Buckey Denies Having Desire for Children : Tells of Relationship With Woman to Make His Point

Ray Buckey testified under questioning Thursday about a sexual relationship he had with a woman and contended it demonstrated that he would not have molested children at his family’s McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach.

Buckey, 31, completing 5 1/2 days of cross-examination that both sides said support their opposing positions, told prosecutor Lael Rubin that he believes it is “common sense” that pedophiles do not have sexual relations with adults.

“That’s mixing apples and oranges,” he said.

‘Wouldn’t Have Any Desire’

Asked to explain, Buckey said, “If you have a perversion for children, you wouldn’t have a perversion, or you wouldn’t have any desire, for a female adult.”

Later outside the courtroom, Rubin cited scientific studies on pedophiles that indicate there are two types: one that does not have normal adult sexual relations and one that does. The studies were never introduced as evidence in the long-running case.

Rubin said Buckey’s insistence that he engaged in adult sex and found sexual release through adult pornography simply reflects an erroneous belief about pedophilia.

But Buckey staunchly maintained throughout his seven days of testimony that he is no child molester.

“I have no sexual desire for children. I never have and never will,” he repeated Thursday after Rubin accused him of “fabricating” the adult sexual encounter.

Buckey was questioned about a night in 1982 when he claimed to have begun his first and only sexual relationship with a woman. The two, he said, met at a convention on nutrition and UFOs in Reno, where both were selling “pyramid power” hats.

‘Quite a Fantasy’

Buckey described staying in a mirrored motel room at the Fantasy Inn in South Lake Tahoe with the woman as “quite a fantasy,” smiling at the memory. He said the two “made love” there and later under a pyramid in the apartment over his parents’ garage in Manhattan Beach.

“I was very much in love with Barbara at the time,” he said.

Prosecutors said they will call the woman, identified as Barbara Dusky, during the rebuttal phase of the trial.

Rubin told the court, outside the presence of the jury, that Dusky told an investigator that her attempts to seduce Buckey had been unsuccessful, although they shared a bubble bath and slept together at the motel (which she paid for) and at his apartment. The investigator’s report indicates that Buckey could not become sexually aroused and that the two never had intercourse.

“Ray told me he wanted to be married before he had sex,” Rubin quoted Dusky as saying.

Relationship Called Irrelevant

Earlier, Buckey’s attorney, Danny Davis, had argued that the relationship was irrelevant to the issues at hand: “There are people who can be extremely moral, who can learn that from their parents and have a strong belief about that, without having to prove they’re Don Juans or that they’re not pedophiles because they’re promiscuous.”

“Where’s the beef?” Davis asked as court recessed for the day.

Buckey was expected to step down as the key defense witness after brief questions from both sides today. The defense has said it will call a physician as its final witness next week to counter medical testimony that examinations showed physical evidence of sexual abuse in most of the alleged victims.

Prosecutors maintain that Buckey’s testimony “has confirmed the fact that he molested those kids,” despite his denials. Rubin and co-prosecutor Roger Gunson said Buckey made several slips, contradicted testimony of other defense witnesses and confirmed many points made by the child witnesses--except for their claims that he molested them. “For the first time in this case, we got someone (besides the alleged victims) to admit that Ray Buckey often took children from the preschool,” Rubin said as an example.

Calls It ‘Shystering’

Davis, though, dismissed the tedious cross-examination of his client as “hit-or-miss shystering.”

Now in its 27th month of trial, the McMartin case is the longest and costliest--more than $15 million--criminal proceeding in history. Five other teachers at the nursery school were ordered to stand trial with the Buckeys after a lengthy preliminary hearing. However, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner dropped charges against them, citing insufficient evidence.