Obviously, 200 parents aren’t going to shut up when receiving a letter saying, in effect, “A pervert might have raped your kid.” Never mind the explanatory and cautionary statements in that missive. The allegation rang the loudest.
From that point, the McMartin case simply flew out of anyone’s control. As the longest and most expensive legal proceeding in Los Angeles history (it dwarfs the Tate-LaBianca prosecutions), this case was marred by relentless and bizarre excess.
To start with, word of mouth prompted Manhattan Beach parents to request (some say “pressure”) the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office to investigate. Dep. DA Jean Matusinka, then in charge of investigating complaints of child abuse, referred five possible victims to the Children’s Institute International (CII), where psychiatric social worker (MSW) Kathleen (Kee) MacFarlane examined them. It’s clear that at first Matusinka simply wanted to determine whether or not these charges had merit. But the number of interview subjects mushroomed after authorities got into the habit of referring parents fearing the worse to CII. In all, MacFarlane examined over 400 children during October 1983, ultimately determining that 384 were sexually abused. The following month, medical examinations by Dr. Astrid Heppenstall Heger on 150 of these children found forensic evidence of sexual abuse in 80% (about 120) of them.
Through the participation of CII, the case grew in scope from a specific charge of molestation against one child to the rampant, indiscriminate rape of almost 400 children. The sheer number of alleged victims, combined with the fact that some of the kids were claiming sexual abuse at the school before Ray Buckey, the accused, even worked there, indicated to parents and prosecutors that the abuse went far beyond the work of a single individual. Thus, police and prosecutors began investigating others, which ultimately led to the arrests of Ray’s mom, Peggy, his sister, Peggy Ann, his grandmother, Virginia McMartin, and three teachers: Mary Ann Jackson, Babette Spitler and Bette Raidor. Between March and May 1984, prosecutors won indictments on all seven defendants on a total of 208 charges. Prosecutor Lael Rubin later told the press that the McMartin defendants were actually guilty of 397 charges, with thirty more pending the findings of ongoing investigations.
In addition to inflating the number of charges, victims and perpetrators, other aspects began to increase the heinousness of the offenses to the point of sensationalism. Early in the investigation, one of the McMartin parents, Jackie McGauley, met with Dr. Lawrence Pazder, a psychiatrist originally from Canada. With his mistress (later his wife), Dr. Pazder co-wrote Michelle Remembers, an autobiographical account of the second Mrs. Pazder’s life as a victim of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). At this point, the McMartin parents began to fear that an organized group of wealthy and powerful Satanists had indoctrinated their kids and others the world over into a life down the left-hand path.
Rumors of satanic practices led to increasingly exotic descriptions of the actual crimes committed. Judy Johnson, for example, came to believe that Buckey sodomized her son while cramming the kid’s head in a toilet. Other stories began to emerge. Some said that the children made pornography. Adults forced them to play in the nude, while camera’s happily recorded the action (according to some of the kids, they even sang a special song for the occasion: “What you see is what you are./You’re a naked movie star”). The games subject to filming supposedly included numerous instances of anal and vaginal penetration. The perpetrators also allegedly forced them to witness the torture and murder of small animals (tortoises, in particular, but also chickens dogs, and whatnot). On occasion, they would sacrifice humans (in one story they tortured and finally beheaded an infant).
The settings of these atrocities varied from churches to private houses. If you’re wondering how they managed to sneak a bunch of kids out of the preschool in broad daylight, eleven kids mentioned something about a tunnel that ran beneath the school, and opened up inside another house. Inside the tunnel system was a special room, where these activities also occurred.
Bob Currie, another parent dissatisfied with the official investigation, took it upon himself to find smoking gun evidence that Buckey was involved with a satanic child molestation ring. He began by getting the address of suspected molestation sites from CII, and confirming them with his son. He then copied the license plate numbers of vehicles at these locations, and followed their drivers. His investigative technique led to even wilder charges. For starters, he claimed that some kids were flown to other cities during the day from a local airport--in air-freight cartons, no less--to sexually service wealthy industrialists, movie stars and the California Angels. Moreover, he averred that some of the McMartin parents were themselves part of the pedophile ring.
Wayne Satz, a Peabody-Award winning television journalist known for his aggressive style, publicized the accusations locally as a credible child abuse case starting in February 1984. But as the nature of the charges became more and more lurid, the story spread outside of LA. By August of that year, Currie garnered national attention with an appearance on ABC’s 20/20. As the spokesperson of the Parents Against Child Abuse (PACA), an organization of fellow McMartin parents, he became quite visible as a crusader figure.
In some respects, one could see Currie as the ringmaster of a three-ring media circus. By trial‘s end, however, one might be more tempted to see him as a clown.
_________________________________
*In this and the next several posts, I’ll be giving a summary of the legal proceedings as chronicled by Doug Linder’s The McMartin Preschool Trials:1987-1990, John Earl's "The Dark Truth about 'The Dark Tunnels of McMartin'" published in The Journal of the Institute for Psychological Therapies, v. 7(1995), and Alex Constantine’s Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America. I would point out that each of these resources has an axe to grind, so to speak. Nevertheless, they mostly agree on the chronology of events.
From that point, the McMartin case simply flew out of anyone’s control. As the longest and most expensive legal proceeding in Los Angeles history (it dwarfs the Tate-LaBianca prosecutions), this case was marred by relentless and bizarre excess.
To start with, word of mouth prompted Manhattan Beach parents to request (some say “pressure”) the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office to investigate. Dep. DA Jean Matusinka, then in charge of investigating complaints of child abuse, referred five possible victims to the Children’s Institute International (CII), where psychiatric social worker (MSW) Kathleen (Kee) MacFarlane examined them. It’s clear that at first Matusinka simply wanted to determine whether or not these charges had merit. But the number of interview subjects mushroomed after authorities got into the habit of referring parents fearing the worse to CII. In all, MacFarlane examined over 400 children during October 1983, ultimately determining that 384 were sexually abused. The following month, medical examinations by Dr. Astrid Heppenstall Heger on 150 of these children found forensic evidence of sexual abuse in 80% (about 120) of them.
Through the participation of CII, the case grew in scope from a specific charge of molestation against one child to the rampant, indiscriminate rape of almost 400 children. The sheer number of alleged victims, combined with the fact that some of the kids were claiming sexual abuse at the school before Ray Buckey, the accused, even worked there, indicated to parents and prosecutors that the abuse went far beyond the work of a single individual. Thus, police and prosecutors began investigating others, which ultimately led to the arrests of Ray’s mom, Peggy, his sister, Peggy Ann, his grandmother, Virginia McMartin, and three teachers: Mary Ann Jackson, Babette Spitler and Bette Raidor. Between March and May 1984, prosecutors won indictments on all seven defendants on a total of 208 charges. Prosecutor Lael Rubin later told the press that the McMartin defendants were actually guilty of 397 charges, with thirty more pending the findings of ongoing investigations.
In addition to inflating the number of charges, victims and perpetrators, other aspects began to increase the heinousness of the offenses to the point of sensationalism. Early in the investigation, one of the McMartin parents, Jackie McGauley, met with Dr. Lawrence Pazder, a psychiatrist originally from Canada. With his mistress (later his wife), Dr. Pazder co-wrote Michelle Remembers, an autobiographical account of the second Mrs. Pazder’s life as a victim of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). At this point, the McMartin parents began to fear that an organized group of wealthy and powerful Satanists had indoctrinated their kids and others the world over into a life down the left-hand path.
Rumors of satanic practices led to increasingly exotic descriptions of the actual crimes committed. Judy Johnson, for example, came to believe that Buckey sodomized her son while cramming the kid’s head in a toilet. Other stories began to emerge. Some said that the children made pornography. Adults forced them to play in the nude, while camera’s happily recorded the action (according to some of the kids, they even sang a special song for the occasion: “What you see is what you are./You’re a naked movie star”). The games subject to filming supposedly included numerous instances of anal and vaginal penetration. The perpetrators also allegedly forced them to witness the torture and murder of small animals (tortoises, in particular, but also chickens dogs, and whatnot). On occasion, they would sacrifice humans (in one story they tortured and finally beheaded an infant).
The settings of these atrocities varied from churches to private houses. If you’re wondering how they managed to sneak a bunch of kids out of the preschool in broad daylight, eleven kids mentioned something about a tunnel that ran beneath the school, and opened up inside another house. Inside the tunnel system was a special room, where these activities also occurred.
Bob Currie, another parent dissatisfied with the official investigation, took it upon himself to find smoking gun evidence that Buckey was involved with a satanic child molestation ring. He began by getting the address of suspected molestation sites from CII, and confirming them with his son. He then copied the license plate numbers of vehicles at these locations, and followed their drivers. His investigative technique led to even wilder charges. For starters, he claimed that some kids were flown to other cities during the day from a local airport--in air-freight cartons, no less--to sexually service wealthy industrialists, movie stars and the California Angels. Moreover, he averred that some of the McMartin parents were themselves part of the pedophile ring.
Wayne Satz, a Peabody-Award winning television journalist known for his aggressive style, publicized the accusations locally as a credible child abuse case starting in February 1984. But as the nature of the charges became more and more lurid, the story spread outside of LA. By August of that year, Currie garnered national attention with an appearance on ABC’s 20/20. As the spokesperson of the Parents Against Child Abuse (PACA), an organization of fellow McMartin parents, he became quite visible as a crusader figure.
In some respects, one could see Currie as the ringmaster of a three-ring media circus. By trial‘s end, however, one might be more tempted to see him as a clown.
_________________________________
*In this and the next several posts, I’ll be giving a summary of the legal proceedings as chronicled by Doug Linder’s The McMartin Preschool Trials:1987-1990, John Earl's "The Dark Truth about 'The Dark Tunnels of McMartin'" published in The Journal of the Institute for Psychological Therapies, v. 7(1995), and Alex Constantine’s Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America. I would point out that each of these resources has an axe to grind, so to speak. Nevertheless, they mostly agree on the chronology of events.
Now I remember this story. It's actually been used in a couple of Psychology textbooks on recovered memories and such.
ReplyDeleteWhat a three-ring circus ...
ReplyDeletehysteria, witch hunt, over-inflated ego, white-knight heroism, political careerism, media whores, projected paedophile fantasies...and the list goes on.
ReplyDeletein an exteremely large percentage of reported cases of the molestation of a child by an adult, there is nothing but the comments of a child to begin with, no physical evidence and the (albiet ligitimate) concern of parents, caregivers and authorities, with the dangerous assumption of guilt before the investigation pushing people beyond logic and reason.
my wife`s children, as wards of the province, are afforded a higher than normal protection against such scenarios because all investigations are done internally including interviewing the child or children involved immediately after allegations are made, and then the police are contacted.
this process usually takes a matter of a few hours before the police are brought in, but my wife has had two scenarios where she was working all night with the group home staff and the children and eventually the police.
throughout all of this one is trained to remember that the children will do all they can to please the parents and authorities, to the point where if the interviewer is clumsy in his or her language and inference, the child will confabulate all manner of things merely to give the adult what the child believes they want.
Charles, I bet I can predict what those textbooks say.
ReplyDeleteTinkerbell, it gets worse.
Alistair, we'll be going more towards wherever the list goes on.
I must be a bit slow after the holidays, but I don't quite get why an initial internal investigation would give added protection. I'm thinking you mean that because they are wards of the state, with the parents held in check at a distance, professional staff can investigate without presuming that either side is lying.
I'm going to provide some transcripts of these talks that will illustrate what you're saying about children trying to please authority figures.
I read somewhere that Wichita,Kansas has the highest per capita child abuse in North America. Just recalled that when I read this post.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with child abuse investigations there is a lot of social pressure on anyone who tries to be reasonable and consider the possibility of wrong accusation. Mere mention of abuse makes people react strongly. Even of a person is legally proved innocent th stigma and distrust attach. And how can we blame a parent who prefers not to take a chance with their wards? How do we expect non-emotional response to a very emotional issue?
More "Hey, I didn't know that!" moments by X. Dell.
ReplyDeleteI had read Michelle Remembers a while back; the book is buried somewhere around here in a pile. If memory serves me, a priest and bishop got sucked into the story, giving it validity.
But I didn't know about the writer's relationship with his subject. Mistress, eh? I wonder what the Catholic church says about that.
I was unaware of the connection between Pazder and the McMartin case. The small world of conspiracy theory.
I had heard a few things about the McMartin case like the tunnel and plane trips. But I know you'll give me more details in the "Hey, I didn't know that!" vein.
Comments for the previous post talked about the disgust factor of such cases. Better disgust with awareness than to hide what does happen. Being aware means that kids can know what to watch for with the caution not to lie or exaggerate.
Remind me to tell you about the local politician -- a staunch conservative -- who was caught in a police sting operation. The pol thought he was going to have sex with pre-teen girls through an arrangement with their "mother." (The girls didn't exist.)
I thought only Godless liberals did such evil stuff.
SJ, after looking into this subject for as long as I have, you'd begin to see the hyperreactions going both ways. There are some who would overact exactly as you suggest. There are also people who treat every allegation of child abuse as an attempted witch hunt, with a stigma attached to the accuser (as with other types of rape cases). Obviously, being wrong in either direction has undesirable consequences.
ReplyDeleteRay, the world of conspiracy theory gets smaller later on in McMartin.
I never read Michelle Remembers. Perhaps I should, although I have read tons of later books and articles on the same subject written by other authors.
Your pol sounds interesting, for that's where we'll be heading eventually. Pedophilia claims go across both sides of the aisle, of course, but the Republicans seem to indulge more than their Democratic counterparts--either that, or they're caught far more often.
i wish to clarify my last comments regarding the actions of children`s aid with allegations of sexual abuse.
ReplyDeletein discussion with my wife who is a children`s aid worker, she stressed that the police are called the moment that allegations are made, as per the requirements of the law, but that their efforts concurrent with the police are where their children benefit in protection from hysterical amplification of initial reports.
I getcha now, Alistair. I'm currently reading Robin Sax's 2010 book It Happens Every Day, and she discusses the change from an agency-by-agency approach ten years ago to a team approach, where police, social workers, forensic pediatricians (with advanced technology) all get involved at the start of a case and work together.
ReplyDeletei do remember this case. i remember thinking that private early childcare was the last place i would want to find myself employed in. (not that i wanted to anyway) i also remember some very capable and caring people who were deterred by a career in early childcare because of this and similar cases at the time.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Foam, I thought most people would remember it. That's one reason why I used it to launch this series of series.
ReplyDeleteThose capable and caring friends of yours would find themselves in good company. In fact, a lot of people left teaching amid this and other scandals.