2 Sides in McMartin Case Claim Support in Boy’s Testimony

The 10-year-old boy’s account of being sexually abused, photographed nude and threatened took 90 minutes; the defense’s cross-examination took more than 15 days.

But after the second alleged child victim to testify in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case stepped down from the witness stand late last week, prosecutors said his story had not been dented.

In fact, the defense’s lengthy cross-examination brought out new evidence, including the identification of a church and market where preschoolers were allegedly subjected to animal sacrifices and sexual abuse, and the naming of a Manhattan Beach grocer as a participant in the activities.

While the boy’s testimony appeared to strengthen the prosecution’s case, defense attorneys said it helped them because it was too preposterous to be believed.

Patient and Alert

Throughout his three weeks of testimony, the chubby, freckle-faced youngster had remained patient and alert, sometimes correcting his interrogators’ misstatements, complaining when convoluted questions came too fast and calmly asking the judge to instruct one defense attorney to lower his voice.

Prosecutors said he held up well, but had told them he was puzzled at the necessity for him to endure the same questions over and over. As the proceedings dragged on, the boy frequently changed previous answers to “I don’t remember” when asked again.

And by the time he and his parents were thanked for their cooperation and excused by Municipal Judge Aviva K. Bobb on Friday, he was noticeably tired.

The third child witness, a 9-year-old girl, is scheduled to take the stand Tuesday.

Charged with 208 counts of molestation and conspiracy involving 41 children are school founder Virginia McMartin, 77; her daughter, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 58, and grandchildren, Ray Buckey, 26, and Peggy Ann Buckey, 28; Betty Raidor, 65; Mary Ann Jackson, 57, and Babette Spitler, 36.

Hearing in 7th Month

Last week, as the preliminary hearing, which is being held to determine whether the defendants should stand trial, entered its seventh month, the questions put to the boy became increasingly detailed and sometimes ghoulish: What color was the pen with which he was allegedly sodomized? How full was the cup of blood? Did the pony cry out when it was slashed? How long were the severed rabbit’s ears?

Defense attorneys insisted that further questions were necessary to support their contention that the child had been subtly “brainwashed” by parents, therapists, prosecutors and the media and was unwittingly or purposely testifying not from memory but from his imagination.

They also suggested in their questions that the boy’s testimony was a “fantastic” melange of nightmares, Halloween parties and childhood sexual experimentation in games like “doctor,” that grew with each telling.

For example, defense attorneys noted that when the youngster first testified about being taken with other children to the storeroom of a local market for sexual purposes, he said that the owner of the grocery had come to the storeroom’s door with one of the teachers. Sometime later, the child testified that the owner had watched the children play “naked games.” And still later, he testified that the owner had actually participated and “touched” him.

Asked About Blood

The defense also pointed out that a few days after being asked whether he ever had been made to drink cat’s blood, the boy for the first time mentioned being forced to drink rabbit blood.

Without being allowed to explore such allegations, defense attorney William Powell Jr. argued, “There’s no way we are going to sever the matrix that exists between the story as the child tells it and the preconditioning. . . . Our only hope is to find the grandiose and the fantasy.”

At one point during the cross-examination, Powell commented on the child’s increasingly bizarre revelations by quoting a line from Sir Walter Scott: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Christine Johnston, one of three prosecutors in the case, said outside of court, “Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. We stand by the testimony of our witness.”

After each defense attorney had questioned the boy once, they began a second round of questions.”

Judge Calls a Halt

However, Bobb, who last week sustained more and more objections from the prosecution and cut off several lines of questioning as repetitive and unproductive, finally called a halt to the cross-examination.

“The prosecution has alleged some eight counts (of molestation) and conspiracy (involving the 10-year-old boy),” she said. “We have now heard testimony on innumerable counts. I think we could be here for months getting details of further unalleged incidents not charged.”

If counts are added to the criminal complaint, as prosecutors have hinted, she said, “this preliminary hearing could take 10 years. I don’t intend to hear anything but the counts alleged in the complaint.”

During his brief direct examination, which began last month, the self-assured youngster testified that he had been forced to perform sex acts with all seven defendants in the molestation case, including the school’s 77-year-old founder, as well as with others he called “the strangers,” and had watched defendants Ray Buckey and his sister, Peggy Ann Buckey, have sexual intercourse.

He described being photographed nude at school and at an unfamiliar house--and being shown the pictures by a teacher who told him, “Here’s you and you’re gonna be a star.” He told of animal slaughters in a local church and at a farm; he recounted how he was tied up during “naked games” at the seaside nursery school in Manhattan Beach, and he said his teachers had threatened to harm his parents if he told of the sexual abuse.

More Revelations

Cross-examination elicited more.

In answer to defense attorneys’ questions, the boy vividly described the hacking to death of two ponies and being forced to drink the blood of a slaughtered rabbit during satanic-like rituals in front of a church altar. He identified St. Cross Episcopal Church in Hermosa Beach and Harry’s Market in Manhattan Beach as locations of some of the alleged sexual abuse.

And he named a local grocer, Ray Fadel, as having watched and participated in the activities in the storeroom of his market. That was the first time a witness had identified any of the so-called strangers allegedly involved in the molestations.

Much of the boy’s final day on the stand was consumed with arguments about whether he should be shown and questioned about the severed ears of a rabbit, a cape and a candle seized earlier this month in a raid in connection with a separate molestation case. The judge ruled that the defense had failed to lay sufficient foundation “to show these items at this time to this witness,” and excused the child from further questioning.

She also denied several defense motions to strike the youngster’s testimony, to allow any of the defendants to proceed directly to trial, to release the two defendants currently being held without bail or to dismiss the charges altogether.