Dear Harley,
You might be too young to remember (how often do you hear that?) the incredible and bizarre case of the McMartin Preschool sexual abuse trial.
The McMartin Preschool was located in Manhattan Beach and I was living in the adjacent city Redondo Beach at the time. And man, oh man, was this big news. People in the area, including myself, wanted to march over there and burn the school down and lynch every damn one of them.
The trial lasted forever. I remember it started in 1983 but it wasn't until 1990 before the dust settled. The details are a bit fuzzy for me now but there are a few things that stand out. Things are not what they seem. It all started when the mother of a child attending the school accuse her ex-husband, who worked at the school, of sodomizing his/her son. The boy was also raped by the grandson of the founder of the school who also worked there as a teacher, Raymond Buckley.
It soon blew up to almost 400 children being sexually abused by the school. We all believe that the school was literally the den of the devil and how could such a thing happen to so many victims, for so long, without anything be said? The school was under police protection wearing riot gear surrounded by a rabid mob baying for blood. Me included -- lol!
Sympathies started to change as more time, investigation and evidence came out. That the instigator who hated her ex husband and threatened him in the past was diagnose with acute schizophrenia for many years preceding the accusations and died of alcoholism before the conclusion of the case. The bizarre allegations by the children under leading questions were mind boggling. Such things that stood out in my mind at the time were orgies in the class rooms, witches flying through the air sprinkling them with potions so that they would have sex with the adults, under ground tunnels where they would smuggle children from other schools to be raped; and the one that made me go "hmm..." that they brought in an elephant into the classroom to be gang raped as they were also into bestiality.
After all was said and done I went from wanting to burn the school down and lynch people to realizing it was all a lie. A horrible perverse that blew up in a way nobody expected, intended and wanted.
The manipulation of the children and the bias by the government prosecution was criminal. One of the children, as an adult, admitted that he never saw or experienced anything. Nothing at all. He said that during the brutal questioning -- interrogation -- when he was a child he said that whenever he gave an answer they didn't like he would just give another one. Ray Buckley served five years in jail without being convicted of a single thing. Even one of the inmates admitted that he made up the so called jail house confessions made by Buckley in exchange for favorable treatment promised by the prosecution on his other pending cases.
It was such a mess. Just a horrible, corrupt and evil mess. The McMartin Preschool and the McMartin/Buckley family was screw from the start. Their guilt was decided before they ever stepped into court and it was just a matter of going through the motions and establishing it formally.
Kids do lie, kids do make things up, kids are easily misled and manipulated by adults.
And just to be clear I am not in any way implying this is the case with the five year old girl. Just that things aren't always what they appear. We need to know when this five year old was examined.