McMartin Pre-Schooler: 'I Lied' (McMartin child molestation case)

[IndianaGreen]

October 30, 2005

McMartin Pre-Schooler: 'I Lied'

A long-delayed apology from one of the accusers in the notorious McMartin Pre-School molestation case

By Kyle Zirpolo, as told to Debbie Nathan

My mother divorced my father when I was 2 and she met my stepfather, who was a police officer in Manhattan Beach. They had five children after me. In addition, my stepfather has three older children. In the combined family, I'm the only one of the nine children he didn't father. I always remember wanting him to love me. I was always trying excessively hard to please him. I would do anything for him.

My stepbrothers and stepsisters and a half-brother and half-sister went to McMartin. So did I. I only remember being happy there. I never had any bad feelings about the school—no bad auras or vibes or anything. Even to this day, talking about it or seeing pictures or artwork that I did at McMartin never brings any bad feelings. All my memories are positive.

The thing I remember about the case was how it took over the whole city and consumed our whole family. My parents would ask questions: "Did the teachers ever do things to you?" They talked about Ray Buckey, whom I had never met. I don't even have any recollection of him attending the school when I was going there.

The first time I went to CII (Children's Institute International, now known as Children's Institute, Inc., a respected century-old L.A. County child welfare organization where approximately 400 former McMartin children were interviewed and given genital exams, and where many were diagnosed as abuse victims), we drove there, our whole family. I remember waiting … for hours while my brothers and sisters were being interviewed. I don't remember how many days or if it was just one day, but my memory tells me it was weeks, it seemed so long. It was an ordeal. I remember thinking to myself, "I'm not going to get out of here unless I tell them what they want to hear."

http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-mcmartin44oct30,0,7258817.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[goclark]

1. I remember the case

I just have a hard time remembering my life in Pre School.

I clearly remember Kindergarten but not Pre School.

[Judi Lynn]

2. So now the pre-school owner and her daughter are dead

after living in torment all those years. Here's a google grab for DU'ers who may not remember what this was about:

The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial, the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history, should serve as a cautionary tale. When it was all over, the government had spent seven years and $15 million dollars investigating and prosecuting a case that led to no convictions. More seriously, the McMartin case left in its wake hundreds of emotionally damaged children, as well as ruined careers for members of the McMartin staff. No one paid a bigger price than Ray Buckey, one of the principal defendants in the case, who spent five years in jail awaiting trial for a crime (most people recognize today) he never committed. McMartin juror Brenda Williams said that the trial experience taught her to be more cautious: "I now realize how easily something can be said and misinterpreted and blown out of proportion." Another juror, Mark Bassett, singled out "experts" for blame: "I thought some of the expert testimony about the children told you more about the expert than the child. I mean, if the expert says children are always 100% believable and then you have a child who is not believable, either the expert is extremely biased or they've never seen anything like that child before."

The McMartin trial had its origins in a call placed to police in Manhattan Beach, California by Judy Johnson, the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old son who attended the McMartin Preschool on about ten occasions in 1983. Johnson told Detective Jane Hoag that a school aide, Ray Buckey, the 25-year-old son of the owner of the preschool, had molested her son. Despite the fact that the young boy was unable to identify Ray from photos and medical investigations of the boy showed no signs of sexual abuse, the police conducted searches of Buckey's home, confiscating such "evidence" as a rubber duck, a graduation robe, and Playboy magazines. Detective Hoag arrested Buckey on September 7, 1983.
(snip/...)

http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-mcmartin44oct30,0,7258817.story?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The burden of guilt which has been placed on the children who were trying to cooperate with and please the adults is simply unforgiveable. The man Kyle in Indiana Green's article must feel so old, and misunderstood by now, and sad, and this was NOT anything he could have controlled at his age, as he couldn't understand it. He wasn't old enough.

I hope everyone who joined the feeding frenzy will have a long time to carry burning memories of the witch hunt and their parts in it. This was unforgiveable.

[undergroundpanther]

3. Mc Martin case did alot to

harm legit cases of child abuse by discrediting kids who DID have an issue.

In the hospital because of PSTD.. And I discovered there was this agenda that all satanists are bad going on with the staff there.. My therapist refused to believe me. I was abused by a christian pedophile,my mom knew he was fundie she said so in my records and I said so too but my hysterical therapist tried to twist my past into something it was not and tell me he was really a satanist.

Why? Because at that time I was a satanist in that whole gothic kinda phase popular in the early 90's.And I never ate any babies or hurt any animals.But the McMartin case still was burning in their minds and what I was saying MUST NOT BE TRUE..to them. And my mental health suffered because I spent my time arguing my past and not trusting my therapist who was supposed to help but insisted I lie.
I walked out of his office because he pissed me off and refused to listen to me.Funny years later the catholic church pedophile priest scandal broke and every so often you hear about christian churches with perverts being busted by police and pastors convicted.I wonder if this fool is still shouting at the devil?

The FBI dug up a field to find remains of satanic rituals and came up empty.Yet the christian churches have their good guy badge and it is so "shocking" when real evidence comes out and it's against christians and not the "devil" that has been the churches best buddy and scapegoat for the evil and abuse of authority and power in the christian churches ranks, that has been there since the crusades the witch burnings and before.History does not exonerate the churches from crimes against humanity.Some people are desperate to put these crimes on some other religion to excuse christianity of blame. Giving an organization with power a carte' Blanche good guy badge is dangerous especially for kids who's parents trust a church because of their reputation instead of looking at the character of the church .A good guy image does not mean the church is immune from the actions of the bad people in those orgs.who misuse power. I don't care what the beliefs are if someone is abusing power they are a danger.

I wonder to myself how many people have been hurt by christians and catholic priests? Even today the pope covers for the pedophiles in the church and will not release documents because the church is scared of coming clean and losing money and that good guy badge .. It's so very easy for a 'judeo-christian' culture to blame it all on the devil rather than look at the sick authoritarian ideas in the church and in the bible that led to sick shit like shepherding and discipling movements.Introspection into ones own habits is feared by authoritarians and illegitimate power.

[woo me with science]

4. Thank you for posting this.

This was a devastating case, horrible enough for the people directly involved, but also terribly damaging to so many other lives.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. I was a kindergarten teacher at that time, in Harlem at a daycare center.

Things rippled through the country and touched our little classroom. All of a sudden, the teachers were first not encouraged to hug the children or let them sit in our laps. Then it was outright prohibited.

Then, the fingerprinting. I quit at that point. Not because I had a criminal record that I had to hide. Because the registry was demeaning to me as a professional if I had not been officially charged with a crime.

After I left, the accusations from the parents started with the remaining staff. It almost sounded like a game of Clue: John with Jim in the bathroom with a cake of soap. Ridiculous charges. The accused staff was suspended and hearings and investigations ensued. My ex-assistant teacher had a red flag come up on his public records for being abusive. When the charge was delved into, it was discovered that he was deemed "abusive" for yelling at his wife in public during heated divorce proceedings. Well, he was cleared, given his job back, given his back pay (held in escrow), etc. But other staff just quit out of frustration. The daycare center was never the same as far as being warm, innovative, and yes, fun.

I'm sure there was actual abuse elsewhere, but I can vouch that where I worked was free from the taint, and I consider my tenure there to be a highlight in my life.

[bemildred]

6. The single most egregious witch hunt I can remember.

The paranoia still echoes through our child
care and school systems.

[IndianaGreen]

7. And the media went gah-gah for it

the defendants were convicted in the media long before the trial was held. It was the media that published sensational stories about Satanic rituals and animal sacrifices. Thankfully, the jury rendered a verdict on the evidence and the defendants were all acquitted.

[question everything]

9. I think that there is a case in Connecticut

where, again, the "evidence" completely unraveled yet the DA would not release the defendant.

Amiraut? Or a similar name

[High Plains]

10. Massachusetts

and I think the family was the Amiraults. Gerald Amirault did 18 years in prison...

[question everything]

13. Thanks, you are right

I remember being surprise that whet I have always considered to be a liberal state - shows you how much I knew - was a place for such a miscarriage of justice. It was almost like a personal vendetta by the prosecutor.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. Yes, all sorts of wild accusations were made for which there was no

physical evidence whatsoever.

There was a similar case in Jordan, Minnesota at about the same time. Again, kids were coached into making wild accusations about things like babies being killed, but nobody stopped to ask whether there were any missing babies or if so, where their remains were.

You almost have to wonder if these witch hunt type cases were given heavy media coverage in order to discredit genuine accusations of child molestation.

[RamboLiberal]

11. Young woman from my area of PA had her life ruined in NJ

by just such a case. Margaret Kelly Michaels was accused of ritualistic abuse against children at Wee Kare Michaels lost a decade of her life in prison before work by investigative journalists Debbie Nathan and Dorothy Rabinowitz got lawyer Morton J. Stavis to take on her case even though her family had exausted their finances. When he died in a tragic accident his good friend William Kunstler took on her cause.

The appellate court had ruled that the children’s testimony was so corrupted by the leading questions asked by the investigators that a "taint hearing" had to be held to determine if any of the children’s testimony could be considered valid, or if it was too tainted. This would be akin to unscrambling an egg, and Essex County appealed the decision to the New Jersey Supreme Court. In June 1994, the Supreme Court upheld the appellate court’s ruling – no new trial without a taint hearing.

The problem of bringing back the child witnesses, after so much doubt had been cast on their testimony, proved to be insurmountable for the prosecution team. After spending over $3 million to prosecute her, Essex County dropped the indictment against Kelly Michaels in December 1994. The $800,000 bill for her defense was not officially withdrawn, but she has not been pursued for the money.

Kelly, by then 32, was free. But, "being technically not guilty is not the same as being completely innocent," she reflected. "You cling to that difference when you walk into a courtroom and people spit at you, or when you’re sitting in a cell and all around you people are screaming filthy names at you. That difference, it’s everything."

http://crimemagazine.com/daycare.htm

And can someone tell me if there's been any resolution in the following two cases I saw in this article? Wonder how many innocent people are still imprisoned by this 80's witch hunt hysteria? Imagine if this happened today with the 24 hour pundits like Sustern, Grace, and Crosby around! It would be total hysteria and witch hunting!

Bernard Baran was arrested in 1984 and convicted for allegedly molesting three preschoolers at the day care where he worked. He was only 19 years old. The initial accusation against him came from the parent of a little boy who accused Baran of touching her son. She was a drug addict who periodically lost custody of her child. The other accusations against Baran arose after the other parents learned about the first accusation. The medical evidence against Baran was similar to that brought against Kelly Michaels – that is, it was non-existent. Baran’s mother had no money to mount a proper legal defense for him. Baran is still in prison, also in Massachusetts, a victim of prejudice and hysteria.

Patrick Figured was sentenced to prison for life for allegedly abusing three toddlers at his girlfriend’s mother’s day care. The allegations against him and his girlfriend, Sonja Hill, were preposterous and included burning bibles and forcing the children to drink blood. Jurors ignored testimony that Figured, an electronics company executive, was never alone with the children and had very little to do with them. The anal "winking" test helped sentence Figured to three life terms. He is currently incarcerated in North Carolina’s Nash Correctional Institution.

[rooboy]

12. I rented the movie "INDICTMENT" starring James Woods and Mercedes Ruehl...

which tells the story of the McMartin case. I recommend it to anyone who wants to be thoroughly stunned.