Court Sees Videotape of a Therapy Session for McMartin Witness

A videotaped interview with a child witness in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case was played in its entirety in open court Tuesday, after months of controversy over the suggestive methods used by therapists to elicit accounts of sexual abuse from hundreds of youngsters who attended the Manhattan Beach school.

Attorney Dean Gits, who represents defendant Peggy McMartin Buckey, a former teacher, said he asked that the 90-minute tape be shown because he wanted Municipal Judge Aviva K. Bobb and the media “to see what went on” at Children’s Institute International, the diagnostic and therapeutic center for child abuse victims where many of the alleged McMartin victims first gave their accounts of the alleged molestations.

The tape shows social worker-therapist Shawn Connerly leading a 7-year-old girl through a series of play activities on the floor--drawing, looking at pictures and acting out suggested scenarios of what might have happened, using puppets and naked dolls. Connerly tells the child that 183 other children had already told her “yucky secrets,” that the teachers are all “sick in the head” and deserve to be beaten up and that her help is needed in figuring out what had happened at the school--or what “might” have happened.

At one point during the interview, Connerly asks the girl, “Think Mr. Ray might have done some of that touching? Do you think that’s possible?” When the girl shakes her Rags Raccoon puppet in a gesture of “no,” the therapist continues.

“Where do you think he would have touched her, Rags? Can you use your pointer and show where he would have touched her?” The child is encouraged to keep pointing to different parts of the body until she has included the doll’s private parts.

The therapist asks her, “What part of Mr. Ray would have touched her?” and keeps going until the child points to the doll’s genitals.

The defense contends that the testimony of the three children who have testified so far was produced by “brainwashing” at the institute and reinforcement by parents and prosecutors: “Here you see the germination of a fabrication,” Gits told reporters outside court. “It may have been a play event--with suggestions hidden underneath.”

Criticism Dismissed

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin, chief prosecutor, dismissed criticism of the tapes as “tremendous smoke.” They were not intended for use in court, she said, but for therapeutic purposes, and what they contain is not the basis of the district attorney’s case. She agreed that the questions asked on the tape are “leading.”

The child seen on the year-old tape is now 8, and minutes earlier she had completed six days on the witness stand. The girl held firm to her story--outlined in 40 minutes of direct examination last Tuesday--of having been raped, photographed, tied up and placed in a dark closet and forced to watch a turtle slashed by her teachers five years ago.

During cross-examination, she described in a wispy voice the schoolchildren’s screams and cries when they were caught on the playground by teachers during games of cowboys and Indians and held captive while awaiting their turn to be taken inside and molested. During questioning by defense attorney Daniel Davis on Monday, however, the girl appeared confused and frequently said, “I can’t remember,” or gave answers inconsistent with earlier testimony.

For example, although she had repeatedly identified “Ray, Miss Betty and Miss Peggy”--defendants Ray Buckey, 26; Betty Raidor, 65, and Peggy McMartin Buckey, 58--as the three teachers who had sexually abused her, when asked Monday who touched her, she said, “I can’t remember.”

She said that she could not remember how she was touched and could not remember the threats to her and her parents that she had testified about. She said she had never touched Ray Buckey’s penis, although last week she had described being forced to do so.

Literal Thought

Rubin contended that the wording and context of the questions had confused the witness because, like most children, she thinks quite literally.

For example, the girl said “no” when asked by Davis on Monday whether “anything” had ever been placed in her vagina or anus. During redirect questioning by Rubin on Tuesday, she said she thought “anything” meant “like a stick or an object” and was not thinking in terms of a penis or hand.

Davis said during a court recess that he believes that the inconsistencies in the child’s testimony will create a reasonable doubt in jurors’ minds, should the case go to trial.

The fourth child witness, a 9-year-old boy, will take the stand today in the preliminary hearing to determine whether the defendants should stand trial. The defendants also include school founder Virginia McMartin, 77; her granddaughter, Peggy Ann Buckey, 28; Mary Ann Jackson, 57, and Babette Spitler, 36.