Judge Denies Peggy Buckey Back-Pay Claim of $223,000

A judge has refused to grant $223,000 in back pay to Anaheim teacher Peggy Ann Buckey, a former defendant in a child molestation trial that became the nation’s longest and costliest criminal proceeding.

Her attorney, John J. Wagner, said he would file an appeal.

Buckey, a special education teacher at Anaheim High School, was reinstated and rehired in 1989 after a battle with the state Board of Education.

She sued the Anaheim Union High School District for five years’ back pay and benefits dating from 1984--the time that she was accused of child molestation to her reinstatement.

She also claimed that she was never given a hearing before the suspension of her teaching credentials in September, 1985.

Superior Court Judge Ronald Sohigian ruled Wednesday that Buckey had allowed her teaching credentials to expire.

During that break in service, the school district was not obligated to keep her on the payroll and therefore she had no recourse to collect lost pay until her rehiring, the judge ruled.

Sohigian decided that Buckey is entitled to back salary and health benefits of $37,000 only from March, 1984, to September, 1985.

She was accused of child molestation in March, 1984, while teaching at the defunct McMartin Pre-School. Her teaching credential expired September, 1985.

Charges against Buckey, her grandmother, Virginia McMartin, and three others were dropped in January, 1986, two years after Buckey was accused.

Buckey’s brother, Raymond, and their mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, were acquitted Jan. 18, 1990, of 52 child-molestation charges. Raymond Buckey was retried on eight counts and that proceeding ended in mistrial in July, 1990, when a jury said it was hopelessly deadlocked.

The McMartin case consumed seven years of court time and cost Los Angeles County more than $13.5 million.