Pam Meermans, deputy director of Family and Children’s Services of Clark County, says Wray’s case is a reminder that, like other crimes, sex abuse crimes are “all about access and opportunity” to victims.
She applauds advances in fighting child sex abuse but cautions against a “false sense of security,” noting that “95 percent of the time, victims have relationships with their offenders,” relationships that can develop even in family settings.
Twenty-eight years after his conviction, Wray, now 61, continues to serve consecutive sentences of 10 to 25 years on each of three rape counts and two years on each of seven counts of gross sexual imposition at the Southeast Correctional Facility in Lancaster. Retired Clark County Common Pleas Court Judge Gerald Lorig imposed the sentences Sept. 17, 1984. Wray also served 60 days for sexual imposition.
The failure to report Wray to authorities (not then required by Scout policy or law) gave him the opportunity to assault more boys. Two of the indictments against Wray involved assaults that happened between February and May 1984 — after the Scouts suspended Wray, but before his arrest.
Local court records show he was indicted for victimizing 13 boys and one girl aged 6 to 13 between February 1981 and May 1984. The charges involved fondling, oral sex and anal sex and resulted in the 11 convictions.
The records also show that during their 1984 criminal investigation, Springfield police detectives William Herier and William LeVan learned that Wray had been sentenced on two counts of child molesting in 1975 in Maricopa County, Ariz.
Arizona court records obtained by the News-Sun say Wray molested a 9-year-old girl and 8-year-old boy with the same last name in September and November of 1974. (Records don’t specify whether they were brother and sister.)
Wray served his two terms of 5 to 10 years at the same time.
Current screening procedures used by both Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the Scouts now are designed to discover such a past criminal history and bar him from volunteering.
Documents released by court order include an Oct. 18, 1984, letter about Wray written by Tecumseh Council scout executive George W. Stone.
The letter reports that on Dec. 5, 1983, the Scoutmaster of Troop 45 at Springfield’s Hope Lutheran Church informed Stone a scout had accused Wray, then an assistant scout master, of molesting him.
Released records show Wray had registered as a troop committee member the previous December.
After confirming the report with the boy’s parents, wrote Stone, he and the church’s pastor, William Zimmann, “confronted Mr. Wray … He denied having done anything but agreed to resign from his position … and to periodic counseling sessions.”
The letter’s next sentence underscores how attitudes toward reporting sexual crimes against children have changed in the past 20 years: “The pastor, the boy’s parents and the Scoutmaster were satisfied with this arrangement.”
Meermans, who has spent more than 25 years working with child abuse and child sex abuse victims, said the action doesn’t surprise her.
“Back in the ’80s, people just couldn’t wrap their minds around” child sex abuse, she said. “Nobody knew how to address this. Nobody.”
Even child advocates hurt children by the procedures they used in investigating and prosecuting cases, she said.
Stone’s letter asks Robert Durgin, Area 6 Scout Director, to “advise me of what further action I need to take to place this man in the confidential file to prevent him from again registering as a Boy Scout Leader” and reports Wray’s imprisonment.
It’s not clear whether the molested Scout mentioned in Stone’s Dec. 5, 1983, letter is the same child Wray confessed to abusing in a July 5, 1984, sworn statement to Springfield police detectives Herier and LeVan.
Nor was it possible to obtain a list of the Scouts then in the troop to cross-check their names against the names of Wray’s other victims and determine how many of the cases sprung from his involvement with Scouting.
Meermans said a longer list would not have surprised her.
“This was a busy, busy guy,” she said, adding that the average pedophile may have “hundreds of victims.”
The Scout mentioned in Wray’s confession was 11, and Wray confessed he had sexual encounters with him “probably four or five times.”
In addition to his involvement in Scouts, Wray volunteered as a Big Brother, a position in which he met the first boy mentioned in his confession. He admitted that he was sexually involved with the boy multiple times a week for four years, beginning when the child was 8.
“There at the end, he was really getting tired of it, and I started slacking off,” Wray said. “I really fell in love with that little boy.”
Divorced for a second time when he was arrested, Wray told detectives his memories of some of the encounters were fuzzy because “I was drinking heavy … I have a drinking problem.”
At times in his statement, Wray sought to shift some of the blame to the children, calling some of the sex a “more or less mutual thing” adding, “I don’t want to sound like the heavy all the time.”
His victims included boys who were brothers and step brothers of one another. The girl he abused was a sister of one of his boy victims, mirroring his crimes in Arizona, if the children with the same name in that case were indeed brother and sister.
Wray’s youngest victim was 6 and at least one of the boys, a 9-year-old, had previously been abused within his family.
“I remember his mother told me he got assaulted by his uncle twice, and that kind of put a little click in my head, so I didn’t (continue),” Wray said.
At the end of the interview, a detective asked Wray if he had anything he wanted to add.
“Yes, there, there is,” he said. “I realize I am sick. I am recovering from my alcoholism right now. I would like to get some professional help to get over this sexual problem I have. I share deep remorse, sadness for all the lives I have messed up, and I just need help. I don’t want to go back to prison, I will do anything in my power to cooperate.”
Meermans said that whatever rules, laws and procedures society puts in place ultimately will run into a reality that’s as hard as a stone wall.
“If you’re a good criminal, you’re going to find multiple pathways to get what you want,” she said. In the case of sex offenders frustrated by screening procedure, that can include developing close relationships with family and friends and even marrying women with children to have access to the children.
“The best way to combat this is to have really good open communications with your kids about everything,” she said, so they can reach out if a molester starts doing something that makes them uncomfortable.
In Ronald Wray’s case, one Scout was able to do that in December of 1983. The bad news was that it came after he and others had become Wray’s victims.
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