McMartin: Yeah, Yeah, But What Really Happened? (Believer‘s argument)

In this post and the next I will present the best case I can for each opposing side. These do not necessarily reflect my views on the subject in whole or part, and each supposition should be evaluated critically.


Defenders of the Ritual Satanic Abuse occurring at McMartin Preschool snidely, cynically and unfairly characterized the main witnesses who provided a bulk of the information about the case. Time and again credible physical evidence was never taken into account by the prosecutor’s office, and thus curtly dismissed by the press, which had abandoned any notion of objectivity by jumping on the “witch hunt” bandwagon.

Judy Johnson was arguably the most tragic of the McMartin victims. The defense, the press, prosecutor Glenn Stevens and subsequently her portrayal by Roberta Bassin in the 1995 HBO docudrama Indictment depicted her as a psychotic alcoholic obsessed with her son’s rectum and genitalia. Yet, before McMartin she had no history of either mental illness or alcohol abuse.

Note, Johnson made no accusation of child abuse when she first observed her son’s condition, and assumed that it was anything but that. Far from being obsessed with the subject, she was simply looking out for her kid, and did what any responsible parent would do: she took him to the doctor. As the symptom’s persisted, she took him to another doctor who told her that her son was sexually abused. Her allegations of abuse became increasingly weird only because the crimes were extraordinarily brutal and incredible. As she found out more about them, she reported these to authorities.

She then found herself the target of harassment. In separate instances of what one could call “street theatre,” a number of strangers would insult and ultimately threaten her. Eventually, people close to her began to turn on her, including her ex-husband. She finally came to the point where she had good reason not to trust anyone, which is why she kept guns for protection, and drank booze for liquid courage. While one could certainly argue that these actions did not make her look very good when taken out of context, if looking at them in the light of her circumstances and the pressure she had endured since the separation from her husband, they become more understandable. Thus, we have to question whether or not Johnson suffered from any form of schizophrenia.

Then too, even if one steadfastly refused to believe Judy Johnson, the complaints of sexual abuse came not just from her but from hundreds of other parents. Certainly, they could not all be paranoid schizophrenics or alcoholics or gun owners even. The attack on Johnson’s credibility therefore represents a preemptive attack on all the McMartin parents, who, by association, must have at least some of the negative attributes associated with Johnson. After all, they’re engaged in the same action, and they believed that the same things occurred.

Dr. Astrid Heger and Kee MacFarlane were skewered on the stand for the methodology of their investigations. While one could characterize their interviewing techniques as aggressive, one has to keep in mind that they were dealing with subjects who had multiple reasons for not answering truthfully. As predicted by Dr. Roland Summit’s Child Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, these children could have felt that no one would believe them, for their experience did not sound realistic, bordering on the fantasy that people often associate with childhood. The children could have also been threatened. Thus the technique had to be aggressive in some cases to establish (1) that they were a superior authority, who superseded the authority of their McMartin teachers and who could thus protect them; and (2) that said authority would believe their stories whereas no one would otherwise.

That’s not to say that the aggressive questioning shown by defense on videotape was evident in all of the cases. Eleven of the children volunteered information about the tunnels with little prodding by CII personnel to incorporate this into an orthodox account of the remaining 300+ children under evaluation. And even those who refused to stipulate the “naked movie star” game, nevertheless said that they knew of the song that accompanied it (see transcripts in this earlier post). One would therefore have legitimate reason to suspect that the children heard it there, and that it represented a mindset that was at least condone by McMartin teachers. As far as we know, none of the students were counseled to stop singing it, or disciplined for having sung it.

Also, one had to keep in mind that both Dr. Heger and MacFarlane were highly regarded professionals who continued their efforts on behalf of children’s safety and health until the present day. To suggest that they were amateurs who didn’t know what they are doing is disingenuous. They had the necessary credentials to make the observations they did, as did the CII pediatrician who examined the Johnson child in August 1983.

We thus have to question if they were both that far off the mark, especially Dr. Heger. There was evidence of sexual abuse, as explained by Alex Constantine:

They haven’t put aside as anomalous accident the first exhibit in the case, a physician’s report that one of the children suffered “blunt force trauma” of sexual areas....The parents were left to ponder why some of the toddlers in the care of the McMartins had chlamydia, a sexually-transmitted infection….

Any sexually transmitted disease in a child would offer powerful and compelling evidence of abuse. While she did not document specific evidence from direct observation, Dr. Heger indeed would not have to directly see instances of Chlamydia to know that the child had sex with someone. She would simply have to know they were treated for it. As a number of females are asymptomatic, there might not have been anything to examine, anyway. Likewise, other evidence of sexual abuse might not be evident in subsequent examination.

Most important, Dr. Gary Stickel’s dig at the McMartin grounds found not one, but two tunnels, and possibly a third. Since the parents could prove the existence of those tunnels, their dismissal by authorities hinted of cover-up, thus implying an organization of individuals whose powerful reach extended into the District Attorney’s office.

This pretty much sums up the case of those who believe in the guilt of Ray Buckey and his colleges at McMartin. But as the old saw says, there are at least two sides to every story.