Never Molested Child, Says Peggy McMartin Buckey

After listening silently for five years to accusations against her in the McMartin Pre-School case, defendant Peggy McMartin Buckey took the witness stand Tuesday and told the jury in a clear, strong voice that she “never” molested a child.

Quickly dispensing with the tedious questions that have characterized the proceedings, Buckey’s attorney, Dean Gits, went straight to the point. First he pinned up photos of the four children who have accused her and then, pointing to the color glossies, asked:

“Did you ever molest any of those children?”

“Never,” she replied, with vehemence in her voice.

“Now,” Gits went on, “when I say ‘molest’ I mean did you ever touch them on any part of their body for the purpose of sexual gratification either of yourself or of anybody else?”

“No.”

“Were you ever naked in front of any of these children?”

“Was I ever what? “

“Were you ever naked in front of these children?”

“No.”

The plump 62-year-old woman, wearing a loosely flowing aqua dress and more make-up than usual, spoke with confidence during her one hour on the witness stand, often looking directly at the jurors. She was scheduled to resume testifying today.

Her appearance marked the first time a defendant had testified in the case, either at the preliminary hearing or the trial. Buckey is charged with 12 counts of molestation and one count of conspiracy.

Her son, Raymond Buckey, 30, who is also expected to testify, is charged with 52 molestation counts and a shared count of conspiracy in the trial, which entered its third year last month and is believed to be the longest criminal trial in U.S. history. He sat at the defense table and listened Tuesday while his mother testified.

Jurors were seemingly impassive as they heard directly from the woman they have only watched from a distance while children testified, sometimes in graphic detail, against her. Nonetheless, they seemed to pay more attention to Buckey than they have to some other witnesses, some of whom literally have put jurors to sleep.

Denies Allegations

Buckey testified that she never made any of the children disrobe, never transported them off school grounds to molest them or permit others to molest them, never engaged in satanic acts in a church and never threatened any youngsters.

These were among the allegations made throughout the preliminary hearing and trial, at which nine of 11 alleged child victims have testified to rape, sodomy, oral copulation, bizarre field trips, animal mutilations and threats while they attended the school.

Buckey both directed and taught at the Manhattan Beach nursery school founded by her mother. She was arrested in March, 1984, along with six other teachers, and spent two years in jail before being freed on bail, now set at $295,000. Charges against all but Buckey and her son have been dropped.

Gits avoided specifics in his questioning and stuck to the main allegations.

“Did you ever see any other person molest these children while you were at the preschool?” Gits continued.

“Never,” she repeated.

“Did you ever see any other person any other place in the world molest these children while you were working at the preschool?”

“No.”

Not ‘Slightest Suspicion’

Buckey said she never saw or heard anything that gave her the “slightest suspicion” that any children were being molested or mistreated, nor had she ever conspired or agreed with anyone to molest children or to permit it.

Afterwards, in the courthouse corridors, Buckey told a small knot of reporters that initially she was nervous on the stand, but that her nervousness disappeared under Gits’ questioning.

“I want the world to know what went on at our school,” she told reporters, adding that the barrage of testimony against her has hurt, “because it (the alleged molestation) never happened. . . . There wasn’t one of us who would ever harm a child.”

For the last eight months, the defense has sought to demonstrate that the school was so small and accessible that the alleged crimes could not have occurred without being noticed by parents, passers-by and other teachers.

Former teachers, most of them once defendants in the case themselves, testified they never observed or heard anything suspicious, and the defense even called neighbors, clergymen and the postman who regularly delivered the mail. Jurors have visited the school, “reconstructed” by a Hollywood prop company with fake foliage to look the way the school did at the time of the alleged crimes.

Testimony Doubted

Additionally, a psychologist called by the defense testified that the children’s testimony may have been “contaminated” by interviewers at Children’s Institute International, a Los Angeles child-abuse diagnostic and treatment center, and by conversations with their parents and friends.

While the defense lawyers rarely discuss strategy with reporters, it appeared that Peggy Buckey’s purpose on the stand was to persuade jurors that she is not the monster they have heard about, but rather a gentle teacher with normal, not perverted, love for children.

Initially unsure about whether to allow Buckey to testify, Gits said he made the decision “because I feel the jury wants to hear from her.” He said he expects to conclude his brief direct examination today. Buckey then faces what is expected to be a long cross-examination.

Gits said he does not intend today to go through each child’s allegations in detail “because we’ve heard them ad nauseam. My client has denied any knowledge of or involvement in any naked games or sexual activities whatsoever. . . . I don’t know how much more she can add, except one more link in the chain of non-molestation.” Prosecutors, however, described Buckey’s first hour of testimony as “canned, well-coached and insincere.”

The trial is expected to last well into the fall. Citing more than 100 witnesses, 900 exhibits and almost two years of testimony, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders warned defense lawyers last month that he will not permit them to call “unnecessary” witnesses and narrowed its roster of prospective witnesses to five names. Since then, one already has testified, a second was dropped and Buckey is the third. The two remaining witnesses the judge said he will allow are a physician, who will address the prosecution’s medical evidence, and Raymond Buckey.

Both sides will then summon an assortment of rebuttal witnesses before the jury begins its deliberations.