwilliamson@examiner.com