Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 12, 1992 TAG: 9203120096
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: VICTORIA RATCLIFF, CHARLES HITE and DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"I'm very angry about it. It can happen to anybody," Gray said Wednesday.
Gray, a Roanoke child psychiatrist, made his comments less than a week after the state Board of Medicine suspended his license. He also faces charges of sexually molesting a 16-year-old Roanoke County boy and a continuing investigation in Franklin County for similar activity at his Smith Mountain Lake home.
The allegations are groundless, Gray said, and he has no idea why some of his former patients and the other young people he helped have turned on him.
"Most of these people, you can get them to say anything. Some are psychopaths, some are troubled, some want to please whoever they're talking to," he said.
Doctors who treat emotionally troubled patients are always vulnerable, Gray said. Those patients "are more likely to make accusations and more likely to exaggerate," he said.
Gray believes the charges against him were precipitated by a fight that occurred Nov. 5 between two young men he had befriended.
Gray talked about his predicament while waiting to testify as a witness in a Roanoke Circuit Court trial on a malicious wounding charge against one of the men - David A. Mullins. The case was postponed Wednesday when Mullins failed to appear.
When the fight occurred, Gray said, he was using his truck to help the other man - Daniel Ray Taylor - move from an apartment on Albemarle Avenue to Highland Avenue in Southwest Roanoke. Mullins showed up, and he and Taylor began fighting, Gray said.
Taylor was stabbed twice in the back with a hunting knife, and Mullins was charged with malicious wounding. Taylor told police that Mullins was "upset because Gray was paying more attention to Taylor than to Mullins," authorities said.
Gray said police have told him that Taylor and Mullins both said Gray was their lover.
"I don't know why they would say that. No, it's not true," Gray said.
Gray said he has never been involved in homosexual activity. "I'm not into that."
But, he said, there have been occasions when gay patients have developed crushes on him the same way heterosexual patients might develop a crush on a doctor of the opposite sex.
"When you're treating people, or you know people, they like you and you're nice to them. They get real possessive and don't want you to have any other friends. They don't want to share you. They don't want you to help somebody else more than you help them."
That is a chance he takes in his profession, Gray said. But, he said, he hasn't let that stop him from trying to do what he can to help people who feel caught in hopeless situations.
He has allowed many troubled juveniles and homeless people to stay in apartments in his four-story brick office at 310 Washington Avenue S.W. He said his efforts to help people are not just limited to patients. He said he pays $1,500 to $1,600 a month to keep up an orphanage for 50 children in the Peruvian Amazon.
Gray said the orphanage is run by two Baptist ministers and is associated with a church. Efforts by the Roanoke Times & World-News to determine the locatation of that orphanage have failed.
His desire to help people stems from his upbringing - the child of missionaries, one of whom died in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines during World War II, he said.
Gray remembers growing up in the prison camp between 1941 and 1944, when he was a baby and young child. During the Communist revolution in China, when he was about 6 years old, Gray said, he lived as a homeless beggar on the streets of Peking. He said he wandered the streets with a group of children who took care of him for about six months.
"I've been through a hell of a lot worse than they've ever been through," he said, referring to his patients.
Because of his experiences, Gray said, he has never been able to say no to troubled kids who seek his help. "I don't give up on people. I can't. That's why I'm so successful as a psychiatrist. I don't give up."
Gray said he's the only psychiatrist in town who houses troubled patients in his home and office. He said that's because he's truly interested in helping people, whereas other doctors are in it for money.
Gray said he and his wife have taken "dozens and dozens" of children into their home as foster children through the years. He said he has one child of his own - a daughter, who is married and lives out of the area.
During the 1970s when he practiced in California, Gray said, "I kept running into kids all over. No one wanted them, no one took care of them." He and his wife, Emily, became involved in foster care.
Gray blames one of his foster children - a 16-year-old boy he was trying to adopt - for the demise of his practice in California.
That boy accused Gray of sexually molesting him. The boy's allegations were investigated by San Diego police, who recommended that Gray be charged with a felony. However, prosecutors decided on an out-of-court settlement in 1978 in which Gray agreed to seek psychiatric counseling and stop the practice of child psychiatry for three years. He also agreed to surrender his foster-home license.
Although police believed the boy was a "credible witness and appeared truthful," Gray said the boy lied.
Gray believes the boy invented the allegations against him because he discovered that the child was molesting other children. When he confronted the boy, the boy complained to another adult, who took the case to authorities.
Gray said that he had taken the boy into his home when he was 12 and had promised to adopt the child if he behaved himself for four years.
Asked why he agreed to stop treating children and receive treatment himself for three years, Gray said, "I agreed because I thought I needed it at that point. I was falling apart. I couldn't handle any more emotionally."
After all of that, Gray said, the boy who started it "still wanted to come back home." Gray said he considered letting him come back, but social workers wouldn't permit it.
He said another boy involved in allegations against him that were dismissed by the California medical board later followed him to Roanoke and lived in his office building for a year and a half. That boy, who had numerous scrapes with police, hanged himself in the Roanoke jail several years ago, Gray said.
Gray said he moved to Roanoke in the early 1980s and again began helping teen-agers and young adults who had nowhere else to go. In the past 10 years, he said, he has let 45 to 55 young people live in his office building.
"You become their support system. They need money for gas and they contact you or come by. If they're broke and need money for food, I give them $10. Or I let them cut the lawn or weed or paint" for spending money, he said.
His wife got particularly tired of one of the young men, who kept calling his house in the middle of the night asking for money and help, Gray said. "Some of these people, you have a hard time not helping them if they call. They're not friends, they're just people who need help."
Gray said his wife has been "devastated" by the charges against him.
Some of the people Gray let live in the building had criminal records, which angered the Roanoke Police Department, he said. Gray accused the Roanoke vice squad of spreading rumors that he was gay.
"The Roanoke city vice squad is not in the business of spreading rumors. We don't have time for foolishness," Vice Lt. Steve Lugar said Wednesday.
by CNB