Peggy Ann Buckey Hears Self Described as Victim, Molester at Hearing for Credential

Peggy Ann Buckey, a former defendant in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, heard herself described as both a victim and a lying child molester Thursday in the wind-up of a lengthy hearing to regain her teaching credential.

It is expected to be weeks before Buckey, 32, will know which view of her--expressed by rival lawyers in their final arguments--has prevailed with Administrative Law Judge Roland E. Gruen, who presided at the hearing in the downtown State Office Building.

Gruen has 30 days to decide whether Buckey’s suspended teaching credential should be renewed and then submit his proposed finding to the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing for approval.

In many respects, the hearing was a mini-version of the McMartin criminal trial in which Peggy Ann’s brother, Raymond Buckey, 30, and mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 61, face a total of 64 charges of molestation and one count of conspiracy in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Although it was a quasi-judicial proceeding that usually takes a day or two, Buckey’s credentialing hearing lasted nearly three months. Thirty-nine witnesses were called to testify about reports of child molestations at the now-closed McMartin school in Manhattan Beach.

Questioned Behind Closed Doors

Four of the witnesses were former McMartin pupils, now in their early teens, who were questioned behind closed doors about charges that Peggy Ann Buckey molested them while they attended the school.

The four also testified about playing nude games, secret rooms and tunnels under the school, satanic rites at a nearby church, visits to a mortuary and a cemetery where bodies were dug up and airplane rides to farms where animals were killed.

In a “statement of issues” presented by the state, Buckey was accused of touching the private parts of the four children, taking pictures of naked children and killing birds, rabbits, turtles and a horse to warn them not to tell their parents.

Buckey and six other teachers who taught at the McMartin school were indicted in March, 1984, on molestation charges. Her credential to teach the handicapped in the Anaheim Union High School District was suspended after she was charged with 14 counts of child sexual molestation.

When the charges against her and four others were dropped in January, 1986, she sought reinstatement of her credential but was denied by Anaheim school officials, who continued to question her “moral fitness” to teach.

She turned to state credentialing officials in Sacramento in November, 1986, to get her teaching credential back. Again she was denied, and she filed suit and won a hearing before Gruen.

In closing arguments Thursday, her lawyer, John Wagner, focused his defense on his contention that his client was only at the McMartin School for only about five weeks in November and December, 1978, during the period from April, 1977, to June, 1980, when she was charged with molesting the four children. Two of the children were not even at the school during that time, he said.

Wagner also cited the “bizarre” aspects of the children’s testimony, including satanic rites, secret tunnels and rooms and outside nude games.

Wagner charged that the four child witnesses had been “trained” in their responses by Children Institute International, a Los Angeles child abuse treatment center that interviewed 400 McMartin students in late 1983 and early 1984 about alleged molestation incidents from 1978 through 1983.

Students’ Testimony

He pointed out that two former McMartin students testified on Peggy Ann Buckey’s behalf that they were never molested while attending the school or knew anything about sex games, secret rooms and tunnels at the school.

And, Wagner noted, neither did more than half a dozen former teachers who testified at the administrative hearing.

Wagner also criticized the lack of medical testimony to support the charges of sexual molestation. “No medical doctor testified of any examination,” he said. “We have no evidence to corroborate what these children say.”

In reply, Deputy Atty. Gen. Stephanie Wald, who represented the credentialing committee, admitted that there were some “unusual things” about the testimony of the four youthful witnesses, but she said that “none of these were proven impossible.”

She listed what she said were compelling reasons for believing the molestation testimony.

‘Absolute Consistency’

“The first is the absolute consistency of the children’s accounts of the molestations,” she said. “All described the naked movie star game. All four described being undressed, being asked to pose. All children described touching in their private parts in the same way.

“Three boys here described having to touch Peggy Ann Buckey in the same way. . . . They all described being tied up in the same way. . . . Every child describes animals being killed, primarily rabbits. Every child described the threats that accompany the killings: If you tell your mom and dad this is what’s going to happen to you.”

Wald also accused Buckey of lying when she claimed that she was only at the school for five weeks in November and December, 1978, when payroll records show her there an additional 81 days.

After the hearing, Wagner said Wald’s 81-day total included summers when his client worked at the McMartin school, but he said none of the four children went to school there in the summer, so the time Buckey spent at the school then was not germane to the charges.

After Thursday’s hearing, Buckey said she was fighting to regain her credential for principle.

“I thought I had a duty to fight it. That’s the main thing,” she said. “It’s not an enjoyable thing to sit through and listen to all this stuff. But I felt I had to fight it on principle because I’m innocent.”