McMartin Preschool Trials: 1987-90

A television station immediately reported that McMartin Preschool might be connected to sex industries and child pornography rings. Overnight, gossip became panic. Parents demanded action by the district attorney. The D.A.'s child-abuse unit brought in Kee McFarlane of the Children's Institute International (CII), an agency that dealt with abused children.

McFarlane's CII staff videotaped interviews with hundreds of current and former McMartin students. Frightened parents were shown parts of the videotapes and urged to support their children's disclosures.

By March 1984, the CII reported that there was evidence that 360 children had been abused. Astrid Heger, a doctor for the organization, had medically examined 150 of the children and concluded that 120 had been molested. With the town beside itself with anxiety and outrage, enrollment at McMartin Preschool plunged and, after 28 years of community service, it closed on January 13, 1984. Three months later, on February 3—at the start of television's "sweeps" month, during which stations battle for viewers and advertising dollars—KABC reporter Wayne Satz announced that some 60 children "had been keeping a grotesque secret of being sexually abused and made to appear in pornographic films while in the preschool's care—and of having been forced to witness the mutilation and killing of animals to scare the kids into staying silent."

On March 22, 1984, a grand jury indicted Ray Buckey, his mother, grandmother, sister, and three other women on 115 counts of child sexual abuse. Buckey and his mother were held without bail.