Buckey Family Problems Revealed in Trial : Childhood Sexual Abuse, Emotional Upsets Told in 11 Days on Stand

After 11 days of testimony, McMartin Pre-School molestation defendant Peggy McMartin Buckey finally stepped down from the witness stand last week, denying any wrongdoing, revealing that she herself was victim of child sexual abuse and acknowledging that her son, co-defendant Raymond Buckey, had serious emotional problems.

Facing her longtime adversary, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin, the 62-year-old woman frequently reacted indignantly to suggestions that she and her son molested and threatened children.

“Never!” she said repeatedly, as Rubin goaded her with questions in exchanges that grew increasingly caustic.

“I just want the world to know what happened,” said Buckey, who crocheted during recesses and read religious literature while lawyers conferred during lulls in the trial.

Outside the courtroom, Buckey’s attorney, Dean Gits, characterized his client’s testimony as that of “a strong lady with opinions, an honest woman confronted with weaknesses she observed in her child,” who was forced to air her personal problems in front of the jury.

Reason for Testimony

He said he called her as one of the final defense witnesses, despite knowing that her temper might flare up, because he felt the jury wanted to hear from her. Gits also assessed the prosecution’s cross-examination as “ineffectual.”

Prosecutor Rubin, however, said that Buckey’s testimony provided the jury with a glimpse of “a very dark American family which tried for a long time to keep its problems hidden . . . she thought she was invincible. Any truth we heard came from times when she got caught off guard and departed from her prepared, canned answers.”

Rubin focused on inconsistencies between Buckey’s testimony and that given by other witnesses. Rubin also contrasted Buckey’s statements with entries in diaries written by her mother, former defendant Virginia McMartin, and with her own previous statements during the trial.

During detailed cross-examination, Buckey said that before and during the period her son, Raymond Buckey, 31, taught at the family-run nursery school, she was aware that he was a troubled young man “trying to find himself.”

She said that as a child, her son was a misfit and a shy young man who was uncomfortable both with his peers and adults, preferred the company of children, and had serious problems with drinking and marijuana.

Insisting that she would not have allowed him to teach if she hadn’t trusted him, Peggy Buckey acknowledged that she had received complaints about her son’s inability to keep order in his class. She also had heard complaints about his allowing children to sit on his lap and about his penchant for wearing shorts without underwear.

She said that she never witnessed any suspicious behavior or saw any evidence that her son became sexually aroused around children. Buckey also testified that both she and her son sought counseling from a minister at the Church of Religious Science in Redondo Beach--she, to cope with marital problems and the deaths of several relatives and friends and he, for drinking problems, lack of direction and his reaction to the molestation accusations made against him after his 1983 arrest.

Counseling Sessions Explored

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders allowed the counseling sessions to be explored in court, he explained, because “Mrs. Buckey has painted the school and her conduct there in a particular way. This tends to seriously cast (that) in doubt. If the descriptions here are correct, Raymond Buckey had a lot of problems that should have caused him to be removed from the preschool, aside from molesting children.”

Both Peggy Buckey and the minister, Dr. Frank Richelieu, testified that the counseling sessions had nothing to do with Raymond Buckey’s “sexual problems with children,” as prosecutors alleged.

The basis of that allegation turned out to be an ambiguous FBI report that paraphrased an interview with Glendee Lauerman, Mrs. Buckey’s niece, in which she spoke of Raymond Buckey’s receiving counseling in connection with child molestation. Lauerman has not been called as a witness.

Pounders, who said he is inclined to reject further witnesses except for a medical expert and Raymond Buckey, vowed last week that “I will get this case to a jury or die in the attempt.”

4 Jurors Lost

He said that the jury, which has already lost four members, is being “held together with spit and baling wire.” Pounders, who fears a mistrial if proceedings drag on much longer, described the trial--now in its third year and repeatedly halted by delays--as already “the longest criminal trial in world history.”

The defense said it intends to recall Dr. Astrid Heger, a pediatrician who examined the McMartin schoolchildren and has already testified to medical signs of sexual abuse in most of them. The defense also plans to call Kee MacFarlane, the social worker who supervised interviews with the McMartin schoolchildren at the Children’s Institute International, a Wilshire-area child abuse diagnostic and treatment center.

Strict Review

Pounders said he would study defense summaries of what those witnesses would testify about before ruling today on whether they will be allowed on the stand. He said he will reject any witness not shown to be crucial to the defense’s case. And if no other witnesses are waiting in the wings, Pounders said he will require the defense to put Raymond Buckey on the stand or rest.

The trial will be interrupted by a three-week vacation next week, then followed by rebuttals, final arguments and jury deliberations--with a verdict not expected before late fall or possibly 1990.