Peggy Buckey Sues to Teach in Anaheim School District

Peggy Ann Buckey, a former defendant in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, filed a lawsuit Tuesday to force the state to renew her credentials to teach in the Anaheim Union High School District.

Buckey, 32, was charged with eight counts of immoral conduct stemming from the alleged molestation of children at the preschool, but the charges against her were dismissed in January, 1986.

Buckey, the granddaughter of Virginia McMartin, the school’s founder, was a tenured special education teacher in the Anaheim district at the time of her arrest in 1984. She was suspended, but not fired, and her teaching credentials expired.

After the charges against her were dismissed, Buckey applied for a renewal of her credentials. The Anaheim school district opposed her application and a committee of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing notified her it would recommend that the commission deny her application.

Buckey asked for an administrative hearing to appeal the panel’s decision and noted in her suit, which named as defendants the commission and its credentialing committee, that “more than a year has elapsed” and no hearing has been held.

Since then, she has been unable to find a teaching job, Buckey said in her suit.