High Court Refuses to Hear McMartin Suit on Civil Rights : Justice: State child care workers who investigate child abuse are immune from liability, justices rule.

The Supreme Court, refusing to get involved in the McMartin preschool molestation case, Monday dismissed a suit which contended that child therapists violated the civil rights of two McMartin family members by publicizing initial reports of sex abuse at the Manhattan Beach school.

The justices let stand a state court ruling which deemed child care workers in California absolutely immune from liability for investigating child abuse or reporting evidence to law enforcement authorities.

The high court action ends a civil suit filed by Virginia McMartin, founder of the scandal-plagued preschool, and her granddaughter, Peggy Ann Buckey, who taught there.

In March, 1986, soon after Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner dropped all charges against the two, McMartin and Buckey filed a suit contending that prosecutors and child therapists conspired to “fabricate” evidence against them and to exaggerate the child abuse allegations.

The suit noted that former Dist. Atty. Robert Philibosian was running for election when the McMartin scandal arose. It also noted that Kathleen (Kee) MacFarlane, a child therapist who interviewed the young children, was carrying on a “romantic relationship” with the television news reporter who broke the story.

None of the courts that considered the suit ruled on the merits of the complaint. Instead, they simply upheld a blanket immunity provision in California law.

Under a 1980 state law, child therapists, teachers and other people who work with children must investigate and report any evidence that the children in their care have been abused. In return, they are shielded from liability for their actions. A separate state statute makes prosecutors immune for their official actions.

“The social worker must make a quick decision based on perhaps incomplete information” of possible child abuse, a state appeals court said in rejecting the suit in August. “The social worker’s independence, like that of a prosecutor, would be compromised were (he) constantly in fear that a mistake could result in a time-consuming and financially devastating civil suit.”

Under past Supreme Court rulings, people who work with law enforcement officials are also shielded from liability under federal law.

In the McMartin case, county prosecutors enlisted the aid of Children’s Institute International, a private center that employed MacFarlane to interview children who had attended the preschool. Because MacFarlane was working for prosecutors, she was shielded from liability under federal law as well.

In August, a state appeals court in Los Angeles dismissed a list of complaints filed by McMartin and her granddaughter, and the state Supreme Court refused to consider the issues. Since those complaints involved state laws, they could not be appealed further.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, James H. Davis, appealed separately to the U.S. Supreme Court on the federal civil rights allegations. He argued that the state immunity law was too broad.