All 7 McMartin Defendants Are Ordered to Stand Trial

All seven defendants in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case were ordered Thursday to stand trial on charges they sexually abused children at the Manhattan Beach nursery school as their 18-month preliminary hearing, the longest and costliest in state history, ended.

Municipal Judge Aviva K. Bobb ordered each of the seven to rise as she handed down her separate decisions, frequently smiling. “It appears to me that the offenses have been committed,” she said, ticking off the counts and telling each defendant, “The court believes there is sufficient cause to believe you are guilty thereof.”

After the rulings were announced, school founder Virginia McMartin, 78, angrily denounced the proceedings:

“This court is exactly like a Nazi prison camp--there is no justice or honesty. . . . I knew from the day I stepped into this court that the judge was against us. The D.A. came in here and lied and lied.”

The defendants, charged with a total of 135 counts of molestation and conspiracy, are to be arraigned Jan. 23 in Superior Court. All but key defendant Ray Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, are free on bail.

Trial must begin within 60 days after arraignment, unless the defendants agree to a delay.

Ordered to stand trial were McMartin; her daughter, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 59; McMartin’s grandchildren, Ray Buckey, 27, and Peggy Ann Buckey, 29; and three former teachers, Mary Ann Jackson, 58; Betty Raidor, 66, and Babette Spitler, 37.

Fourteen children testified at the hearing that they had been raped, sodomized, fondled, drugged, forced by their teachers and others to play “naked games,” to witness the mutilation and killing of animals and to participate in satanic rituals involving churches, cemeteries and corpses.

Their allegations stunned Manhattan Beach, where the McMartin family was well known and respected, and drew nationwide attention. The case spawned a wide-ranging investigation of preschools in the South Bay that resulted in the closure of eight schools.

Of the 135 counts lodged against the defendants, 72 were from the original complaints and grand jury indictment and 63 were added by Bobb, based on testimony by child witnesses during the hearing. Prosecutors asked Bobb on Thursday to order the seven to stand trial on 181 counts.

Bobb ruled that Ray Buckey should face 82 counts and be held without bail.

Peggy McMartin Buckey was ordered to face 24 counts and to remain in custody in lieu of $1-million bail. Bobb said she will rule today on a request by Buckey’s attorney to reduce bail to $240,000.

Raidor was held to face 10 counts, with bail remaining at $750,000.

Peggy Ann Buckey faces eight counts. Bail stands at $10,000.

Jackson faces six counts, and bail is $100,000.

Spitler faces four counts, and bail was set at $400,000.

McMartin was ordered to stand trial only on one count of conspiracy, and bail was set at $5,000.

‘It’s Hard to Believe’

In a courtroom packed with parents, therapists and a few children, the chief prosecutor in the case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin, said: “In some respects it’s hard to believe that this preliminary hearing is finally over. This was really a victory for the children and their parents.

“We now look forward to prosecuting this case fairly and vigorously, and I certainly hope the trial will take less than 18 months,” she said, adding that the twists and turns of the record-setting hearing had made her wary of any predictions.

Rubin said the district attorney’s office is reviewing the case and will decide in the next two weeks which defendants and counts it will prosecute further.

Defense attorney Forest Latiner predicted that charges against some of the defendants, including his client, Peggy Ann Buckey, will be dropped. “There’s a difference between probable cause and what is needed to result in enough persuasion for conviction,” he said.

The defendants, ashen-faced but expressionless, looked straight ahead or down as Bobb stated her findings. Afterward, McMartin reacted angrily.

“This is the biggest pack of lies I’ve even seen,” the wheelchair-bound woman yelled. “I have faith in one thing, and that is God. God knows, and he fills this courtroom. I have no faith in judges, juries and trials.”

‘Theatrical Display’

In a statement she read aloud in court before Bobb’s ruling, Jackson said the exhaustive hearing had robbed her of her faith in the judicial system.

“What I have witnessed . . . has been not a search for truth and justice, but a continuous theatrical display,” the former teacher said. “The truly heroic figures in this tragic marathon are the defendants, and time will someday declare this to be true.” She said she had found strength in the diaries of concentration camp survivors.

The McMartin investigation and prosecution has cost more than $4 million.

The case began in September, 1983, with the arrest of McMartin’s grandson, Ray Buckey, after a mother reported to Manhattan Beach police that her 2-year-old son had been molested. Buckey was released for lack of evidence and rearrested the next March with his sister, mother, grandmother and three former teachers. The seven were originally charged with more than 300 counts of conspiracy and molestation.

For nearly two years the preliminary hearing dragged on, as attorneys argued over whether the seven should be tried together or separately, whether child witnesses could testify by closed-circuit television and whether long, often hostile, cross-examination should be curtailed.

Then a year ago, a 7-year-old boy clambered atop a booster chair on the witness stand--with the public sequestered in a neighboring courtroom watching the proceedings on a television monitor--and testified that his teachers had molested and photographed him while he and his young classmates played “naked games” at the McMartin school.

13 More Witnesses

Thirteen children followed him on the witness stand to tell of sexual abuse and threats.

Last summer, however, prosecutors abruptly rested their case after presenting fewer than one-third of the 41 alleged victims scheduled to take the stand. The rest, they said, had either been withdrawn as witnesses by their parents or eliminated by the district attorney’s office for various reasons.

Several months later, after a long legal battle over the constitutionality of closed-circuit television procedures, one child was allowed to testify by that method. Parents of McMartin children had lobbied hard and successfully for the passage of state legislation authorizing its use.

In rulings in June and again Thursday, Bobb dismissed more than two-thirds of the original charges, for which no evidence had been offered.