McMartin preschool

Categories: Los Angeles history | Mass Hysteria

The McMartin preschool case was based on allegations of sexual abuse of the school's children by the school's owners, the McMartin family. After seven years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. It is one of the most famous of all the sexual abuse cases and it was the longest and most expensive trial in the history of the United States to date.

Contents

[edit]

Allegations

In 1983, the 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, the grandson of school founder Virginia McMartin and son of administrator Peggy McMartin Buckey. Her belief was based on the fact that her son suffered from painful bowel movements, though he denied her suggestion that preschool teachers had molested him. In addition, she also claimed that people at the daycare had flown and had sexual encounters with giraffes. Ray Buckey was questioned, but was not prosecuted due to lack of evidence. The police, however, sent a letter to about 200 parents of students at the McMartin school, stating that their children may have been forced into sex, and asking the parents to question their children.

Several hundred children were questioned, and by spring of 1984, 360 children had been identified as having been abused. A doctor concluded that 120 had been sexually abused. No physical evidence was found to support these allegations. The mother who made the original complaint was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia the same year.

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 alone may have led to false-memory syndrome among the children who were questioned.

Some of the children's accusations were bizarre. Some alleged that, in addition to having been sexually abused, they saw witches fly, traveled in a hot-air balloon, and were taken (in one case by actor Chuck Norris) through secret underground tunnels (which were sought by investigators but never found). Ray Buckey was described as having beaten a giraffe to death with a baseball bat in front of the children. There were claims of orgies at car washes and airports, and 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. No child pornography was ever recovered during the investigation.

[edit]

Trial

In March 1984, 208 counts of child abuse were laid against Virginia McMartin, Peggy McMartin Buckey, Ray Buckey, Ray's sister Peggy Ann Buckey, and teachers Mary Ann Jackson, Bette Raidor and Babette Spitler. In the 20 months of preliminary hearings, the prosecution presented a theory that Satanic ritual abuse was afoot at the preschool.

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 Buckley and Ray Buckey remained in custody awaiting trail; 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 about three years of testimony and nine weeks of deliberation by the jury, Peggy McMartin Buckey was acquitted on all counts, and Ray Buckey was cleared on 39 of 52 counts, and freed after more than 2 years in jail. He was retried later on some of the 13 counts, which produced another hung jury. The prosecution then gave up trying to obtain a conviction, and granted Ray Buckey bail. He had been jailed for 5 years without ever once being convicted of any wrongdoing.

[edit]

Media coverage

Like other high-profile criminal trials in the United States, such as the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the McMartin trial was heavily covered by television and print media. In 1986, a telephone survey showed that 96 percent of adults in the area had heard of the case, and over 90 percent of those who had an opinion believed the accused were guilty.

A moral panic of sorts ensued, touching off a witch hunt in which network news shows claimed that Satanic abuse of children in schools and day-care centers was nationwide and rampant.

[edit]

Aftermath

The McMartin preschool itself was closed and leveled (which conspiracy theorists propose was done to eliminate evidence of the tunnels). Three of the accused have died since the trial concluded.

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 U.S. 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.

[edit]

External links

[edit]

Movie