Bill to Allow Testimony on TV by Children Gains

As anxious parents looked on, a state Senate committee reversed itself Tuesday and narrowly approved a bill to allow children in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case to testify outside the presence of their alleged attackers.

The bill, which would allow closed-circuit televised testimony of sex-abuse victims under 14 years of age, was sent to the Senate floor with the minimum six votes required after its author, Sen. Art Torres (D-South Pasadena), pleaded with his colleagues to “send a clear message” to child molesters.

Parents of the children said they were “jubilant” over the Judiciary Committee’s action, but conceded that the bill, which is opposed by defense lawyers, will have a hard time clearing the full Senate and Assembly.

For the McMartin parents, the urgency of the issue was underscored as a 7-year-old boy became the first of 42 former students at the Manhattan Beach preschool to take the witness stand in the preliminary hearing of seven former teachers.

Even if Torres succeeds in pushing his bill rapidly through the Legislature, Tuesday’s hearing left doubt as to whether the law could be applied retroactively to the McMartin case.

A legal opinion by the Legislature’s lawyer contends that it would be unconstitutional to change courtroom operations once a trial is under way. But Torres produced his own legal opinion, by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, saying that the measure contains only “procedural changes” that can take effect as soon as it is signed into law.

Testimony by children in the McMartin preliminary hearing is expected to last at least 16 weeks, enough time, according to Torres, to get the measure to Gov. George Deukmejian and to enable at least a few of the young witnesses to avoid open courtroom testimony.

In a Los Angeles press conference Tuesday, Deukmejian reiterated that he has not taken a position on the bill to allow testimony of child sexual-abuse victims by closed-circuit television but described it as a “very difficult legal area and a civil rights issue in terms of the accused people.”

Despite the trauma for parents and children of having open court testimony, he said, “Someone accused of a crime is entitled to be confronted by his accuser.” The bill fell one vote short of passage in the Judiciary Committee last week when defense attorneys, including one involved in the McMartin case, argued that it would compromise defendants’ constitutional guarantee of confronting their accusers face to face.

In arguing for reconsideration, supporters of the measure said that children can be intimidated and traumatized by a direct courtroom confrontation with their alleged attackers.

Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who was absent last week, supplied the crucial “aye” vote Tuesday after unsuccessfully arguing for several changes in the bill, including one that would have limited its scope to witnesses 7 years or age or younger.

As currently written, the measure would allow closed-circuit testimony only in specific cases where a judge finds that there would be serious psychological harm in allowing in-person testimony.

The young witnesses would be placed in a another room where they would view attorneys and the defendants on separate television monitors. The defendants, judge and jury would view the testimony on their own monitors located in the courtroom.

Sen. President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) in arguing against the measure, said the procedure could make it more difficult for accused child molesters to prove their innocence.

In another development, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that children who are alleged victims of sex abuse should not be allowed to testify against their accused molesters over closed-circuit television because the procedure violates the defendants’ constitutional rights.

Accused child molesters, like other criminal defendants, have an absolute constitutional right to confront witnesses against them in open court, Judge Dion G. Morrow said.

Morrow’s ruling came in the case of Campbell Hugh Greenup, 57, former principal of a private school in Northridge, who was accused of sexually molesting eight of his students.

Despite his decision on the constitutional issue, Morrow turned down a request by Greenup’s attorney to dismiss the charges against the educator. The judge ruled that Greenup, in effect, waived his constitutional right to confront witnesses during a preliminary hearing last year.

Morrow’s ruling does not affect the Greenup case, or any other pending criminal case. The ruling, while not binding on other judges, is noteworthy, attorneys said, because the judge went even further than a recent Court of Appeal ruling in asserting the right of the accused to face accusers eye to eye.

Times staff writers Robert W. Stewart and William Endicott contributed to this story.