McMartin Pupil Ends Testimony; Sticks to Account

After six days on the witness stand, the 7-year-old boy who is the first alleged victim to testify in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case stepped down Tuesday, his composure and his account of sexual abuse at the school essentially intact.

During cross-examination by seven defense attorneys, the boy stuck to his story of being molested, photographed and threatened during what he called “naked games” at the Manhattan Beach nursery school.

“I think he did very well . . .,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Glenn Stevens said as court recessed.

However, defense attorney Bradley Brunon claimed the child’s testimony shows that real and imagined events are mixed in his memory.

“I think the Institute (Children’s Institute International, a Los Angeles child-abuse center) has persuaded these children something happened,” Brunon said. “There’s no end to what kind of phantasmagoric stories might come out.”

After final questions from attorneys Tuesday afternoon, Municipal Judge Aviva K. Bobb told the young witness: “You can go home now. I want to thank you for . . . putting up with all this long questioning.”

Nationwide attention had been focused on the boy, as parents, attorneys and child-abuse experts watched to see if he could testify in front of his alleged abusers and withstand questioning by seven defense attorneys.

However, during a total of 23 hours of testimony, the crew-cut youngster did not break down or freeze under cross-examination. His only signs of discomfort were deep sighs when he became anxious and yawns and fidgeting when he became tired or bored.

Stevens said no parents in the case have expressed a desire to withdraw their children as a result of the 7-year-old’s experience.

The child testified that he had been tickled, touched sexually, sodomized, photographed and threatened at the school.

He testified that he was molested by four former teachers, defendants Raymond Buckey, 26; Peggy McMartin Buckey, 58; Betty Raidor, 65, and Babette Spitler, 36, while the school’s owner and founder, Virginia McMartin, 77, watched.

He did not implicate the two other defendants, Peggy Ann Buckey, 28, or Mary Ann Jackson, 57.

The seven are charged with 208 counts of molestation and conspiracy involving 41 children at the school since 1978 and are in the sixth month of their combined preliminary hearing to determine whether they should stand trial.

During a week of cross-examination, the boy frequently appeared to contradict his earlier testimony, changing his answers or saying “Don’t remember” or “Don’t know.” His answers varied according to the tone of voice and phrasing used by the questioning attorney.

Some of the inconsistencies were minor: He insisted in court, for example, that he had not owned a cap pistol while he attended McMartin, but defense attorneys Monday played an excerpt from a year-old videotaped interview with him in which he said he did.

However, he also appeared to waffle on more serious matters.

During cross-examination Tuesday, for example, he said he had told his mother about the “naked games” before being interviewed at Children’s Institute. Minutes later, he said he did not remember when he had told her about such games. And still later, he agreed with a defense attorney’s suggestion that he had not told his mother anything about what happened before the interview.

The issue is important, because the defense claims that no children made allegations against the McMartin teachers until they were “brainwashed” by therapists at Children’s Institute, a diagnostic and treatment center for child-abuse victims, which interviewed many of the alleged victims.

Later Tuesday, during redirect examination, Stevens attempted to clear up some of the confusion over the meaning of some of the child’s answers.

“All the touching you told us about, did all of that stuff really happen to you?” he asked.

“Yes,” the boy said emphatically.

“Did anybody tell you what to say when you come into court?” Stevens continued.

“No,” the child replied.

“Did anyone tell you you had to come to court to testify?” he asked.

“No,” the child said again.

Throughout the past week, defense attorneys, in impromptu press conferences in the court corridor, celebrated each apparent inconsistency they elicited. Nearby, prosecutors protested that the questions were “a semantic mine field” that created confusion and rendered “yes” or “no” answers meaningless.

The defense attorneys’ styles of cross-exmination featured questions asked in the negative, (“You never saw a child tickled on the penis or the tushy, did you?), fast switching of subjects and queries that began, “Do you remember. . . .”

Such questions drew objections not only from the prosecution, but also from the judge. She criticized the queries as “vague” and “involving two contexts” and asked that they be restated in a simpler and more straightforward manner.

Bobb also ordered defense attorney Forrest Latiner to tone down his loud and hostile approach, which Latiner defended as “a demanding intonation I adopted to get his (the witness’s) attention.”

The other defense attorneys took a generally gentle, friendly approach, likened by the prosecution to that of “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Summing up the young witness’s performance on the stand, Stevens said, “I’m not disappointed. He never once said in court that the whole thing was made up, artificially created . . . or the result of coaching by his mother or the district attorney.”

Stevens said he believes that the child’s testimony has provided “more than enough evidence, despite any perceived inconsistencies, to hold the defendants to answer on eight counts.”

The second child witness, a 10-year-old boy, is scheduled to take the stand today.