Preschool Founder Virginia McMartin Dies

Virginia McMartin, founder of the McMartin Pre-school where charges of child molestation sparked the longest and costliest criminal prosecution in U.S. history, has died. She was 88.

The feisty McMartin, who attended the lengthy proceedings in her wheelchair, died Sunday night in Torrance after a series of strokes.

She was pronounced dead, apparently of heart failure, at Little Company of Mary Hospital shortly after paramedics transported her there from her Torrance home. As a lifelong Christian Scientist, she had never received medical treatment.

McMartin and six other teachers were indicted in 1984 on 115 charges of felony child molestation after one mother called Manhattan Beach police to say she suspected that her 2-year-old son had been molested at the facility. Charges were dismissed against McMartin and four teachers in 1986 when no convincing evidence was located.

After seven years, an 18-month preliminary hearing, a three-year trial and a second briefer trial--all costing taxpayers more than $13 million--her daughter, Peggy McMartin Buckey, and grandson, Raymond Buckey, were acquitted.

Although McMartin was absolved of criminal activity, she lost her preschool and her life savings, and received little compensation in civil suits.

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In 1991, she and two teachers won a slander suit against one parent who claimed on national television that they had engaged in satanic rituals and lewd acts at the school. But they received only $1 each in damages after the judge ruled that they failed to prove that their reputations were damaged or that the parent intended to cause them emotional distress.

“I got what I wanted--the truth to come out,” McMartin told reporters. “I didn’t care a snip about the money. I wanted him to shut up.”

In testimony at that civil trial, the blunt McMartin denied the parent’s assertion that she had stripped her blouse to the waist in front of children.

“It was such an awful thing to say against an old lady,” she testified. “I haven’t even owned a blouse since 1940.”

McMartin is to be cremated and no funeral is planned.