McMartin Preschool Trials: 1987-90

An 18-month preliminary hearing began on June 6. The chief prosecution witness, Dr. Roland C. Summit, a mental health expert on child sexual abuse, congratulated the media for bringing the issue to the public's attention, theorizing that the publicity had protected countless children from sexual assault. He also defended the interview technique in which McFarlane and her associates rewarded the children for "right" answers.

Because of the children's interviews, the formal charges against the codefendants came to include:

conspiracy to make the preschool the headquarters of an extensive kiddieporn/prostitution ring producing millions of child-sex pictures;

drugging children and forcing them into satanic rituals and sex games;

exposing the children to encounters with lions, rabbits, turtles, a sexuallyabusive elephant, flying witches, space mutants, and bodies (including babies) in mortuaries and graveyards;

taking children via trapdoors through underground tunnels to adjacent garages, thence by train, airplane, and hot-air balloon to secret rituals; and

killing and cutting up animals and threatening to do the same to children's parents "if you tell."

(Years later, in a 1993 broadcast interview, Summit admitted he hadn't viewed any of the 400 videotaped interviews and hadn't read any of the transcripts.)

In March 1985, nearly 50 parents dug up the vacant lot beside the Mc-Martin school in search of an underground room and animal remains. After finding nothing, the district attorney's office hired an archaeological firm to excavate. The dig discovered trash dating back 60 to 100 years, but no tunnels or rooms. The FBI and Interpol conducted a worldwide search for evidence of a kiddie-porn/prostitution ring but found no photographs or films to corroborate the children's stories.

On January 17, 1986, District Attorney Ira Reiner dropped charges against five of the defendants. Having reviewed 100,000 pages of testimony, he said his predecessor had based the case on "incredibly weak" evidence. Yet he found other "strong and compelling" evidence against Ray Buckey and his mother, who were kept in jail. He announced 79 child-abuse counts against Ray, 20 against his mother, and one conspiracy count against both.