Gosh! Unbelievable a civilized society will stoop so low as to sexually abuse children!!! Bad
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The McMartin Preschool case was one of the earliest and largest child sexual abuse cases in this country. Although none of those charged were ever convicted, the 28-month trial was the longest and costliest criminal prosecution in U.S. history. This case is often cited as triggering the wave of pre-school sexual abuse cases during the mid-1980s.
The case began in August 1983 when the mother of a 2 1/2 year-old boy reported to police that her son had been abused by Raymond Buckey at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, an affluent community on Santa Monica Bay. The school had been founded by Ray's grandmother, Virginia McMartin, in the mid-sixties. His mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, was an administrator, and his sister, Peggy Ann Buckey was a public school teacher who helped out at the pre-school during school vacations. Ray was the only male teacher at the preschool.
After the initial accusation, Ray was arrested, but released due to lack of evidence. The mother continued her allegations, claiming that her son returned home from pre-school with his anus red and sore and surmising from that that he had been sodomized, and claiming that he had witnessed bizarre satanic rituals at the school. At the beginning of the investigation, police wrote letters to 200 parents of current and former students telling them that the pre-school was being investigated and questioning them about possible molestation of their children.
After the letters went out, parents began questioning their children and the children began telling stories of abuse at the preschool; that they had been touched inappropriately, that their pictures had been taken, that they had had been forced to engage in anal and oral sex, and forced to play a game called "Naked Movie Star."
Dozens of the children were interviewed and examined by therapists specializing in diagnosing sexual abuse. They implicated Peggy Ann Buckey and other teachers as well as Ray. As time went on, the accusations mushroomed from sexual abuse to include stories of bizarre satanic rituals, where the McMartins mutilated animals and forced the children to touch corpses, in hidden underground passageways beneath the school. No such passageways were ever found. Some of the children's interviews were videotaped and shown to jurors at trial.
In March 1984, police rearrested Ray along with his sister Peggy Ann, his mother, Peggy, and grandmother Virginia, as well as three other teachers. Charges against Virginia, Peggy, and the other teachers were dropped in 1986 for lack of evidence.
The first trial of Ray and his mother began in April 1987 and ended in April 1989 with acquittals on some counts and a deadlocked jury on others. Ray was tried a second time, and in 1990 another jury was deadlocked on all counts. The prosecutors chose not to retry him. Ray had spent five years in jail and Peggy had spent two.
The lengthy and sensational McMartin case drew attention from the national media, and is still cited today as a symbol of the dangers and difficulty of using children's testimony. Some jurors in the first trial, when interviewed after the verdict, said that it was the videotapes of the interviews with the children that had prevented them from finding the McMartins guilty. They said that they believed that some of the children had been abused, but that the interviewing techniques had been so suggestive that they had not been able to discern what really happened.
Violet Amirault had been running the Fells Acres Day care center for almost 20 years with her children and five other teachers when her son Gerald Amirault was accused of abusing children in their care. Gerald was not a teacher, but helped out at the school as a handy man and bus driver.
The incident that prompted a large scale investigation and two trials with multiple appeals occurred in 1984, when a 5 1/2 year old boy told his uncle that Gerald had touched his private parts. According to Gerald, the boy had wet his pants, and in order to help out the boy's teacher, who was busy, Gerald took the boy into the bathroom, dried him off and gave him a fresh change of clothes.
The boy's mother claims that soon after the incident, he began displaying disturbing behavior, wetting his bed, baby-talk, chronic masturbation and acting out sexually with his younger brother. She became concerned and asked her brother, who had been sexually abused as a child, to talk to her son. During a walk in the park, the boy told his uncle that while he was at school, Gerald had pulled down his pants and touched his penis.
The mother started questioning the boy about what happened to him at day care. Eventually, he told her that Gerald often took him to a "secret room" with a bed in it, or to the park, where he would undress the boy and fondle his penis. He also said that Gerald put his penis into the boy's mouth and rectum and indicated that oth
