Teacher Says She Saw No Abuse at McMartin

The first--and probably only--adult witness who could corroborate or contradict the testimony of children in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case told the court Tuesday that nothing happened in the two months she taught at the school to arouse her suspicion that the children were being sexually abused.

Mary Lou Enockson said she never saw any touching of pupils, molestations, “naked games” or terrorized or drugged children. Nor did she have any knowledge of secret rooms or field trips to farms, churches, cemeteries or mortuaries, she said.

She testified that she never saw fellow teachers or children naked and that she does not recall there being any animals at the preschool while she taught there.

Four of the 14 children who testified in the preliminary hearing attended the school while she taught there, defense attorneys said, and one of them testified that defendants Ray and Peggy Ann Buckey had taken children on separate occasions from “Miss Mary Lou’s” classroom to molest them. Enockson said, however: “I’m positive it didn’t happen.” She added that she had never seen any of the defendants at the school except school founder Virginia McMartin and her daughter, Peggy McMartin Buckey.

Attorney Barbara Aichele, who represents defendant Mary Ann Jackson, said the child who testified that he had been removed from Enockson’s class is the only child witness against her client.

“If children say they were taken out of class and we show for a fact that isn’t true, it doesn’t just undermine testimony relating to the two months she was there, it casts doubt on all of it,” Aichele said later outside of court.

Enockson taught at the Manhattan Beach school--where her two children had been enrolled--during the fall of 1978. She said she left because she found the job “boring” and the pay “not worth it.”

In her daylong testimony as a defense witness in the preliminary hearing, Enockson was asked whether, while she taught at McMartin, she had any reason to believe that molestations were going on.

“Well, I don’t know what went on in the afternoons,” she answered. “And I don’t know what went on in the other classrooms.”

She testified, however, “I do believe that children were molested,” adding that she believes so not because of what she saw at the time but because “that many kids could not have that many problems if nothing had happened.”

She said she is a close friend of some of the parents of alleged McMartin victims and knows of many family problems that she attributes to the alleged sexual abuse.

Enockson’s testimony is considered crucial because she probably will be the only teacher who is not a defendant who will be called to testify during the proceedings. The few others who worked at the school are either elderly, ill or dead.