1st McMartin Witness Steps Down--Tired but Unshaken

After four days on the witness stand, the first alleged child victim to testify in the McMartin Pre-School molestation trial has stepped down, her version of events at the Manhattan Beach nursery school unshaken after two rounds of cross-examination.

At the words “No further questions,” jurors smiled at the 12-year-old girl like doting parents, and the judge thanked her, saying he knew how “difficult” the proceedings had been for her. As she left the stand, she shook hands with the court reporter and hugged her father.

Each side claimed that the girl’s testimony lent support to its position--prosecutors praising its “clarity and courage,” defense attorneys saying it proved how well she had been “coached” into believing that she had been molested.

The testimony of the girl--the first of 13 scheduled child witnesses--underscored the difficulties of questioning a child who is trying to remember and describe incidents that may have occurred as much as seven years earlier.

Apparent Inconsistencies

The lawyers’ questions sometimes confused her. She was pressed for details about alleged sexual abuse that were either hazy in her mind or discomforting. And she was asked to explain apparent inconsistencies between statements she gave in a 1984 videotaped interview with a therapist, statements she made in the 1985 preliminary hearing and testimony she was giving now in a case that has taken four years to reach the trial stage.

Was her memory better then or now? the defense attorneys wanted to know. Which time was she lying?

And despite ground rules imposed by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders to avoid a replay of the preliminary hearing at which children were kept on the stand for as long as 15 days of repetitive questioning, the girl became visibly tired during 3 1/2 days of cross-examination, frequently answering “I don’t remember,” “I don’t know,” or “I don’t understand.”

The girl maintained throughout, however, that she had been touched on the vagina by both defendants Ray Buckey, 29, and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 60, who are charged with 99 counts of molestation and one count of conspiracy.

She said they had forced her to play a game they called “naked movie star,” which involved photographing groups of nude children at the school and at a nearby house. And she told the jury she had been scared into silence by threats that her parents would be harmed if she told about the alleged activities.

She added last week, for the first time, that Ray Buckey had penetrated her with his fingers. The child explained that that particular unpleasant memory had been triggered by a conversation with her mother last month about menstruation and the use of tampons.

It was, the girl said, “the fact of something going in your vagina” that brought it all back. “I kind of told her I didn’t really want to (use tampons). That’s when I told her I was touched by Ray in the vagina.”

Defense lawyers said the new allegation was predictable hyperbole.

She said she changed her testimony slightly “because of how much I’ve thought about it” during two years since she first testified.

“I don’t want to say something I’m not completely sure about,” she told defense attorney Daniel Davis, who represents Ray Buckey. “It wouldn’t be fair to anyone. It wouldn’t be fair to myself.”

The girl also changed her account of another incident, saying she is now uncertain as to whether she had been drugged with a pink medicine that made her sleepy while at the preschool.

‘Really Struggling’

Lawyer Dean R. Gits, who represents Peggy Buckey, said outside the courtroom that the girl “proves our opening statement” that the children’s memories were shaped by outside pressures.

“I see a child who is really struggling for answers and insight,” he said. “I don’t believe that for the most part she’s lying intentionally. She is extremely well-coached . . . a good product of shaping . . . contaminated by what other people told her.”

Gits said he does not expect any of the children to recant after they have been prepared for court by long and frequent meetings with prosecutors. The first witness testified that she had met with Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin six or seven times in sessions that lasted as long as four hours and included a discussion of “smart answers” to “tricky questions.”

Gits said the girl was sketchy on details about the alleged events at the school and showed no anxiety or other symptoms of having been traumatized.

Prosecutor Rubin praised the girl, among the oldest child witnesses remaining in the case, and added:

“During these last four days, we’ve had a real picture of the process of how memory works . . . how all of us deal with unpleasant or difficult memories by pushing them far back in the recesses of our minds so we don’t have to dwell on them on a daily basis. Then as time goes on, little bits and pieces seem to come out, until finally there is a process of putting them together and getting to the stage which she did just recently, of finally admitting to herself and accepting the fact of what truly happened to her.”