short essay
Background story (courtesy of TruTV):
Virginia McMartin, 79, lived in the small oceanfront community of Manhattan Beach, California. She had opened a preschool on the main drag and hired members of her family and church to help build and run it. Her daughter, Peggy Buckey, 59, was the administrator. The school was considered so exemplary that the town had given Virginia an award.
In 1983, a woman named Judy Johnson dropped off her two-year-old son Matthew at the daycare center. Judy, separated from her husband, mentally unbalanced and struggling to make ends meet, became obsessed with Matthew's anus. He said it hurt him to have bowel movements, so she took him to a doctor, who declined to examine him. On August 11, she examined Matthew in the morning and he seemed okay. However, when he returned home from the preschool, she claimed, his anus was red and itchy. She did not associate it with his diarrhea. Instead, she began to perceive something more nefarious: She believed that Ray Buckey, the only male teacher at the school, was abusing her son.
Judy confronted Matthew, asking him quite directly if Ray Buckey had done something to him. Matthew denied it. She kept up this line of questioning, which got her nowhere, so she switched tactics.
Since her son was playing doctor and giving people "injections," she asked Matthew if Ray had ever done that to him. Again, he said no. However, he did admit that Ray had taken his temperature, and Judy Johnson jumped to the conclusion that this was a disguised form of sexual abuse. She took Matthew to the hospital for a rectal examination.
From there, reports are conflicting. Some say that there was no evidence of actual sexual abuse, while others say that Matthew admitted that he had seen Ray Buckey's penis and that Ray had photographed him. Judy contacted the police.
This was not the first report about child abuse in a daycare center, so the authorities were determined to find out what was going on. Judy spoke on her son's behalf, claiming that he had been photographed naked and tied up. Not only that, he'd seen this done to other children as well. Judy was told to take Matthew to some specialists in child abuse at UCLA.
Unfortunately, the person who examined him was an inexperienced intern. She saw the redness and accepted Judy's interpretation. Based on no real evidence and on no experience with such injuries, the intern diagnosed penile penetration as the cause of the irritation. Thus began the terrible saga that was to be labeled as America's twentieth-century witch-hunt.
So here’s what then happens – the police sent a 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. The contents of the letter said:
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.
Several hundred children were then interviewed, but the techniques used during the investigations were highly suggestive and invited children to “pretend” or “speculate” about supposed events. By spring of 1984, it was claimed that 360 children had been abused. The methods of questioning used on the children were extremely suggestive, leading to false accusations. Others believe that the questioning itself may have led to false memory syndrome among the children who were questioned. Ultimately fewer than 12 of the original 360 children testified during the actual trial
Videotapes of the interviews with children were reviewed by Dr. Michael Maloney, a British clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry, as an expert witness regarding the interviewing of children. Maloney was highly critical of the interviewing techniques used, referring to them as improper, coercive, directive, problematic, adult-directed in a way that forced the children to follow a rigid script and that "many of the kids' statements in the interviews were generated by the examiner." Transcripts and recordings of the interviews contained far more speech from adults than children and demonstrated that, despite the highly coercive interviewing techniques used, initially the children were resistant to interviewers' attempts to elicit disclosures. Recordings of these interviews were instrumental in the jury's refusal to convict, by demonstrating how children could create their vivid and dramatic testimonies without having experienced the abuse. The techniques used were contrary to the existing guidelines in California for the investigation of cases involving children and child witnesses.
Some of the accusations were described as "bizarre", overlapping with accusations that mirrored the just-starting satanic ritual abuse panic. 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.
Some of the abuse was alleged to have occurred in secret tunnels beneath the school, but no evidence of any secret chambers was found. 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. During the trial, testimony from the children stated that the naked movie star game was actually a rhyming taunt used to tease other children—"What you say is what you are, you're a naked movie star,"—and had nothing to do with having naked pictures taken.
Johnson, who made the initial allegations, made bizarre and impossible statements about Raymond Buckey, including that he could fly. Though the prosecution asserted Johnson's mental illness was caused by the events of the trial, Johnson had admitted to them that she was mentally ill beforehand. Evidence of Johnson's mental illness was withheld from the defense for three years and, when provided, was in the form of sanitized reports that excluded Johnson's statements, at the order of the prosecution. One of the original prosecutors, Glenn Stevens, left the case and stated that other prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense, including the information that Johnson's son was unable to identify Ray Buckey in a series of photographs. Stevens also accused Robert Philibosian, the deputy district attorney on the case, of lying and withholding evidence from the court and defense lawyers in order to keep the Buckeys in jail and prevent access to exonerating evidence
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 52 of 65 counts, and freed on bail after more than five years in jail.
The trial lasted seven years and cost $15 million, the longest and most expensive criminal case in the history of the United States legal system, and ultimately resulted in no convictions. The McMartin preschool was closed and the building was dismantled and several of the accused have died. In 2005 one of the children (now an adult) retracted the allegations of abuse.
“Never did anyone do 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.”
