McMartin: Yeah, Yeah, But What Really Happened? (Skeptic’s Argument/Official Story)

In this post and the previous one, I 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.


No credible evidence points to the guilt of Ray Buckey or anyone else at the McMartin Preschool. The evidence offered by believers is weak, and easily debunked by verified expert witnesses. What’s worse, this case served as a benchmark of public hysteria that accused many teachers and other professionals who could easily be proven innocent.

Starting with Judy Johnson, she clearly suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, as documented by doctors at Kaiser Hospital. Furthermore, her actions are consistent with someone suffering from dementia. As pointed out in earlier comments by our friends Foam and Tinkerbell, one has to wonder why, upon receiving a diagnosis of sexual abuse, she waited six days to contact police. One possibility is that she couldn’t make up her mind on what to do during that time. Note, impaired decision-making is a symptom of schizophrenia. Then too, one has to question her dumping of young Billy at the gates of McMartin Preschool to begin with. Fortunately, Peggy Buckey was there to look after the kid, but that’s not something that most of us would count on. That action possibly shows impaired judgment and a misreading of the situation on Johnson’s part. Schizophrenia rests on the premise of cognitive dysfunction.

Most of the expert witness testimony--as chronicled above--was at best misguided, and at worst an egregious error on the part of professionals, who never bothered to question their actions, let alone their own motivations. As pointed out in the aforementioned IPT article by John Earl and elsewhere, those involved with the prosecution had agendas, some hidden, some not. In addition to McMartin prosecutor Glenn Stevens’ accusation that one of his colleagues wanted to parlay the case to his political advantage, the expert witnesses also sought to make a name for themselves. Dr. William Gordon, as noted above, testified in over 300 child abuse trials as an expert. Expert witnesses get paid for their testimony (and according to a friend of mine who was retained as one, there are other perks involved too). And you better believe that no one is going to hire an expert witness who dissents from their version of the story.

According to some, CII didn’t hire Kee MacFarlane because of her expert psychology credentials, but because of her skill in grant-writing. A case like McMartin, which gained international television exposure, could make that aspect of her job a lot easier. Indeed, CII took out a full-page ad in the Beach Reporter asking for contributions that netted $30,000 in additional funding. But MacFarlane’s visibility as a McMartin investigator afforded her the opportunity to give gut-wrenching testimony before Congress:

I believe we are dealing with no less than conspiracies in these [preschool] cases, organized operations of child predators . . . Preschools in this country in some instances have become a ruse for larger unthinkable networks of crime against children. If pornography and prostitution are involved, which is sometimes the case, those networks may have greater financial, legal, and community resources than any of the agencies trying to uncover them.

According to their tax forms, CII’s government and private funding increased from below a half-million dollars in 1982 to $1.8 million in 1983, and to $3.25 million in 1985. By trial’s end, $15 million 1980s dollars would find their way into CII’s pot.

During the preliminary hearing, Judge Aviva Bobb noted for the record her belief that both MacFarlane and Heger had an even deeper motivation to make the prosecution’s case against the McMartin staff. As reported in a Pulitzer-Prize-winning series of articles on the case by Los Angeles Times reporter David Shaw:

In 1985, during the preliminary hearing, for example, two vital prosecution witnesses--Kee MacFarlane, the social worker who conducted most of the original interviews with the McMartin children, and Dr. Astrid Heger, the pediatrician who said she found signs of molestation--refused under oath to disclose if they had been molested as children themselves. The defense said that if they had been molested, the experience might have ‘tainted’ their evaluations of the McMartin children.

Judge Aviva Bobb ordered MacFarlane and Heger to respond. When they refused, she said she would construe their refusals as an admission that they had been abused.

In this light, we might see overzealousness by MacFarlane and Heger as understandable, perhaps even heroic. Let’s face it: child abuse is a real and devastating social ill that occurs in industrialized societies. Both of them apparently had first-hand knowledge of that fact. Both professionals in fact dedicated their lives to keep this from happening to other children.

The problem is that this zeal did not address the matter before the court: specifically if the staff at McMartin raped kids, and forced them into prostitution, pornography and weird satanic rituals. Their (I presume real) experience constituted a bias that neither did or would acknowledge. Thus, they continually heard “no” as "yes." Worse, one could argue that their investigation actually constituted sexual abuse in its own right.

As to reports of Chlamydia and other signs of potential sex abuse, that also has little bearing on the matter before the court: the guilt or innocence of the Buckeys. After all, in any random population of approximately 400 children, one might expect a certain percentage of them to have actually been molested. Statistics vary widely, from 11-25% (depending on whom you’re asking), but assuming that even the lower of these numbers is inflated and the true number is less than half of that, or 5%. That would still amount to approximately twenty children. Halve that again, to 2.5%, and the figure would change to ten kids--which, when you think about it is still an alarmingly high figure.

Thus, one should have expected sexual abuse in a certain percentage of those children, with maybe one or two contracting an STD. Yet nothing ties that abuse to McMartin Preschool in general, or to Ray Buckey specifically. More likely, friends or family members committed these assaults. But to single out someone like the Buckey’s offers the perfect scapegoat. After all, it’s more comforting to think that the enemy is some 'creep' from the outside rather than a cherished friend or family member.

The only remaining argument the believers can therefore offer is that of the tunnels. Despite the work and findings of Dr. Stickel, there’s no evidence that they ever existed.