School Aide Molested Her, Girl Testifies

A blonde, 7-year-old girl, the first child witness in the ongoing sex molestation trial of a former playground aide at a Manhattan Beach preschool, testified Friday that she and two classmates were fondled in a school bathroom in mid-1984.

Speaking calmly but tersely in a courtroom open to the public, the girl swore that Michael Ruby, 18, an aide at the now-closed Manhattan Ranch Preschool, threatened to kill her parents if she told them that he had touched her genitals.

“I was about to pull up my pants . . . but before I had a chance he came in,” she told an attentive jury. “He said he would kill my mom and dad (if I told).”

After almost three hours on the witness stand, the girl appeared to tire and become somewhat fidgety during cross-examination by William MacCabe, Ruby’s lawyer, but she stuck firmly to her story.

As the daylong hearing before Torrance Superior Court Judge Bob T. Hight drew to a close, MacCabe sought to impeach her testimony by reading a transcript from the preliminary hearing. At that hearing last fall, the girl testified that Ruby molested her “when we were playing outside.”

“Now she says it was inside the bathroom,” MacCabe noted after the session. “We’ll have lots of that. That’s one of the many contradictions that we have seen and expect.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa Hart, who is prosecuting the case, countered that the girl’s testimony was by no means contradictory.

During the preliminary hearing, Hart said, “she had said ‘when,’ not ‘where.’ (The bathroom incident) was during when they were playing outside. That’s how I interpret it.”

The witness, soon to enter second grade, will continue her testimony Monday and be followed later by four other girls.

Ruby, who worked part time at the school for 10 months before his July, 1984, arrest, is currently charged with 17 counts of child molestation against six girls. However, only five girls will testify, Hart said.

Scaled Down

As it has proceeded to trial, the case has been scaled down.

Ruby was initially charged with 31 counts of molesting eight boys and girls. Two of the witnesses, one of whom had charged Ruby molested him at locations including a “pink haunted house” populated by “pretend” ghosts, were dropped last December.

Soon after Ruby’s arrest, the preschool was shut down by the state Department of Social Services amid allegations that the school swapped children for purposes of sexual and physical abuse with the nearby McMartin Pre-School. However, no such evidence has emerged at Ruby’s preliminary hearing and trial, and no other Manhattan Ranch teachers have been arrested, despite initial claims by child witnesses that others took part in the molestations.

Seven teachers at the McMartin school are accused of molesting 19 children. The McMartin case is in the preliminary hearing stage.