The Mcmartin Trial -- Child-Abuse Case Mishandled From Start, Experts Say

LOS ANGELES - Several legal experts say that the McMartin Preschool molestation case, in which defendants were acquitted on most charges, was mishandled from the beginning.

While the case was not the first of its kind, it was by far the largest, turning the police and prosecutors into ``pioneers'' who devised procedures as they went along, the experts say. They made lots of mistakes.

The biggest was in not paring the case down to a manageable size. Peggy McMartin Buckey and her son Raymond Buckey were acquitted on 52 counts in the marathon proceeding. A mistrial was declared on 13 other charges.

Mrs. Buckey today filed a $1 million federal civil lawsuit alleging that there was a conspiracy to have the McMartin defendants indicted, the Associated Press reported.

Her lawsuit alleges the conspirators were Los Angeles County, the city of Manhattan Beach, former District Attorney Robert Philibosian, Children's Institute International and therapist Kee McFarlane, as well as Capital Cities-ABC Inc. and its former reporter Wayne Satz.

``If it can happen to seven innocent people it can happen to you, too,'' she said.

She also said that after the verdict was announced, a parent from the school threatened to kill her husband.

The alleged victims and their families had endured a nightmare since making the allegations in 1983. So had the defendants.

Trial jurors had given up nearly three years of their lives before finding that the defendants were - if not entirely innocent - at least not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

And the case itself cost taxpayers more than $15 million.

Most of the experts agreed that, besides filing an unwieldly case, former Los Angeles County District Attorney Robert Philibosian erred by relying on therapists untrained in criminal investigative techniques to interview the alleged child victims, they said.

In the McMartin case, the cost of the trial went beyond dollars and cents, as the childhoods of alleged victims were put on hold in the expectation that the case would be speedily resolved.

And in the end, it seemed the jury did not believe the children enough.

One 10-year-old boy spent 16 days on the witness stand during a preliminary hearing. Defense attorneys hammered away at his apparent mix of fact and fantasies that included tales of voyeurism and satanic rites. The boy's ordeal led parents of most of the other 41 alleged victims to pull their children from the case.

Raymond Buckey served five years in jail - about the same as he would have served before being freed on parole under a 10-year prison sentence - before the jury was even asked to decide whether he was guilty.

His mother, Peggy, spent two years in jail because of similar rulings.

Five other teachers at the now-defunct school experienced ostracism and the potential of prison for two years, only to have charges dropped before the trial. They heard themselves pronounced ``probably not guilty'' by a new district attorney, Ira Reiner.

Like the Buckeys, all but one of the teachers had to sell their homes to pay their lawyers.

The young mother whose allegations started the case was among three people connected with the case who died. She apparently drank herself to death. One suspect, who was never formally charged, apparently took too many pills after several children implicated him. A defense investigator killed himself the night before he was to testify.

Despite the tragedies, useful things were learned, said James Peters, senior attorney for the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse.

Manhattan Beach police, who handled the first complaint that a 2 1/2-year-old boy had been molested by ``Mr. Ray,'' decided to save time by sending a letter to other McMartin parents. The letter panicked them by informing them that their children may also have been molested, Peters said.

Parents, frantic for answers, alerted suspects to the investigation, giving them an opportunity to destroy incriminating evidence, if any existed.

Next, Peters and other experts said, the district attorney's office erred by referring parents and their children to a little-known Los Angeles sex-abuse center, rather than to police.

The longest trial

The McMartin Pre-school molestation case was the longest criminal trial in U.S. history. Here is a chronology of the case.

-- Aug. 12, 1983: Judy Johnson tells Manhattan Beach police that she believes her 2 1/2-year-old son was molested by Raymond Buckey at the McMartin Pre-School.

-- Sept. 7, 1983: Buckey is arrested, but he is released later that day for lack of evidence. Police send letters to 200 parents naming Buckey as a child-molestation suspect and ask them to interrogate their children about oral sex, fondling of genitals and sodomy.

-- Fall 1983 to spring 1984: Nearly 400 children are interviewed by Children's Institute International; 41 are listed as victims.

-- Feb. 2, 1984: KABC-TV reporter Wayne Satz broadcasts reports of dozens of alleged acts of oral copulation and sodomy with children.

-- March 22, 1984: Public outcry prompts Los Angeles District Attorney Robert Philibosian to send the case to grand jurors, who indict Buckey; his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey; his sister, Peggy Ann Buckey; his grandmother Virginia McMartin; and three employees, Mary Ann Jackson, Babette Spitler and Betty Raidor, on 115 charges of child molestation.

-- March 24, 1984: The defendants are arrested. Buckey and his mother are held without bail. Bail for the others ranges from $50,000 to $350,000.

-- June 6, 1984: Municipal Judge Aviva Bobb presides over a preliminary hearing that is to last 18 months with thirteen of the 41 alleged victims testifying.

-- Jan. 22, 1985: The first child witness in the preliminary hearing testifies that he and other pupils played ``naked games'' and that some defendents had touched his genitals.

-- Jan. 9, 1986: Judge Bobb orders all seven defendants to stand trial, ending the longest preliminary hearing in California history. The cost of the hearing was estimated at $4 million.

-- District Attorney Ira Reiner says there is insufficient evidence to warrant a trial for five of the seven defendants and asks dismissal of charges against Virginia McMartin, Peggy Ann Buckey, Mary Ann Jackson, Babette Spitler and Betty Raidor.

-- Jan. 23, 1986: Mrs. Buckey is released on $295,000 bail, reduced from $495,000.

-- Dec. 19, 1986: Judy Johnson, 44, the mother who made the first allegations, is found dead at home. The coroner says she died of fatty metamorphosis of the liver, an ailment commonly found in alcoholics.

-- April 20, 1987, to July 13, 1987: Jury selection and opening statements.

-- Oct. 17, 1988: The judge dismisses eight molestation counts against Buckey and his mother. They now face a combined 65 counts.

-- Feb. 15, 1989: Buckey is released on $1.5 million bail after nearly five years in jail.

-- April 27, 1989: The trial, hitting the 2-year, 4-day mark, becomes the longest criminal hearing in U.S. history when it surpasses by one day the Hillside Strangler trial of Angelo Buono in 1982-83.

-- Nov. 2, 1989: Jurors begin deliberations, sifting through volumes of testimony from 124 witnesses.

-- Jan. 18, 1990: The jury acquits Buckey and his mother of 52 counts. The judge declares a mistrial on 13 other counts.