McMartin Preschool Trial(英)

artin accessible by a tunnel. One boy told of watching animal sacrifices performed by McMartin teachers wearing robes and masks in a candle-lit ceremony at St. Cross Episcopal Church. In response to a defense question, the boy added that the kids were forced to drink the blood of the sacrificed animals. Perhaps strangest of all, was the testimony of one boy who said that the McMartin teachers took students to a cemetery where the kids were forced to use pickaxes and shovels to dig up coffins. Once the coffins were removed from the ground, according to the child, they would be opened and the McMartin teachers would begin hacking the bodies with knives.

　　By September 1985, and well over a year into the preliminary hearing, some members of the prosecution's own team began to express doubts about the case. One prosecutor was quoted as saying, "Kee MacFarlane could make a sixth month old baby say he was molested." The two co-prosecutors in the case urged dropping all charges against five of the seven defendants, and pushing ahead with prosecution only for Ray Buckey and Peggy Buckey. Chief Prosecutor Lael Rubin, however, argued that all seven deserved prosecution. After a December 1985 meeting involving over a dozen members of the District Attorney's Office, the decision was made to drop charges against all defendants except Ray and Peggy Buckey. So far the case had cost Los Angeles County four million dollars——and the trial had yet to begin.

　　The First Trial

　　A legal bombshell exploded before the trial was scheduled to begin in the courtroom of Judge William R. Pounders. Independent filmmakers producing a documentary on the McMartin trial turned over to both the California A. G.'s office and to defense attorneys copies of a taped interview with McMartin prosecutor Glenn Stevens. In the interview, Stevens acknowledges that children began "embellishing and embellishing" their stories of sexual abuse and said that, as prosecutors, "we had no business being in court." Stevens also admitted on tape that prosecutors withheld potentially exculpatory information

from defense attorneys, including evidence concerning the mental instability of the original complainant in the case, Judy Johnson, as well as evidence that Johnson's son was unable to identify Ray Buckey in a police line-up. Based on the revelations contained in the Stevens interview, defense attorneys moved that charges against Ray and Peggy Buckey be dismissed, but Judge Pounders denied the motion.

　　Jury selection took weeks. The twelve finally selected included eight males and four females. Half of the jurors were white, three African-American, two Asian, and one Hispanic. All but two jurors had at least some college education. Defense attorneys said later they were pleased with the jury.

　　In many ways, the trial was a condensed version of the preliminary hearing. While the prosecution attempted to prove widespread sexual abuse of McMartin children, the defense tried to prove that the whole show was driven by the suggestive and overzealous interview techniques of the crusading therapists of CII. In addition to featuring two rather than seven defendants, there were fewer charges, fewer attorneys, and fewer witnesses. Still, by any measure, it was a major trial. Before it was over, the prosecution would present 61 witnesses, including nine child witnesses, a jailhouse informant, parents, medical specialists, therapists, and even a woman who had sexual relations with Ray Buckey.

　　Opening statements in the McMartin trial began on July 14, 1987. Deputy District Attorney Lael Rubin characterized the trial as one about the betrayal of trust. Dean Gits, attorney for Peggy Buckey, described a case in which the children, the parents, and the McMartin teachers were all victims of an overzealous prosecutor. He told the jurors to consider that the McMartin Preschool operated for over twenty years without complaints, and that the prosecution——despite moving heaven and earth in a search for secret tunnels, pornographic pictures, semen, and buried animals——had turned up no hard evidence of any sexual molestation. Daniel Davis, attorney for Ray Buckey, said that he would offer a "common sense defense" that would show his client to be the victim of suggestive interviewing techniques and a virtual witch hunt.

　　The prosecution produced several parent witnesses to lay a foundation for the accounts of their children that would follow. Typically, a parent would testify that prior to the infamous letter of Chief Kuhlmeyer announcing that Ray Buckey was suspected of child abuse, he or she had no reason to suspect that his or her child had been molested. After taking the children to CII and talking with Kee MacFarlane, however, the parents became convinced that their children had been sexually abused. Parents suggested that bladder infections, nightmares, anatomically correct artwork, or masturbation were confirming evidence of abuse. A couple of parents theorized that the massive abuse might have occurred during naptime, when parents were prohibited from picking up their children.

　　The prosecution's child witnesses, ranging in age from eight to fifteen, repeated many of their stories from the preliminary hearing. Jurors heard of the Naked Movie Star Game, Ray Buckey scaring the children into silence by executing a cat with a knife, and numerous graphic accounts of sexual abuse by both Ray and Peggy Buckey. The defense countered with evidence of contradictions between trial testimony and testimony at the preliminary hearing, videotaped interviews in which the children denied that they were molested, and CII interviews revealing MacFarlane coaching children and rewarding "right" answers.

　　The defense tried to produce a child witness of its own, the young boy who started the whole investigation rolling: the son of Judy Johnson. With Judy Johnson now deceased, the boy's father flatly told reporters that his son would testify "over my dead body." Judge Pounders agreed with Johnson that trial testimo

ny might prove too stressful for his son and declared the boy legally unavailable as a witness.

　　Perhaps the key witness in the trial was CII therapist Kee MacFarlane. In her five weeks on the stand, MacFarlane fought to defend her controversial interview techniques that included naked puppets, anatomically correct dolls, and telling children what other children had previously reported about sexual abuse at the McMartin School. Before MacFarlane finished her lengthy testimony, even Judge Pounders was expressing concern about her techniques. Outside of the presence of the jury, Pounders declared, "In my view, her credibility is becoming more of an issue as she testifies here."

　　Defense expert Dr. Michael Maloney, professor of psychiatry at USC, further discredited MacFarlane's interview techniques. Maloney criticized the technique as presenting children with a "script" that discouraged "spontaneous information" and instead encouraged the children to supply expected answers to "please mother and father" and prove themselves "good detectives."

　　Another distinct weakness in the prosecution's case was the lack of medical evidence of sexual abuse. Although Dr. Astrid Heger testified that she found numerous scars "consistent with rape," the defense's medical expert, Dr. David Paul, said that his review of the medical evidence turned up virtually no evidence of molestation. In the case of nine of the eleven alleged victims, Paul found the body parts to be "perfectly normal."

　　Perhaps the strangest testimony at the trial came from jailhouse informant George Freeman, Ray Buckey's cell mate and a nine-time felon and confessed perjurer. Freeman testified that Buckey had admitted to him that he sexually molested children at the McMartin School and elsewhere, had a long-standing incestuous relationship with his sister, shipped pornographic materials to Denmark, and had buried incriminating photos of himself and children in South Dakota.

　　The high point of the trial, from the standpoint of media attention, came with the testimony of the defendants themselves. Peggy McMartin Buckey was the first to testify, telling the jury "never" when asked whether "she ever molested those children." She also told jurors that she never witnessed her son behaving in a sexually inappropriate way at the school. Ray Buckey also denied each and every prosecution charge——as well as the allegations made by jailhouse informant George Freeman. He testified that he was not even teaching at the school during many of the times in which he was accused of abusing children. During cross-examination, prosecutor Lael Rubin kept hammering Buckey with questions about two barely relevant facts uncovered during the investigation: that Buckey sometimes did not wear underwear and that he owned several sexually explicit adult magazines.

　　On November 2, 1989, after nearly thirty months of testimony, the case went to the jury. The jury spent another two-and-a-half months deliberating its verdicts. On fifty-two of the sixty-five charges against the two defendants (some charges were dropped during the trial), including all of the charges against Peggy Buckey, the jury returned an acquittal. On the thirteen remaining charges against Ray Buckey, the jury announced that it was hopelessly deadlocked. Jury foreperson Luis Chang explained the vote: "The interview tapes were too biased; too leading. That's the main crux of it." Another juror told reporters, "Whether I believe he did it and whether it was proven are very different." Judge Pounders offered his own appraisal of the verdict: "I was not surprised by the verdicts. I would not have been surprised at any decision the jury made."

　　Aftermath and Second Trial

　　

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