‘Awful Lies,’ McMartin Screams in Courtroom

Virginia McMartin, the 77-year-old founder of the McMartin Pre-School, in an emotional outburst in the courtroom Monday, screamed, “This awful court, these awful people, these awful lies,” when she apparently thought court bailiffs were harming her daughter.

The outburst occurred at noon as McMartin’s daughter, co-defendant Peggy McMartin Buckey, 58, was being led out of the courtroom and into an inner hallway by bailiffs. Buckey tripped over a television wire and fell face forward. She screamed as she hit the floor with a loud thud and her jail sandals fell off.

Bailiffs quickly shut the hallway door, obstructing the view of the incident from the courtroom. An 8-year-old boy who had spent the morning testifying that McMartin’s grandson, Ray Buckey, 26, had sodomized and molested him was not in the courtroom during the outburst.

The distraught McMartin screamed, “What more hell do you people want to put us through? My son’s dead; I don’t want to lose my daughter. . . . they mistreat her all the time.”

The white-haired woman, who has been called “Miss Virginia” by the eight child witnesses the prosecution has called in the preliminary hearing of the child molestation case, slumped heavily into her wheelchair and looked toward the closed hallway door.

‘Lies, Lies’

She continued, “All I’ve heard is lies, lies, from the first day in the courtroom.”

Mary Ann Jackson, 57, another defendant, put her hand on the woman’s arm and tried to quiet her.

McMartin’s attorney, Bradley Brunon, rushed to her side and told her in a calm, soothing voice that bailiffs had not pushed her daughter.

‘She’s all right. She tripped over a television cable,” Brunon said.

Later, Peggy McMartin Buckey’s attorney, Dean Gits, said his client appeared to be all right.

“I thought she had hit her head on the floor, but there were no marks on her,” Gits said. “But she was complaining that her legs hurt.”

Gits said the mistreatment of her daughter that McMartin was referring to was from other inmates.

“She didn’t mean the bailiffs,” the lawyer said. “Even though she (Peggy McMartin Buckey) is being held in isolation, there are times when she comes in contact with other prisoners. They grab at her and yell at her because of all the publicity about this case.”

Brunon added that his elderly client was referring in her outburst to a son who died years ago.

Monday’s incident was the first courtroom outburst involving any of the seven defendants during the long legal proceedings.

Peggy McMartin Buckey and Ray Buckey are being held at County Jail facilities. The other five defendants in the case are free on bail.

The boy who took the stand Monday morning was the eighth to testify in the Municipal Court proceedings, which will determine whether the seven former teachers accused of 208 counts of molestation and conspiracy will stand trial in Superior Court.

The boy testified that Ray Buckey “sticked his fingers in my butt” during a game called “tickle.”

The child, who attended the Manhattan Beach school from 1978 to 1980, testified--as have many of the previous witnesses--that Ray Buckey forced him to undress and took pictures of him during a game called “naked movie star” and threatened to kill him and his parents if he told about the incidents.

During the morning session, Daniel Davis, attorney for Ray Buckey, continually interrupted the direct testimony of the child to object to questions being asked by the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Glenn Stevens.

The boy, who did not seem frightened, did seem confused by the flurry of objections. He looked frequently from the prosecutor to the defense attorney and to the judge with a puzzled expression on his face. Many of his answers after such exchanges were: “I don’t remember.”

Stevens, frustrated that almost all of his questions were being interrupted by objections, complained to Judge Aviva K. Bobb, “This is an attempt to harass and intimidate an 8-year-old boy.”

Bobb replied, “I’ve noticed a belligerent tone in Mr. Davis’ voice. . . . I don’t expect the cross-examination to be done in that tone. It’s an intimidating tone of voice and it doesn’t (help) the truth-seeking process.”

The judge then ordered the attorneys to be more careful in the way they made their objections.

A courtroom monitor who is keeping statistics on the hearing said in the hallway that she counted 86 objections, almost all of them from Davis.

Davis, in a hallway interview, insisted that he was not intimidating the boy.

Other defendants in the case are Peggy Ann Buckey, 29; Betty Raidor, 65, and Babette Spitler, 37.