Father of McMartin Ex-Student Is Hit With Suit Alleging Slander

Three former McMartin Pre-School defendants filed a slander suit Wednesday against a Hermosa Beach man who has gone on the national talk show circuit charging that his son was molested at the school and demanding a retrial.

The suit accuses Robert Currie, a former mortgage banker, of making a series of false, malicious and slanderous statements regarding preschool founder Virginia McMartin, her daughter, Peggy McMartin Buckey, and her granddaughter, Peggy Ann Buckey.

James H. Davis, the women’s attorney, said the suit was filed in response to statements Currie made on “Geraldo,” “Sally Jessy Raphael” and other local and national television talk shows.

In those appearances, Currie has insisted that Peggy McMartin Buckey, 63, and her son, Ray Buckey, 31, were guilty, despite their Jan. 18 acquittals on 52 molestation counts after one of the longest and costliest criminal trials in history. Even though charges against Virginia McMartin and Peggy Ann Buckey were dropped earlier for lack of evidence, Currie has implicated them as well in his TV appearances, Davis said.

Prosecutors said they will retry Ray Buckey on five of the 13 counts that had left the jury deadlocked.

In the weeks since the acquittals, some of the McMartin parents and other groups have staged an extraordinary public campaign to keep the case alive, appearing on talk shows, lobbying Los Angeles County supervisors and collecting letters in support of a retrial.

Although other McMartin parents have made similar TV appearances, Davis said Currie was singled out because “he had made a career of pursuing this case.” Currie’s son, now 14, attended the McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach for three years but did not testify at the trial.

“One would have thought that the end of the trial would have brought an end to the slander,” Davis said in a press conference at Los Angeles Superior Court. “Instead, the defendant has toured every major talk show and repeated (the accusations).”

On those shows, Currie has explained in graphic detail crimes that were allegedly committed at the preschool, including the sexual abuse of one child with a carrot and the mutilation of animals to intimidate the children.

Davis said the decision to file the slander suit came last Thursday, when Peggy McMartin Buckey was “absolutely reduced to tears” when she learned that Currie had accused her during one telecast of “raising her muumuu to her waist” when the two were arguing shortly after the arrest of Ray Buckey.

Davis said Currie had made such remarks since the case was filed in 1984, but he is being sued only for statements made after the acquittals. Under California law, he said, Currie was immune from being hit with a slander suit as long as criminal proceedings were pending against the defendants.

The suit seeks unspecified punitive damages.

Davis said he hopes the lawsuit will serve notice that the people who have been acquitted in the McMartin case will no longer tolerate public ridicule.

“It is my hope that we will make everyone more responsible,” he said.

“I am looking forward to the opportunity to defend myself in open court, under oath, as to the truth of my statements that I have made, and it is my understanding that truth is an absolute defense against slander,” Currie said of the suit.

Legal experts said the lawsuit raises the possibility that some aspects of the McMartin case could be heard again, this time before a jury considering the slander suit.

“Truth is a defense to slander and libel,” said John T. Nockleby, a visiting professor at Loyola Law School. “In proving the alleged slander is true, the defendant is going to be investigating and presenting evidence, at least as it regards his particular children. In that respect, the whole thing could be retried.”

Davis said Currie has made the McMartin case “his avocation.”

“Think of it,” Davis said. “The day after the acquittal, he is in New York for one TV show and the following week he is there for another one.”

Currie said he does not speak for the parents whose children testified at the trial, but he feels it is his obligation to speak publicly.