First McMartin Witness Testifies on TV

After months of wrangling between prosecutors and defense attorneys, an 8-year-old witness in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case Tuesday became the first child to testify by closed-circuit TV under a state law passed last May.

As the sponsor of the law authorizing televised testimony, Sen. Art Torres (D-South Pasadena), and a score of spectators watched, the boy testified for three hours that he was sodomized by and forced to orally copulate chief defendant Raymond Buckey, 27.

He also said he was touched sexually by Buckey’s mother, defendant Peggy McMartin Buckey, 58, and by several men and women, whom he described only as “Ray’s friends,” when he attended the Manhattan Beach nursery school.

The third-grader added that he was photographed during so-called “naked movie star” games, tied up on occasion, given injections, taken to a mortuary to view corpses and to a house of horrors that included fake lions in the basement and Ray Buckey costumed as the devil. He said school founder Virginia McMartin, 78, sometimes watched the naked games.

In Small Room

The child, along with a parent, an independent monitor and a bailiff, testified from a small room behind the courtroom. He could see the attorney questioning him, and sometimes the judge, on a 19-inch color TV monitor, and the seven defendants, their lawyers and the public on two 25-inch monitors.

His testimony was transmitted to the courtroom where the judge, attorneys, defendants and reporters watched three 19-inch monitors--two showing a close-up of the child and one focused on his mother or father.

Torres, embracing a McMartin parent who had worked for passage of his bill, said he believes that the technologically complex arrangement is working well, despite some initial problems with the microphones and camera angles. He said the child’s demeanor was not noticeably different from that of the 13 children who had testified previously in open court.

The boy’s father, who had been in the room with him, said his son felt “comfortable” with the setup. He added that he had not noticed any of the “staring” by Ray Buckey that he said he, his wife and his daughter had experienced when they testified earlier in open court.

Defense attorneys complained, however, that they could not establish eye contact with the witness, that the parent and monitor were signaling the child and that the entire setup gave an “unreal” aura to the proceedings.

The slim, brown-haired youngster appeared relaxed during most of his morning testimony, lapsing into frequent “I don’t remember” and “I don’t know” answers and fidgeting only as the day wore on.

Deputy Public Defender Forrest Latiner, who represents defendant Peggy Ann Buckey, said the district attorney’s office stands to gain nothing by the final witness’s testimony and is proceeding only to satisfy the McMartin parents who fought for the televised testimony law after Municipal Judge Aviva K. Bobb had ruled that such a setup could not be used without an enabling statute.

“The child is bewildered (by all the machines),” Latiner said. “He enjoys being the focus of attention. But the questions so far have just been rehearsed stuff. Let’s wait till we get into cross-examination.”

One attorney had begun cross-examination of the boy by late Tuesday.

Five Scheduled

Five children had been scheduled to testify by closed-circuit TV after 13 children testified in open court and 23 of the original 41 complaining witnesses dropped out or were eliminated by the district attorney’s office.

After prosecutors won a 2 1/2-month battle to use televised testimony in appeals that went as high as the state Supreme Court, however, four of those five remaining child witnesses dropped out of the case for various reasons.

Tuesday was not the first time closed-circuit TV has been used in a California molestation case. It was used last year in the preliminary hearing for Northridge school operator Campbell Hugh Greenup, accused of molesting seven girls. However, an appeals court in another case later ruled that the procedure could not be used without legislation.