Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 25, 1993 TAG: 9303250235
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CAROLYN CLICK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GRAY FIGHTS REVOCATION
Dr. William Gray on Wednesday defended himself against charges he sexually abused young male patients but said he held no grudge against his accusers because they were `'messed up" and "got manipulated" by aggressive investigators.Gray, testifying for the first time before a state Board of Medicine hearing officer, adamantly denied allegations of five young men who say he sexually exploited them over a period of years.
"I never had time to have sex," Gray told hearing officer Anthony Giorno. "I'm the kind of person who doesn't have time for lunch."
Nor, said Gray, would he have needed to engage in the kind of acts described by the accusers. "I never have, never needed to. I have a wife," said Gray.
Gray has already agreed to surrender his license to practice in Virginia as part of an agreement to avoid criminal prosecution on the sex charges in Franklin County.
But he is battling the Board of Medicine's effort to revoke his license permanently. Such revocation likely would mean the end of any opportunity to practice in other states because a revocation would be part of his record.
Although he denies all charges, testimony over the past six days suggests Gray was intensely involved in the personal lives of his troubled former patients. He often provided them rent-free living space, hired them for odd jobs, broke up fights and, in one instance, prescribed birth-control pills for one of their wives.
His testimony and that of others who spoke on his behalf showed a slice of urban life largely invisible to Roanoke by day, where sex comes cheap and friends turn on each other for money and drugs.
Gray described the five who testified against him in June as selfish and volatile, engaging freely in indiscriminate sex. One, he said, was a "male hustler" who held transvestite parties in the apartments above Gray's office until the former psychiatrist threw him out for bothering his patients with their tawdry appearance.
Another, responsible for several knife fights, was "the biggest pain I've ever had to live with."
Gray suggested Wednesday it was money that prompted his accusers, some of whom he had treated as far back as 1983, to concoct the sex and drug allegations. Gray said one alerted him to the blackmail scheme, saying if he did not come up with $35,000 they would spread rumors that the doctor was a homosexual.
Yet, Gray told a skeptical Assistant Attorney General Carol Russek, he has overcome his initial anger toward the alleged conspirators.
"I've forgiven everyone," said Gray. "I don't carry grudges."
Gray said his background as the son of Southern Baptist missionaries - a background that included internment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II - has prepared him for setbacks in life.
"You do what you have to do to survive sometimes," he said, after describing an incident as a teenager in Java when he escaped a tribe of headhunters. "I've dealt with danger all my life and I'm not scared of it," he said.
The state on Wednesday aggressively attacked Gray's assertions that the prescriptions he wrote for the five - prescriptions that included antibiotics for bronchitis and pain medication for a tooth ache as well as anti-depressants - were based on complete examinations and sound medical judgment.
And the normally soft-spoken Gray flared when Russek questioned him in detail on what those examinations entailed.
Asked by Russek if he thought a gynecological examination was important before prescribing birth control pills, Gray agreed but said he did not conduct a Pap smear on the young woman.
"Me, a psychiatrist, do a Pap smear?" he said. "You'd really put me in jail then."
Gray acknowledged he occasionally failed to note the drugs he prescribed in the patients' charts, but said that was because the request for aid often was after hours when he did not have access to his charts.
He said he primarily kept the medical charts for legal purposes, anyway.
"So it's not a medical necessity, it's a legal necessity?" asked Giorno.
"It's a legal necessity," answered Gray.
Gray is expected to face another day of questioning before the hearing, held at the Patrick Henry Hotel, wraps up Thursday or Friday.
Giorno will then present a report to the full Board of Medicine, which will act on the license revocation at its June meeting.