McMartin preschool trial

File:Virginiamcmartin.jpg

Virginia McMartin

The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case of the 1980s. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. It was the longest and most expensive criminal trial of its time. Accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1984 to 1987, and the trial ran from 1987 to 1990.

Initial allegations

In 1983, Judy Johnson (1944-1986), mother of one of the Manhattan Beach, California preschool's young students, complained to the police that her son had been sodomized by her estranged husband and by McMartin teacher Ray Buckey, who was the grandson of school founder Virginia McMartin and son of administrator Peggy McMartin Buckey (1926-2001).

Judy Johnson's belief began when her son had painful bowel movements. What happened next is still disputed. Some sources state that at that time, he denied her suggestion that his preschool teachers had molested him. One source stated that a hospital exam confirmed he was sodomized, and that he named a teacher at the school as the perpetrator.

In addition, she also made several more extravagant accusations, including that people at the daycare had sexual encounters with animals. Ray Buckey was questioned, but was not prosecuted due to lack of evidence. The police then sent an open letter to about 200 parents of students at the McMartin school, stating that their children might have been abused, and asking the parents to question their children:

September 8, 1983. Dear Parent: This Department is conducting a criminal investigation involving child molestation (288 P.C.) Ray Buckey, an employee of Virginia McMartin's Pre-School, was arrested September 7, 1983 by this Department. The following procedure is obviously an unpleasant one, but to protect the rights of your children as well as the rights of the accused, this inquiry is necessary for a complete investigation. Records indicate that your child has been or is currently a student at the pre-school. We are asking your assistance in this continuing investigation. Please question your child to see if he or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a victim. Our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include: oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttock or chest area, and sodomy, possibly committed under the pretense of "taking the child's temperature." Also photos may have been taken of children without their clothing. Any information from your child regarding having ever observed Ray Buckey to leave a classroom alone with a child during any nap period, or if they have ever observed Ray Buckey tie up a child, is important. Please complete the enclosed information form and return it to this Department in the enclosed stamped return envelope as soon as possible. We will contact you if circumstances dictate same. We ask you to please keep this investigation strictly confidential because of the nature of the charges and the highly emotional effect it could have on our community. Please do not discuss this investigation with anyone outside your immediate family. Do not contact or discuss the investigation with Raymond Buckey, any member of the accused defendant's family, or employees connected with the McMartin Pre-School.

Judy Johnson was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia and in 1986 was found dead in her home from complications of chronic alcoholism.

Interviewing and examining the children

Several hundred children were then questioned by the Children’s Institute International (CII), a Los Angeles abuse therapy clinic. By spring of 1984, it was claimed that 360 children had been abused. Astrid Heppenstall Heger performed medical examinations and took photos of minute scarring which she stated were caused by anal penetration. Journalist John Earl believes that her findings were based on unsubstantiated medical histories. Critics have alleged that the questioners asked the children leading questions, repetitively, which, it is said, always yields positive responses from young children, making it impossible to know what the child actually experienced. Others believe that the questioning itself may have led to false-memory syndrome among the children who were questioned. Ultimately only 41 of the original 360 children testified during the grand jury and pre-trial hearings, and less than a dozen testified during the actual trial.

The interviewing techniques used during investigations of the allegations were tested and found more effective than simple suggestive techniques in generating false accusations against visitors to a preschool classroom.

Bizarre allegations

Some of the accusations were bizarre. It was alleged that, in addition to having been sexually abused, they saw witches fly, traveled in a hot-air balloon, and were taken through underground tunnels. When shown a series of photographs by Danny Davis, the McMartins' lawyer, one child identified actor Chuck Norris as one of the abusers. There were claims of orgies at car washes and airports, and of children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they would be abused, then cleaned up and presented back to their unsuspecting parents. Some children said they were made to play a game called "Naked Movie Star" in which they were photographed nude.

"What surprised me as an investigative journalist was that nobody looked beyond the seemingly fanciful nature of the disclosures. Nobody tried to interpret what the disclosures might mean through a child's frame of reference and perception. Nobody searched for plausible explanation....children talked about...improbable events like jumping out of airplanes and seeing a horse killed. Yet, investigators did not track reports that Raymond Buckey had a friend who ran a special effects studio or that Virginia McMartin's sister owned a horse ranch."

Trial

In March 1984, Virginia McMartin, Peggy McMartin Buckey, Ray Buckey, Ray's sister Peggy Ann Buckey and teachers Mary Ann Jackson, Bette Raidor, and Babette Spitler were charged with 208 counts of child abuse. In the 20 months of preliminary hearings, the prosecution, led by attorney Lael Rubin, presented their theory of sexual abuse. The children's testimony during the preliminary hearings was inconsistent. Michelle Smith, co-author of Michelle Remembers and alleged victim of satanic ritual abuse, met with the parents and children involved in the trial, and was believed by the initial prosecutor Glenn Stevens to have influenced the children's testimony. In 1986, a new district attorney called the evidence "incredibly weak," and dropped all charges against Virginia McMartin, Peggy Ann Buckey, Mary Ann Jackson, Bette Raidor and Babette Spitler. Peggy McMartin Buckey and Ray Buckey remained in custody awaiting trial; Peggy McMartin's bail had been set at $1 million and Ray Buckey had been denied bail. The cases went to trial, and in 1990, after three years of testimony and nine weeks of deliberation by the jury, Peggy McMartin Buckey was acquitted on all counts. Ray Buckey was cleared on 39 of 52 counts, and freed on bail after more than five years in jail. He was retried later on six of the 13 counts, which produced another hung jury. The prosecution then gave up trying to obtain a conviction, and the case was closed with all charges against Ray Buckey dismissed. He had been jailed for 5 years without ever being convicted of any wrongdoing. Nine of 11 jurors at a press conference following the trial stated that they believed the children had been molested. These same jurors stated that they believed that the evidence did not allow them to state who had committed the abuse beyond a reasonable doubt.

Media coverage

Wayne Satz, at the time a reporter for the Los Angeles ABC affiliate television station KABC, reported on the case and the children's allegations. He presented an unchallenged view of the children's and parents' claims. Satz later entered into a romantic relationship with Kee MacFarlane, the social worker at the Children's Institute International, who was interviewing the children. Another instance of media conflict of interest occurred when David Rosenzweig, the editor at the Los Angeles Times overseeing the coverage, became engaged to marry Lael Rubin, the prosecutor.

Legacy

The McMartin preschool was closed and the building was dismantled. As of 2008 three of the accused have died. In 2005 one of the children (now an adult) retracted the allegations of abuse.

Never did anything to me, and I never saw them doing anything. I said a lot of things that didn't happen. I lied. ... Anytime I would give them an answer that they didn't like, they would ask again and encourage me to give them the answer they were looking for. ... I felt uncomfortable and a little ashamed that I was being dishonest. But at the same time, being the type of person I was, whatever my parents wanted me to do, I would do.

In The Devil in The Nursery, Margaret Talbot for the New York Times summarized the case:

When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80's — the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities.

Jane McCord in the book Behind the Playground Walls - Sexual Abuse in Preschools in her chapter "A Tale of Two Communities" states that in the McMartin case:

There appear to be no winners and many, many losers ... it certainly raised more questions than it ever answered.

Legal

In many states, laws were passed allowing children to testify on closed-circuit TV so the children would not be traumatized by facing the accused. In 1988 case of Coy v. Iowa these laws were held to violate the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees the right of the accused to confront witnesses against them. However, this doctrine is limited; in the 1990 case Maryland v. Craig, the United States Supreme Court ruled that closed circuit testimony was permissible where it was limited to circumstances in which the judge found likelihood of harm to the minor from testifying in open court. One lasting legacy of the trial is an increased understanding of how to question very young children for evidence, with an eye toward their capacity for suggestibility and false memories.

Continued allegations of secret tunnels

An excavation was undertaken in May 1990 by Gary Stickel, and he claimed he found evidence of tunnels under the McMartin Preschool. Relevant quotes from the summation are written as follows:

"The results of the survey by Ground penetrating Radar proved consistent with discoveries of the subsequent excavations, all of which confirmed not only the basic descriptions of children but also specific details of location, interior features and putative function." [...] "If the stories of the children were bogus fantasies, there is no excuse for the tunnels discovered under the school. If there really were tunnels, there is no excuse for the glib dismissal of any and all of the complaints of the children and their parents."

A 1995 article by freelance journalist John Earl published by the Institute for Psychological Therapies found that the concrete slab floor was undisturbed except for a small patch where the sewer line was tapped into. Once the slab was removed, there was no sign of any materials to line or hold up any tunnels, and there would have been no way for the defendants to fill in any possible tunnels once the investigation began. The report concluded that any disturbed soil under the slab was from the sewer line, and from construction fill buried under the slab, before it was poured. Some dated fill material under the slab was from the year 1940. Earl concludes that there were no tunnels at the preschool below ground.

Joseph Wyatt, professor of psychology at Marshall University, presented a different conclusion to the findings of Gary Stickel. After having read the report he asserted that a far likelier explanation for the findings was that they represented a trash pit, dug by the former owner of the lot prior to the construction of the pre-school. This was based on the finding of numerous bottles, tin cans, plywood as well as the former owner's old mail box. Only three small items were dated after 1966, which was the year the pre-school was built, and they were found near the edge of the concrete slab. Wyatt further speculates that Stickel's conclusions were colored by his collaboration with the parents of the McMartin children.

See also

• Day care sexual abuse hysteria
• False memories
• Indictment: The McMartin Trial - HBO film
• Kern county child abuse cases
• Moral panic
• Wee Care Nursery School
• Wenatchee sex ring
• Witch-hunt

External links

• The Dark Truth About The "Dark Tunnels of McMartin" (John Earl, 1995) - A 33-part comprehensive article by a freelance journalist
• McMartin preschool trial, by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
• McMartin preschool trial at University of Missouri
• McMartin preschool trial at Frontline