McMartin Preschool Trial, Wikipedia,

McMartin Preschool Trial

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool

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), the mentally illmother 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).

Virginia McMartin

Judy Johnson's belief was based on her son's painful bowel movements, though he denied her suggestion that his preschool teachers had molested him. In addition, she also made several more extravagant accusations, including that people at the daycare had traveled to zoos and 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.

Peggy McMartin Buckey

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.

In 1985, Judy Johnson was diagnosed with paranoid 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, 360 children had been identified as having been abused. Astrid Heppenstall Heger performed medical examinations and took photos of minute scarring purportedly caused by anal penetration. 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. Some claim the questioning itself may have led to false-memory syndrome among the children who were questioned. Bizarre allegations

Some of the accusations were bizarre and, at times, defied the laws of physics. 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 McMartin's 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.

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 presented their theory of sexual abuse. The children's testimony during the preliminary hearings was inconsistent. 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. [4] 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.

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 the editor at the Los Angeles Times overseeing the coverage became engaged to marry the prosecutor.

Aftermath

The McMartin preschool itself was closed and leveled. Three of the accused have died since the trial concluded. At least one former alleged victim has retracted his story and said he lied, believing he was protecting his younger siblings, and to please his parents.

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.

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. ... Over the last few years, it has become commonplace to describe the ritual-abuse trials as witch hunts, and surely that's as good a metaphor as any. Yet in one important way, it isn't quite right. In the prototypical witch hunts in Europe and in the Massachusetts colony, the accused were often scapegoats for some calamity — disease, bad harvests, the birth of a deformed child. In the witch hunts of the 80's, there was no such injury to be avenged or repaired. There was, however, a psychological need to be fulfilled. Our willingness to believe in ritual abuse was grounded in anxiety about putting children in day care at a time when mothers were entering the work force in unprecedented numbers. It was as though there were some dark, self-defeating relief in trading niggling everyday doubts about our children's care for our absolute worst fears — for a story with monsters, not just human beings who didn't always treat our kids exactly as we would like; for a fate so horrific and bizarre that no parent, no matter how vigilant, could have ever prevented it.

Allegations of secret tunnels

An excavation undertaken in May 1990 claimed to reveal tunnels under the McMartin Preschool. A relevant quote from the summation is written as follows: "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." The archaeologist's claims were refuted in a 1995 article published by the Institute for Psychological Therapies. The study showed 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 was no way for the defendants to fill in any purported 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.