* Original Message Posted via THEIST_WATCH
 * Date: 15 May 95  19:33:46
 * From: Robin Murray-o'hair @ 1:382/1006
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 * Forwarded by: Christopher Baker @ 1:374/14
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@MSGID: 1:382/1006.0 88101397
@TID: WILDMAIL!/WC v4.11  94-0279
McMARTIN PRE-SCHOOL 'ABUSE' CASE TO BE SUBJECT OF NEW HBO MOVIE
The Costliest Legal Case in California History Established a New
and Questionable Paradigm in the Mythology of Satanic and Ritual
Child Abuse. But Was Real Justice Done?
by Conrad F. Goeringer
     On Saturday, May 20, HBO television airs "Indictment," a
movie based on the infamous McMartin Pre School case which
captured the public imagination in the late 1980s, and fostered
hysteria over reports of alleged Satanic and cult ritual child
abuse.
     It was the longest and costliest trial in the history of
the state of California. Despite $15 million, and nearly seven
years of investigation and legal proceedings, no one was
convicted, lives were ruined, and charges that the nation's
children were being kidnapped, abused and murdered by a
conspiracy of satanic cultists were popularized throughout the
media. Satanic cults became the new "bete noir" of Christian
fundamentalists eager to replace a decaying Soviet empire with an
even more horrifying and homegrown threat.
     It began on August 12, 1983, with a complaint filed by a
mother alleging that her two and a half-year-old son had been
sodomized by Ray Buckley, an employee at the McMartin PreSchool
in Manhattan Beach, California. Police began a round of
questioning which spread to 20 other parents and their children
who also attended McMartin, and all denied any acts of abuse. In
fact, the woman who had filed the original complaint (who died in
1986) was a paranoid schizophrenic and alcoholic, something which
was apparently not known at the time. There were no external
signs of abuse, and no other corroborative evidence.
     On orders from the district attorney, however, an
organization called Children's Institute International (CII) was
then brought in. Using a technique called "Play therapy,"
interrogators from the Institute began eliciting responses from
more than 300 children who had attended the pre-school. A grisly
tale of ritual abuse is said to have emerged under questioning of
the children, and in 1984 police arrested Buckey, his grandmother
(who owned the Pre School), Buckey's sister and three female
teachers.
     Hopefully, the HBO treatment of this case will
accurately cover the ensuing events, including the public outcry
and hostility over fears of ritual child abuse. One of the
prosecutors in the subsequent legal circus was Robert
Philibosian, now a regular commentator for a network covering the
O.J. Simpson trial. When DA Ira Reiner inherited the case from
Philibosian, he was shocked by the weaknesses and contradictions
in the case, and after an eighteen-month preliminary hearing
ended up dropping charges against everyone except Buckey.
     One crucial fact that emerged at the McMartin trial was
the role played by "experts" who, deliberately or unwittingly,
led children into imaginative and false telling of stories. "Do
you actually believe children would make something like this
up?", asks a protagonist in the HBO movie. We should now.
Children appear to have been hammered relentlessly by
investigators seeking to confirm their own biases which would
support the allegations of child abuse. Some suggest that a
similar form of "leading" has been taking place within the
"Facilitated Communication" movement of therapists working with
severely autistic people; indeed, the evidence is so overwhelming
that it is therapists who are doing the communicating when they
guide an autistic patient's fingers to a keyboard, belief in this
technique has become tantamount to a blind faith. A once
promising tool in unlocking the minds of those imprisoned by
autism has been, alas, exposed as a pseudo-science, and in some
cases outright fraud.
     The McMartin case involved claims so bizarre that they
are fit material for the production of a B-grade horror genre
film. Those claims also ended up being repeated and amplified in
the folk lore of "Satan's Underground." They moved beyond the
hysterical claims of certain fundamentalist Christian groups
intent on spreading the alarm over a nationwide Satanic
conspiracy, to the land of daytime TV talk shows, questionable
"Documentaries," and even police department seminars (often
conducted by self-proclaimed "experts" who advanced a distinct
religious explanation for this phenomena). One police seminar,
for instance, was told the following tale: children were dropped
off by their parents at the day care facility. They were then
transported by plane to a remote ceremonial location where robed
figures may them lie in coffins. They were lowered into the
ground and had dirt thrown on them, then sexually assaulted by a
satanic high priest. They were then loaded back onto the planes,
transported to the day care facility, and picked up by their
parents.
     Variations on this theme became progressively more
imaginative, and included stories of being buried alive for
several hours with a dead body alongside in a coffin, being
forced to kill newborn babies, drinking of blood, serial sex
including vaginal, anal and oral penetration and other horrors.
Despite the striking lack of corroborative evidence in many of
these accounts, many people in churches, government and the media
believed a number of such stories.
     What finally did happen in the McMartin case? In the
first trial, Buckey's mother was acquitted on all 65 charges
against her. Buckey was acquitted on 52, and the jury deadlocked
on 13. In 1990, Buckey was again tried on nine charges, and the
jury once again deadlocked. Raymond Buckey ended up spending more
than 5 years in jail. The school was shut down and even razed;
investigators brought in earth- moving equipment in an
unsuccessful hunt for "hidden rooms" and ceremonial chambers
which, they had been told, wound underneath the school in a
labyrinth. On the final day of that phase of the investigation,
news reports told of parents and others who still convinced of
the existence of the underground torture chambers scrambled over
piles of dirt and debris digging frantically and finding nothing
of substance. A POSTSCRIPT ON THE MCMARTIN CASE One outcome of
the McMartin debacle and subsequent cases involving claims of
"ritual child abuse" has been a re- examination of techniques
used in extracting information from children. It has been found
that not only do children LIE, but that they often craft stories
and responses which they see as pleasing the investigator or
authority figure who is questioning them. There have been some
cases where children and even teenagers also conspired to "frame"
a parent, teacher, or some other person by concocting
molestation, rape, or ritual abuse cases.
     The hysteria over Satanic cults has pretty much died
down. It is no longer primetime special fare, and many of the
self-touted "experts" on the subject have either faded into
obscurity or moved into other limelights. Charges like the one
that up to 50,000 persons each year were being kidnapped and
sacrificed by Satanic cults have been exposed as groundless. In
fact, J. Gordon Melton of the Institute for the Study of American
Religion observed that the overwhelming percentage of documented,
organized child abuse ritual took place in crank fundamentalist
Christian cults such as the River of Life Tabernacle. Abuse in
such controlled, authoritarian religious environments ranged from
starvation and prayer atonement to "Bible discipline" whippings.
But the lives of many people charged with such offenses are
affected, often for life, and their numbers are still growing.
Even if the legal system brings a kind of justice, the lawyers'
fees, bankruptcies, personal disruptions, and community ostracism
that so often accompanies such events linger. Hopefully, the HBO
showing of "Indictment" will show us the dangers of having police
and the law run amok.
                           --30--
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