McMartin preschool trial - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case of the 1980s. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse

Sexual abuse

Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...

of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1984 to 1987, and the trial ran from 1987 to 1990. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. When the trial ended in 1990 it had been the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history. The case was part of day care sex abuse hysteria, a moral panic

Moral panic

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...

over satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse refers to the abuse of a person or animal in a ritual setting or manner...

in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Initial allegations

In 1983, Judy Johnson, mother of one of the Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach, California

Manhattan Beach is the wealthiest beachfront city located in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, USA. The city is on the Pacific coast, south of El Segundo, and north of Hermosa Beach. Manhattan Beach is the home of both beach and indoor volleyball, and surfing. During the winter, the...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, preschool's young students, complained to the police that her son had been sodomized

Sodomy

Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...

by her estranged husband and by McMartin teacher Ray Buckey. Ray Buckey was the grandson of school founder Virginia McMartin and son of administrator Peggy McMartin Buckey. Johnson's belief that her son had been abused began when her son had painful bowel movements

Defecation

Defecation is the final act of digestion by which organisms eliminate solid, semisolid or liquid waste material from the digestive tract via the anus. Waves of muscular contraction known as peristalsis in the walls of the colon move fecal matter through the digestive tract towards the rectum...

. What happened next is still disputed. Some sources state that at that time, Johnson's son denied her suggestion that his preschool teachers had molested him, whereas others say he confirmed the abuse.

In addition, Johnson also made several more accusations, including that people at the daycare had sexual encounters with animals, that "Peggy drilled a child under the arms" and "Ray flew in the air." Ray Buckey was questioned, but was not prosecuted due to lack of evidence. The police then sent a form letter

Form letter

A form letter is a letter written from a template, rather than being specially composed for a specific recipient. The most general kind of form letter consists of one or more regions of boilerplate text interspersed with one or more substitution placeholders.Although form letters are generally...

to about 200 parents of students at the McMartin school, stating that their children might have been abused, and asking the parents to question their children. The text of the letter said:

September 8, 1983. Dear Parent: This Department is conducting a criminal investigation involving child molestation (288 P.C.) Ray Buckey, an employee of Virginia McMartin's Pre-School, was arrested September 7, 1983 by this Department. The following procedure is obviously an unpleasant one, but to protect the rights of your children as well as the rights of the accused, this inquiry is necessary for a complete investigation. Records indicate that your child has been or is currently a student at the pre-school. We are asking your assistance in this continuing investigation. Please question your child to see if he or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a victim. Our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include: oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttock or chest area, and sodomy, possibly committed under the pretense of "taking the child's temperature." Also photos may have been taken of children without their clothing. Any information from your child regarding having ever observed Ray Buckey to leave a classroom alone with a child during any nap period, or if they have ever observed Ray Buckey tie up a child, is important. Please complete the enclosed information form and return it to this Department in the enclosed stamped return envelope as soon as possible. We will contact you if circumstances dictate same. We ask you to please keep this investigation strictly confidential because of the nature of the charges and the highly emotional effect it could have on our community. Please do not discuss this investigation with anyone outside your immediate family. Do not contact or discuss the investigation with Raymond Buckey, any member of the accused defendant's family, or employees connected with the McMartin Pre-School.

Johnson was diagnosed with and hospitalized for acute paranoid schizophrenia

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...

and in 1986 was found dead in her home from complications of chronic alcoholism before the preliminary hearing

Preliminary hearing

Within some criminal justice systems, a preliminary hearing is a proceeding, after a criminal complaint has been filed by the prosecutor, to determine whether there is enough evidence to require a trial...

concluded.

Interviewing and examining the children

Several hundred children were then interviewed by the Children's Institute International

Children's Institute International

Children's Institute International is an anti-child–abuse organization in Los Angeles that was started in 1950 as "The Colleagues" to raise funds for Big Brothers Big Sisters...

(CII), a Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

abuse therapy clinic run by Kee MacFarlane

Kee MacFarlane

Kathleen 'Kee' MacFarlane was the Director of Children's Institute International. She developed the concept of the anatomically correct doll for children to use during interviews concerning abuse and played a significant role in the McMartin preschool trial.-Professional training:She received a...

. The interviewing techniques used during investigations of the allegations were highly suggestive and invited children to pretend or speculate about supposed events. By spring of 1984, it was claimed that 360 children had been abused. Astrid Heppenstall Heger

Astrid Heppenstall Heger

Astrid Heppenstall Heger, M.D. is a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the USC Keck School of Medicine and the founder and Executive Director of the Violence Intervention Program at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in East Los Angeles....

performed medical examinations and took photos of what she believed to be minute scarring, which she stated was caused by anal penetration. Journalist John Earl believed that her findings were based on unsubstantiated medical histories. Later research demonstrated that the methods of questioning used on the children were extremely suggestive

Leading question

In common law systems that rely on testimony by witnesses, a leading question or suggestive interrogation is a question that suggests the answer or contains the information the examiner is looking for. For example, this question is leading:...

, leading to false accusations. Others believe that the questioning itself may have led to false memory syndrome among the children who were questioned. Ultimately only 41 of the original 360 children testified during the grand jury and pre-trial hearings, and fewer than a dozen testified during the actual trial.

Videotapes of the interviews with children were reviewed by Dr. Michael Maloney

Michael Maloney

Michael Maloney is an English actor.Born in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, Maloney's first television appearance was as Peter Barkworth's teenage son in the 1979 drama series, Telford's Change....

, a British clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry, as an expert witness regarding the interviewing of children. Maloney was highly critical of the interviewing techniques used, referring to them as improper, coercive, directive, problematic, adult-directed in a way that forced the children to follow a rigid script and that "many of the kids' statements in the interviews were generated by the examiner." Transcripts and recordings of the interviews contained far more speech from adults than children and demonstrated that, despite the highly coercive interviewing techniques used, initially the children were resistant to interviewers' attempts to elicit disclosures. Recordings of these interviews were instrumental in the jury's refusal to convict, by demonstrating how children could create their vivid and dramatic testimonies without having experienced the abuse. The techniques used were contrary to the existing guidelines in California for the investigation of cases involving children and child witnesses.

Bizarre allegations

Some of the accusations were described as "bizarre", overlapping with accusations that mirrored the just-starting satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse refers to the abuse of a person or animal in a ritual setting or manner...

panic. It was alleged that, in addition to having been sexually abused, they saw witches fly, traveled in a hot-air balloon, and were taken through underground tunnels. When shown a series of photographs by Danny Davis, the McMartins' lawyer, one child identified actor Chuck Norris

Chuck Norris

Carlos Ray "Chuck" Norris is an American martial artist and actor. After serving in the United States Air Force, he began his rise to fame as a martial artist and has since founded his own school, Chun Kuk Do...

as one of the abusers.

Some of the abuse was alleged to have occurred in secret tunnels beneath the school. Several investigations turned up evidence of old buildings on the site and other debris from before the school was built, but no evidence of any secret chambers was found. There were claims of orgies at car washes and airports, and of children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they would be abused, then cleaned up and presented back to their unsuspecting parents. Some children said they were made to play a game called "Naked Movie Star" in which they were photographed nude. During the trial, testimony from the children stated that the naked movie star game was actually a rhyming taunt used to tease other children—"What you say is what you are, you're a naked movie star,"—and had nothing to do with having naked pictures taken.

Johnson, who made the initial allegations, made bizarre and impossible statements about Raymond Buckey, including that he could fly. Though the prosecution asserted Johnson's mental illness was caused by the events of the trial, Johnson had admitted to them that she was mentally ill beforehand. Evidence of Johnson's mental illness

Mental illness

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...

was withheld from the defense for three years and, when provided, were in the form of sanitized reports that excluded Johnson's statements, at the order of the prosecution. One of the original prosecutors, Glenn Stevens

Glenn Stevens

Glenn Robert Stevens is an Australian economist and the current Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia.-Early life and education:...

, left the case and stated that other prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense, including the information that Johnson's son was unable to identify Ray Buckey in a series of photographs. Stevens also accused Robert Philibosian

Robert Philibosian

Robert Harry Philibosian is an American politician. He served as Los Angeles County District Attorney from 1981 to 1984. He attended Stanford University, graduated from Southwestern Law School and was admitted to the California State Bar in 1968. He is now Of counsel at the law firm of Sheppard,...

, the deputy district attorney

District attorney

In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...

on the case, of lying and withholding evidence from the court and defense lawyers in order to keep the Buckeys in jail and prevent access to exonerating evidence.

Trial

On March 22, 1984, Virginia McMartin, Peggy McMartin Buckey, Ray Buckey, Ray's sister Peggy Ann Buckey and teachers Mary Ann Jackson, Bette Raidor, and Babette Spitler were charged with 115 counts of child abuse, later expanded to 321 counts of child abuse involving 48 children. In the 20 months of preliminary hearings, the prosecution, led by attorney Lael Rubin, presented their theory of sexual abuse

Sexual abuse

. The children's testimony during the preliminary hearings was inconsistent. Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder

Lawrence Pazder

Lawrence Pazder was a Canadian psychiatrist and author. Pazder is known for discredited autobiography, Michelle Remembers published in 1980, that he co-wrote with his patient Michelle Smith, and for his involvement in the satanic ritual abuse moral panic.-Background:Pazder was born in Edmonton,...

, co-authors of the now-discredited satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse refers to the abuse of a person or animal in a ritual setting or manner...

autobiography Michelle Remembers
Michelle Remembers
Michelle Remembers is a book published in 1980 co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient Michelle Smith. A best-seller, Michelle Remembers was the first book written on the subject of satanic ritual abuse and is an important part of the controversies beginning...

, met with the parents and children involved in the trial, and were believed by the initial prosecutor Glenn Stevens to have influenced the children's testimony. In 1986, a new district attorney called the evidence "incredibly weak," and dropped all charges against Virginia McMartin, Peggy Ann Buckey, Mary Ann Jackson, Bette Raidor and Babette Spitler. Peggy McMartin Buckey and Ray Buckey remained in custody awaiting trial; Peggy McMartin's bail had been set at $1 million and Ray Buckey had been denied bail.

In 1989, Peggy Anne Buckey's appeal to have her teaching credentials re-instated after their suspension was granted. The judge ruled that there was no credible evidence or corroboration to lead to the license being suspended, and that a review of the videotaped interviews with McMartin children "reveal[ed] a pronounced absence of any evidence implicating [Peggy Ann] in any wrongdoing and...raises additional doubts of credibility with respect to the children interviewed or with respect to the value of CII interviewing techniques themselves." The following day the credentialling board of Sacramento endorsed the ruling and restored Buckey's right to teach.

Perjury by confession witness

During the trial, George Freeman was called as a witness and testified that Ray Buckey had confessed to him while sharing a cell. Freeman later attempted to flee the country and confessed to perjury

Perjury

Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...

in a series of other criminal cases in which he manufactured testimony in exchange for favorable treatment by the prosecution in other cases, in several instances creating false confessions of other inmates. In order to guarantee his testimony during the McMartin case, Freeman was given immunity to previous charges of perjury. Under immunity, Freeman admitted to fabricating Buckey's confession.

Acquittal and dismissal

In 1990, after three years of testimony and nine weeks of deliberation by the jury, Peggy McMartin Buckey was acquitted on all counts. Ray Buckey was cleared on 52 of 65 counts, and freed on bail after more than five years in jail. Nine of 11 jurors at a press conference following the trial stated that they believed the children had been molested but the evidence did not allow them to state who had committed the abuse beyond a reasonable doubt. Eleven out of the thirteen jurors who remained by the end of the trial voted to acquit Buckey of the charges; the refusal of the remaining two to vote for a not guilty verdict resulted in the deadlock. The media overwhelmingly focused on the two jurors who voted guilty at the expense of those who believed Buckey was not guilty. Buckey was retried later on six of the 13 counts, which produced another hung jury

Hung jury

A hung jury or deadlocked jury is a jury that cannot, by the required voting threshold, agree upon a verdict after an extended period of deliberation and is unable to change its votes due to severe differences of opinion.- England and Wales :...

. The prosecution then gave up trying to obtain a conviction, and the case was closed with all charges against Ray Buckey dismissed. He had been jailed for 5 years without ever being convicted of any wrongdoing.

Media coverage

Wayne Satz

Wayne Thomas Satz was a reporter who first reported on the McMartin preschool trial. His first McMartin broadcast aired on KABC-TV in Los Angeles on February 2, 1984.-External links:...

, at the time a reporter for the Los Angeles ABC affiliate television station KABC

KABC-TV

KABC-TV, channel 7, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, licensed to Los Angeles, California. KABC-TV's studios are located in Glendale, California...

, reported on the case and the children's allegations. He presented an unchallenged view of the children's and parents' claims. Satz later entered into a romantic relationship with Kee MacFarlane

Kee MacFarlane

, the social worker at the Children's Institute International

Children's Institute International

Children's Institute International is an anti-child–abuse organization in Los Angeles that was started in 1950 as "The Colleagues" to raise funds for Big Brothers Big Sisters...

, who was interviewing the children. Another instance of media conflict of interest occurred when David Rosenzweig, the editor at the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

overseeing the coverage, became engaged to marry Lael Rubin, the prosecutor.

The media coverage was skewed towards an uncritical acceptance of the prosecution's viewpoint. David Shaw

David Shaw (writer)

David Shaw was an American journalist who was best known for his reporting for the Los Angeles Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1991...

of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

wrote a series of articles, which later won the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

, discussing the flawed and skewed coverage presented by his own paper on the trial. It was only after the trial that coverage of the flaws in the evidence and events presented by witnesses and the prosecution were discussed.

Legacy

The trial lasted seven years and cost $15 million, the longest and most expensive criminal case in the history of the United States legal system, and ultimately resulted in no convictions. The McMartin preschool was closed and the building was dismantled and several of the accused have died. In 2005 one of the children (now an adult) retracted the allegations of abuse.

Never did anyone do anything to me, and I never saw them doing anything. I said a lot of things that didn't happen. I lied. ... Anytime I would give them an answer that they didn't like, they would ask again and encourage me to give them the answer they were looking for. ... I felt uncomfortable and a little ashamed that I was being dishonest. But at the same time, being the type of person I was, whatever my parents wanted me to do, I would do.

In The Devil in The Nursery, Margaret Talbot for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

summarized the case:

When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80's — the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities.

Mary A. Fischer in an article in Los Angeles
Los Angeles (magazine)
Los Angeles magazine is a monthly regional magazine of national stature. Published by Emmis Communications and produced monthly since the spring of 1961, LA Magazine is a combination of award-winning feature writing, investigative reporting, service journalism, and design, the definitive resource...

magazine said the case was "simply invented," and transmogrified into a national cause celebre by the misplaced zeal of six people: Judy Johnson, mentally ill mother who died of alcoholism; Jane Hoag, the detective who investigated the complaints; Kee MacFarlane

Kee MacFarlane

, the social worker who interviewed the children; Robert Philibosian, the district attorney who was in a losing battle for re-election; Wayne Satz

Wayne Satz

Wayne Thomas Satz was a reporter who first reported on the McMartin preschool trial. His first McMartin broadcast aired on KABC-TV in Los Angeles on February 2, 1984.-External links:...

, the television reporter who first reported the case, and Lael Rubin, the prosecutor.

Legal

In many states, laws were passed allowing children to testify on closed-circuit TV so the children would not be traumatized by facing the accused. The arrangement was supported in Maryland v. Craig
Maryland v. Craig
Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 , was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution...

, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that closed circuit testimony was permissible where it was limited to circumstances with a likelihood that a minor may be harmed by testifying in open court. The case also influenced how very young children were questioned for evidence in court cases with concerns over their capacity for suggestibility and false memories. The case and others like it also impacted the investigation of allegations that included young children. Normal police procedure is to record using video, tape or notes in interviews with alleged victims. The initial interviews with children by the CII were recorded, and demonstrated to the jury members in the trial the coercive and suggestive techniques used by CII staff to produce allegations. These interviews were instrumental in the jury members failing to produce a guilty verdict against Buckey, and several similar trials with similar interviewing techniques produced similarly not-guilty verdicts when juries were allowed to view the recordings. Because these records ended up being extremely valuable to the defense in similar cases, prosecutors and investigators began "abandoning their tape recorders and notepads" and a manual was produced for investigating child abuse cases that urged prosecutors and investigators to not record their interviews.

Continued allegations of secret tunnels

In 1990, parents who believed their children had been abused at the preschool hired archeologist E. Gary Stickel to investigate the site. In May 1990, Stickel claimed he found evidence of tunnels, consistent with the children's accounts, under the McMartin Preschool using ground-penetrating radar

Ground-penetrating radar

Ground-penetrating radar is a geophysical method that uses radar pulses to image the subsurface. This nondestructive method uses electromagnetic radiation in the microwave band of the radio spectrum, and detects the reflected signals from subsurface structures...

.

Others have disagreed with Stickel's conclusions. John Earle wrote in 1995 that the concrete slab floor was undisturbed except for a small patch where the sewer line was tapped into. Once the slab was removed, there was no sign of any materials to line or hold up any tunnels, and the concrete floor would have made it impossible for the defendants to fill in any tunnels once the abuse investigation began. The article concluded that disturbed soil under the slab was from the sewer line and construction fill buried under the slab before it was poured. Further, Earle noted that some fill from beneath the concrete slab was dated to the year 1940.

W. Joseph Wyatt's 2002 report concluded that the "tunnels" under the preschool were more plausibly explained as a rubbish pit used by the owners of the site before the preschool's construction in 1966. Materials found during the excavation included bottles, tin can

Tin can

A tin can, tin , steel can, or a can, is a sealed container for the distribution or storage of goods, composed of thin metal. Many cans require opening by cutting the "end" open; others have removable covers. Cans hold diverse contents: foods, beverages, oil, chemicals, etc."Tin" cans are made...

s, plywood

Plywood

Plywood is a type of manufactured timber made from thin sheets of wood veneer. It is one of the most widely used wood products. It is flexible, inexpensive, workable, re-usable, and can usually be locally manufactured...

, inner tubes, as well as the former owner's old mail box. Only three small items found near the edge of the concrete slab were dated after 1966, which Wyatt suggested were most likely dragged into the pit by rats

Rat

Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...

or other scavengers. Moreover, Wyatt speculated that Stickel's conclusions were colored by his collaboration with the parents of the McMartin children.

Effects on child abuse research

Shortly after investigation into the McMartin charges began, the funds to research child sexual abuse greatly increased, notably through the budget allocated for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect

National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect

The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect is a national center established by the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency of the Federal government of the United States. It concentrates on research and publications regarding child abuse and neglect, administering research on these...

(NCCAN). The agency's budget increased from $1.8 million to $7.2 million between 1983 and 1984, increasing to $15 million in 1985, making it the greatest source of funding for child abuse and neglect prevention in the United States. The majority of this budget went toward studies on sexual abuse with only $5 million going towards physical abuse and neglect. Federal funding was also used to arrange conferences on ritual abuse, providing an aura of respectability as well as allowing prosecutors to exchange tips on the best means of obtaining convictions. A portion of the funds were used to publish the book Behind the Playground Walls, which used a sample of children drawn from the McMartin families. The book claimed to study the effects of "reported" rather than actual abuse but portrayed all of the McMartin children as actual victims of abuse despite a lack of convictions during the trial and without mentioning questions about the reality of the accusations. Another grant of $173,000 went to David Finkelhor

David Finkelhor

David Finkelhor is an American sociologist known for his research into child sexual abuse and related topics. He is the director of Crimes against Children Research Center, Co-Director of the and Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire in the US, from which he received his Ph.D....

who used the funds to investigate allegations of day care sexual abuse throughout the country, combining the study of verified crimes by admitted pedophiles and unverified accusations of satanic ritual abuse.

External links

The Dark Truth About The "Dark Tunnels of McMartin"—A 33-part comprehensive article by John Earl
McMartin preschool trial, by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance are a small group in Kingston, Ontario dedicated to the promotion of religious tolerance through their website, ReligiousTolerance.org.-History of the group and its website:Bruce A...
McMartin preschool trial at University of Missouri
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...
McMartin preschool trial at Frontline

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Initial allegations

Interviewing and examining the children

Bizarre allegations

Trial

Perjury by confession witness

Acquittal and dismissal

Media coverage

Legacy

Legal

Continued allegations of secret tunnels

Effects on child abuse research

See also

External links