After 3 Years, Molestation Case Reaches Trial Stage

This month, more than three years after the first arrest, what remains of the once-massive McMartin Pre-School molestation case is scheduled for trial.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge will resume hearing final pretrial motions Monday and has ordered 500 potential jurors to report Jan. 12.

But developments in the case during 1986 have obscured what happened--or did not happen--at the Manhattan Beach nursery school, and those involved in the case say the facts may never emerge.

“The result may be our never finding the truth,” defense attorney Dean Gits said of the most recent event, the death of a key witness. “We have lost another link, a chance to tell what actually happened.”

With each month, the case--which has cost county taxpayers nearly $5 million so far--took an unexpected turn: first, charges against five of the seven defendants are dropped, then a former prosecutor goes over to the defense, next the prosecution is accused of “outrageous governmental conduct” by McMartin lawyers, and finally, the mother who first alleged that her child had been molested at the school dies.

Almost a year ago, after an 18-month preliminary hearing--the longest in state history--Municipal Judge Aviva K. Bobb ordered all seven McMartin defendants--the school’s founder and six former teachers--to stand trial on 135 counts of molestation and conspiracy.

During the hearing, 14 children testified of sexual abuse and threats--accompanied by animal mutilation and satanic rituals--at the hands of Ray Buckey, 28; his mother, sister, grandmother and three other McMartin teachers. Physicians testified that the youngsters showed physical signs of molestation.

“Their testimony was very credible,” Bobb said, after listening to the children for a total of 88 days.

However, a week after Bobb’s ruling, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner dismissed the charges against five defendants and said he would prosecute only Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, on 101 counts.

Reiner, who had inherited the case from his predecessor, Robert Philobosian, called the evidence against the two Buckeys “strong, compelling,” but that evidence against the others was “incredibly weak.” Later that month, a former McMartin prosecutor, Glenn Stevens, who had leaked information to the press and allegedly lied to his superiors, resigned from the district attorney’s office to avoid being fired. By spring, Stevens was meeting with a Beverly Hills screenwriting team and had signed a movie contract to tell his story.

Taped conversations with the screenwriters--in which he lambasted his former colleagues, defense attorneys, therapists, reporters, McMartin parents and the alleged victims--were given to the defense and later to the state attorney general’s office.

And then Stevens met with McMartin attorneys, and his allegations that prosecutors concealed evidence and lied to the court became the basis for a defense motion to drop the charges against the two defendants or remove the district attorney’s office from the case. The motion was denied.

Several McMartin parents and their attorney have asked the state attorney general’s office to investigate Stevens and the screenwriters. The attorney general’s office also referred the complaints to the California Bar.

Stevens could face penalties as severe as disbarment as a lawyer if the Bar, which has been asked to investigate the matter, finds that he attempted to influence the outcome of a trial for money and aided the defense in a case on which he was once prosecutor.

And there were these other developments:

- Former McMartin defendants sued Los Angeles County, the City of Manhattan Beach and a child-abuse diagnostic center, claiming their lives had been ruined by wrongful prosecution. Peggy Ann Buckey has asked state officials to reinstate her teaching credentials, which were revoked when she was charged in the case.

- The defense was ordered to stop contacting prosecution witnesses after lawyer Daniel Davis, who represents Ray Buckey, sent letters that a judge ruled were “intimidating” to parents of complaining witnesses.

- A University of California, Riverside, professor who misled 1,000 former jurors into thinking they were participating in an academic study when it was really a McMartin defense survey was ordered to contact them again, making clear that his work had no connection with the university.

- The defense tried to disqualify Judge Roger Boren, assigned to conduct the trial, on grounds that he was prejudiced. They alleged in court papers that a McMartin prosecutor might have influenced him through a judge with whom she was “intimately” involved.

Both sides used their preemptory challenges--rejecting three jurists--before the case was finally assigned in November to Superior Court Judge William Pounders.

Then, on Dec. 19, as Pounders was preparing to recess court for two weeks, word came that Judy Johnson, the mother who first reported molestation at the school, had been found dead in her Manhattan Beach home. The coroner’s office has not yet determined what caused her death.

Johnson, 42, had been subpoenaed as a witness by the defense, which intended to show that her history of mental problems and allegations that others had molested her child should have caused authorities to doubt her accusations against Ray Buckey. Defense attorneys say there would have been no McMartin case if Johnson had not made her allegations.

But prosecutors and parents say the alleged molestations would have surfaced eventually, and that most of the parents of alleged victims had no contact with Johnson before the grand jury indicted the teachers. Their children’s accounts came independently of her allegations, they say.

When court resumes Monday, the final stage of pretrial hearings will focus on two issues: allegations that the prosecution intentionally withheld evidence and alleged discriminatory prosecution.

Mental State an Issue

The contested evidence is several pages of notes by both Johnson and an investigator for the district attorney’s office that suggest her troubled mental state.

Chief McMartin prosecutor Lael Rubin has testified that she intended only to briefly delay giving one of the documents, which accuses a Los Angeles Unified School District board member of molestation, to the defense but that through her “negligence” the defense did not receive it for nearly a year. The prosecution contends that information about Johnson’s mental state was communicated to the defense in other forms.

If Pounders finds that the district attorney’s office intentionally withheld evidence, he could apply sanctions or dismiss any count related to that evidence.

The other issue before Pounders is the question of discriminatory prosecution--whether the district attorney is prosecuting the remaining two defendants on evidence no different than that against the five against whom charges were dropped.

The district attorney contends that the evidence differs in both quantity and quality. All the children identified Ray Buckey as their abuser, and most of them implicated his mother as well, prosecutors say. Their recall was specific and their statements were spontaneous.

When these last matters are settled, probably by the end of this week, the defense may ask for a change of venue, on grounds that a fair trial is not possible in Los Angeles County.

Pounders, however, has said he expects the trial to begin here Jan. 12, and has summoned potential jurors in preparation for its start.

No one wants to get on with the trial more than Ray Buckey, he says.

“I do believe this case should and must go to trial,” he said at a Dec. 19 bail hearing. “The truth of my innocence must be known. . . . I do not fear the truth . . . of my innocence or of my mother’s innocence. The truth, to put it simply, will set me free.”

Getting at the truth is proving costly. Since the case began in July, 1983, it had, as of last October, cost the county $4,753,829, and officials said the total has probably passed the $5-million mark by now.

County Auditor-Comptroller Mark Bloodgood said the largest expenditure was for the district attorney’s office, $1,882,000, followed by the Sheriff’s Department, $1,622,000. Court costs added nearly $604,000 and court-appointed attorneys and the public defender’s office have cost more than $524,000.

During the early days of the case, most of the defendants were represented by private attorneys. But as weeks stretched into months, and months into years, their financial resources were exhausted, and now all costs are being borne by county taxpayers. That means that the costs of court-appointed attorneys is concentrated in recent months--and likely to rise rapidly as the trial begins, suggests Tyler McCauley, chief of the county’s audit division.

A three-month Superior Court compilation of fees submitted by various attorneys show that from June through August of last year alone, McMartin defense attorneys billed the county for nearly $190,000. Lawyer Daniel Davis led with fees of $117,000, or $116 an hour. Attorney Dean Gits submitted expenses totaling $47,000, or $75 an hour. And appellate lawyer Andrew Willing put in for $26,000, or $77 an hour, according to court records.