Dr. Jacqueline Amati -Mehler, who trained with Dr. William Ayres at Judge Baker in Boston from 1961-1963, described the standard training for ALL child psychiatrists in their group in an email to journalist Victoria Balfour in November, 2006: "In the sessions, it was verbal only. If there was a physical problem, pediatrics took care of it."
However, according to prosecutor Melissa Mckowan in a statement she made on the Ayres blog on January 29, 2010, Amati-Mehler didn't say this in a conversation the prosecutor claims she had with her. What confuses Balfour is why Amati- Mehler would tell her that she remembered Ayres well - even remembering the name of his hometown in Ohio - and that none of them were trained to touch kids, and then why Mckowan claims Amati Mehler told her a different story and that Amati Mehler didn't remember anything about Ayres and couldn't talk about how he was trained?
The $64,000 question is: did the prosecutor even bother to contact the doctors like Amati-Mehler who trained with Ayres that Balfour went to great pains to find? And even if all of the Boston-trained doctors Balfour found told Mckowan a different story than they did to Balfour- which is highly doubtful - why didn't the prosecutor go out and find her own doctors who trained with Ayres in Boston? Sure, it takes a little effort to track them down, but wouldn't the end result be worth it for the DA's office? Since the end of last year's trial, Balfour has located more than a dozen more doctors who trained with Ayres in Boston and at Yale. Some are still even still practicing. They all say that they were never ever permitted to give physicals to boys or girls during the therapeutic session. Heck, even the Judge Baker administration itself told Balfour that in August of 2009,after the Ayres trial. The Judge Baker administrator, Steve Schaeffer was horrified that anyone would even suggest that their doctors would be permitted to give genital exams to boys in therapy at any time in their almost 100 year history.
The Judge Baker administrator Steve Schaeffer asked Balfour why no one from the San Mateo District Attorney's office had ever contacted him to ask how child psychiatrists were trained there. Balfour did not have an answer. Only the San Mateo DA can answer that.
Is the real story that the prosecutor could just not be bothered ? Why did they not call anyone who trained with Ayres in Boston or Yale to the witness stand? Why did the prosecutor say on the Ayres blog in January 2010 that Dr. Jacqueline Amati Mehler is "physically unable to travel" when in fact the doctor was travelling from Rome to Chicago right after the conclusion of the Ayres trial? Is Mckowan misremembering? Confusing Dr. Amati Mehler with another doctor?
And here's more food for thought. Some in the Bay Area news media are now privately discussing among themselves that the San Mateo District Attorney's office does not want to win the Ayres case for fear of getting sued by all of the juveniles who were treated by Ayres in court-ordered sessions.