The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial: A Commentary

by Doug Linder (2003)

　　The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial, the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history, should serve as a cautionary tale. When it was all over, the government had spent seven years and $15 million dollars investigating and prosecuting a case that led to no convictions. More seriously, the McMartin case left in its wake hundreds of emotionally damaged children, as well as ruined careers for members of the McMartin staff. No one paid a bigger price than Ray Buckey, one of the principal defendants in the case, who spent five years in jail awaiting trial for a crime (most people recognize today) he never committed. McMartin juror Brenda Williams said that the trial experience taught her to be more cautious: I now realize how easily something can be said and misinterpreted and blown out of proportion. Another juror, Mark Bassett, singled out experts for blame: I thought some of the expert testimony about the children told you more about the expert than the child. I mean, if the expert says children are always 100% believable and then you have a child who is not believable, either the expert is extremely biased or they've never seen anything like that child before.

　　The McMartin trial had its origins in a call placed to police in Manhattan Beach, California by Judy Johnson, the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old son who attended the McMartin Preschool on about ten occasions in 1983. Johnson told Detective Jane Hoag that a school aide, Ray Buckey, the 25-year-old son of the owner of the preschool, had molested her son. Despite the fact that the young boy was unable to identify Ray from photos and medical investigations of the boy showed no signs of sexual abuse, the police conducted searches of Buckey's home, confiscating such evidence as a rubber duck, a graduation robe, and Playboy magazines. Detective Hoag arrested Buckey on September 7, 1983.

　　The next day, Police Chief Harry Kuhlmeyer sent a letter to 200 McMartin Preschool parents informing them that Ray Buckey was suspected of child abuse and asking them for information. The letter asked parents to 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. The letter listed the possible criminal acts under investigation:

　　[The 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 Ray Buckey tie up a child, is important.

　　Chief Kuhlmeyer's letter ended by asking parents 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. Needless to say, it wasn't long before everyone connected with the McMartin Preschool, and indeed most everyone in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, knew of the ongoing investigation of Ray Buckey. Judy Johnson's reports of misbehavior at the McMartin Preschool became increasingly bizarre. She claimed that Peggy Buckey, Ray's mother, was involved in satanic practices: she was said to have taken Johnson's son to a church, where the boy was made to watch a baby being beheaded, and then was forced to drink the blood. She insisted that Ray Buckey had sodomized her son while his head was in the toilet, and had taken him to a car wash and locked him in the trunk. Johnson told police that Ray pranced around the preschool in a cape and a Santa Claus costume, and that other teacher

s at the school chopped up rabbits and placed some sort of star on her son's bottom.

　　Eventually most prosecutors would come to recognize Johnson's allegations as the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic, but the snowball of suspicion had been started rolling. Chief Kuhlmeyer's letter led to new accusations and demands from parents for a full-scale investigation of doings at the McMartin Preschool. Bowing to this pressure, the District Attorney's office handed a major portion of the continuing investigation over to Kee MacFarlane, a consultant for the Children's Institute International (CII), an agency for the treatment of abused children.

　　Parents were encouraged to send their children to CII for two-hour interviews. MacFarlane pressed 400 children, through a series of leading questions and the offer of rewards, to report instances of abuse at McMartin. Children generally denied seeing any evidence of abuse at first, but eventually many gave MacFarlane the stories that she clearly wanted to hear. After the interviews, MacFarlane told parents that their children had been abused, and described the nature of the alleged abuse. By March 1984, 384 former McMartin students had been diagnosed as sexually abused.

　　In addition to interviews, 150 children received medical examinations. Dr. Astrid Heger, of CII, concluded that 80% of the children she examined had been molested. For the most part, she based her findings not on physical evidence, but on medical histories and her belief that any conclusion should validate the child's history.

　　On March 22, 1984, a grand jury indicted Ray Buckey, Peggy Buckey (Ray's mother), Peggy Ann Buckey (Ray's sister), Virginia McMartin (founder of the preschool thirty years earlier), and three other McMartin teachers, Mary Ann Jackson, Bette Raidor, and Babette Spitler. The grand jury initially indicted the McMartin Seven on 115 counts of child sexual abuse. Two months later, and additional 93 indictment counts were added, as District Attorney Robert Philobosian pursued his strategy of hyping the McMartin case to boost his chances in an upcoming primary election. In June, bail for Peggy Buckey was set at one million dollars. Ray Buckey was held without bail.

　　The Preliminary Hearing

　　By the time the preliminary hearing began in August 1984, Prosecutor Lael Rubin was telling the media that the seven defendants committed 397 sexual crimes (far more than the number for which they were indicted) and that thirty additional individuals associated with the McMartin Preschool were under investigation.

　　Searches of the McMartin Preschool and the homes of defendants failed to produce much incriminating evidence. No nude photographs of children were discovered, despite the insistence of investigators and parents that such photographing was commonplace at McMartin. No evidence was found of the secret rooms where massive instances of sexual abuse were said to have taken place. In March 1985, a group of nearly fifty McMartin parents, determined to unearth the fabled secret tunnels, begin digging at a lot next to the school. A few days later, the parents were joined in their efforts by an archeological firm hired by the District Attorney's office. Still, no secret rooms were ever discovered.

　　The longest——and probably strangest——preliminary hearing in history began before Municipal Court Judge Aviva Bobb in early 1984. The chaotic proceeding featured seven defendants (each with his or her own attorney) and three prosecutors. Unlike the typical preliminary hearing in which the prosecution tries to demonstrate cause for bringing the defendants to trial and the defense passively observes, the defense in the McMartin hearing mounted an affirmative defense, aggressively cross-examining a parade of prosecution witnesses including allegedly abused children, McMartin parents, therapists, and medical experts. The defense repeatedly tried to ra

ise questions as to how abuse on such a massive scale could have gone undetected for years and suggested that much of the testimony of the prosecution's child witnesses was flatly unbelievable.

　　Kee MacFarlane testified at the preliminary hearing that the abuse was able to go on for years because children either suffered from denial syndrome or were afraid that revealing McMartin's dark secrets would result in their own deaths, or the deaths of family members. MacFarlane explained that she succeeded in bringing out the secrets with the help of anatomically correct dolls and a set of puppets, through which she asked children questions during her interviews. The puppets included Mr. Alligator, Mr. Snake, Detective Dog, and Mr. Sparky. Videotapes of the interviews also showed that MacFarlane and other therapists relied heavily on leading questions and subtle pressure to persuade children to join the chorus of accusers. The defense played tapes that showed therapist Shawn Connerly telling a child interviewee that 183 kids had already revealed yucky secrets and that all the McMartin teachers were sick in the head and deserved to be beaten up.

　　The testimony of children at the preliminary hearing was shockingly bizarre, and often riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Several children reported being photographed while performing nude somersaults as part of the Naked Movie Star Game. One child said that as the game was being played the children sang, What you see is what you are, you're a naked movie star! Others testified as to playing a nude version of Cowboys and Indians—— sometimes with the Indians sexually assaulting the cowboys, and sometimes vice versa. Children testified that sexual assaults took place on farms, in circus houses, in the homes of strangers, in car washes, in store rooms, and in a secret room at McM

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