Harry Shier ran a Sanitarium in San Fernando Valley California in 1952 dealing mainly with Alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Area 93 covering Districts 1, 2, 7, 11, 16 an 17 (http://www.sfvaa.org/Service.html). In a shocking expose’ by his victim Barry Lopez, the lax controls of the people who often run these facilities and the link between Alcoholics Anonymous enabling them through their active participation in these “autonomous” organizations is glaringly shown by a heart wrenching story of the abuse of the victim of this pedophile. it should be remembered that Alcoholics Anonymous actively recruits its members from jails and prisons and it is not just for DUIs anymore. They go after the violent criminals, rapists and con men also and they use the court system under their “Cooperation with the Professional Community” (CPC), “Public information) (PI) or “Hospitals and Institutions” (H&I) committees to get as many new prospects as possible.

Please note that San Fernando Valley Alcoholics Anonymous advertizes under its “Hospital and Institutions” (H&I) that is goes to Tehachapi State Prison which is a “SUPERMAX” prison full of hardened and very dangerous criminals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehachapi_State_Prison) and they are working on bringing these “prospects” back to your AA home groups. See –http://www.sfvhi.org/Facility.html

Barry Lopez was seven when the rapes first started and continued on for 4 years and he eventually found out that Harry Sheir was also raping his brother. Like many of the people who end up “under the radar” in positions of control over others who are often the victims of a well meaning “Intervention” or being court ordered (mandated), Harry Shier started by pretending to be a “Doctor” in Canada and then ended up running a sanitarium for mainly Alcoholics. Lopez eventually escaped from Sheir when his mother married and they went to New York where his stepfather became a major participant in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous in New York City General Service Area 49. From that point the stepfather joined in the “management” of the North East Region of Alcoholics Anonymous starting with the District meetings of AA in New York and then the region. When Barry confided in his stepfather what had happened and wanted to press charges his stepfather told him to drop it, primarily because Harry Sheir was “working with alcoholics” just like in the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous. Barry decided to come forward primarily because of reading about the people coming forward from the Penn State Jerry Sandusky pedophile arrest and conviction.

Barry Lopez described his ordeal and the reasons he decided to come forward in the January 2013 edition of Harpers Magazine (this is only a small part of the article, you have to pay to register to read the entire article) harpers.org/archive/2013/01/sliver-of-sky/ Barry did however go on NPR radio and explained his reasons and struggle to come forward and can be read and the podcast downloaded.

In ‘Sliver Of Sky,’ Barry Lopez Confronts Childhood Sexual Abuse

January 10, 2013 5:00 PM (partial clip)

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Why do monstrously abusive relationships persist between people, and how did my guest, Barry Lopez, become trapped in such a relationship? That’s one of the larger questions Lopez wrestles with in his personal essay about being repeatedly raped by a pedophile over a period of four years, beginning when Lopez was 7, in 1952.

Lopez is best known for his writing about the natural world. He won a 1986 National Book Award for “Arctic Dreams.” In the January edition of Harper’s, he writes in-depth for the first time about the abuse and the ways in which it shaped his life. The pedophile was Harry Shier, a doctor running a sanitarium near the Lopez home in California’s San Fernando Valley, where Shier supervised the treatment of people with addiction problems, primarily alcoholics.

One of Shier’s patients was the cousin of Lopez’ mother, which is how Shier entered Lopez’s life. Lopez would learn many years later that Shier’s medical degree was fraudulent; that before moving to the sanitarium in California, he’d worked in Canada, where he performed botched surgeries on the groin areas of boys. After leaving Canada, Shier did time for raping a boy in Colorado. And when he worked at the sanitarium in California, Lopez was not the only boy he abused.

{snip}

LOPEZ: You know, Terry, it’s all speculative on my part. Until he died, I tried to get my father to tell me what he did when he went out there and talked to those detectives. And he told me a dozen different stories, and I know that what he finally decided to do when he got there was something that he was ashamed of.

He made decisions about the situation that suited him and really were a betrayal of me.

GROSS: My impression from your article, so tell me if I’m wrong, was that when you told your stepfather, he believed you, and he went to the authorities in California and told them, but he decided not to pursue it, he decided not to press charges. And I’m not sure whether he was trying to protect you and trying to prevent you from putting you – from being on the witness stand or

whether he was trying to protect himself and the rest of the family from going through something public and emotional and maybe having their reputations tarnished, because I think there was even less of an understanding then than there is now about what child abuse is.

LOPEZ: I think you’re right. I don’t think in the end – for him, because I became successful as a student and prep school – and, you know, had a – my life changed completely, leaving California in a lower-middle-class environment and moving into a brownstone on 35th Street in Manhattan and going to debutante balls. My life changed so dramatically that he was able to catalog these changes and say: Look, see, see, it’s worked out just fine.

And I think he convinced himself that my pain and confusion was not very important and what was more important were things like satisfying his own sense of justice. And a complicating factor for him was that he was a person with a very high profile in Alcoholics Anonymous in New York City and basically in the region from Philadelphia to Boston.

He was widely known and widely respected. And a complicating factor for him was the fact that Harry Shier – who was the faux physician who abused me – ran that sanitarium mostly to treat alcoholics. And my father’s, stepfather’s primary allegiance was to a person he continued to believe was a legitimate doctor.

And because he treated alcoholics, his work, ultimately, for my stepfather was more important than whatever it was that I went through, which he could not understand or sympathize with.

Read the entire transcript: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=168964002

A more recent story of what happened to 7 year old Barry Lopez is the story of the arrest for attempted pedophilia of 12 Step Councilor David Scratchely who at the time was a director of the Matt Talbot New Hope Recovery Center of Seattle Washington in Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Area 72 in 2011. The Harry Sheir story mirrors the David Scratchely story almost exactly, except for the fact the child was saved before being raped. David Scratchely was not a “Doctor” also and upon examination his credentials were false, just like those of Harry Sheir.

For more on David Scratchely, see – http://stinkin-thinkin.com/2011/09/04/12-step-psychologist-arrested-on-a…

The Catholic Community Services of Western Washington and The Matt Talbot New Hope Recovery Center, in King County Seattle, Washington is also being sued by the patients of David Scratchely for failure to do adequate background checks on him, see –https://www.courthousenews.com/2012/07/17/48445.htm

Hopefully, Mr. Lopez coming forward with this information will get other people to come forward also. This is the only way to stop the very dangerous trends of pedophilia, rape, assault and financial scams which are frequently covered up in Alcoholics Anonymous because of the “code of silence” about informing on other AA members to the proper authorities.

http://www.orange-papers.org/forum/node/3210