In legal tradition, it is the province of the
judge to determine whether an expert witness is truly an expert. In
the case of one of the longest trials in American history, a better
judgment call on that score could have prevented horrendous damage.
Virginia McMartin, 79, lived in the small
oceanfront community of Manhattan Beach, California, just south of Los
Angeles. She had opened a preschool on the main drag and hired
members of her family and church to help build and run it. Her
daughter, Peggy Buckey, 59, was the administrator. The school was
considered so exemplary that the town had given Virginia an award.
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Virginia
McMartin and Peggy McMartin Buckey (AP) |
Then one day in 1983, according to Debbie Nathan
and Michael Snedeker in Satan's Silence, a woman named Judy
Johnson dropped off her two-year-old son Matthew at the daycare
center. They center was full and had already told Johnson so when she
called, but she left him there in the yard anyway. There was discord
among the staff whether to accept him, but ultimately they did. It
would be the single most regrettable act they would ever do.
Judy, separated from her husband, mentally
unbalanced and struggling to make ends meet, became obsessed with
Matthew's anus. He said it hurt him to have bowel movements, so she
took him to a doctor, who declined to examine him. On August 11, she
examined Matthew in the morning and he seemed okay. However, when he
returned home from the preschool, she claimed, his anus was red and
itchy. She did not associate it with his diarrhea. Instead, she
began to perceive something more nefarious: She believed that Ray
Buckey, the only male teacher at the school, was abusing her son.
Judy confronted Matthew, asking him quite
directly if Ray Buckey had done something to him. Matthew denied it.
She kept up this line of questioning, which got her nowhere, so she
switched tactics.
Since her son was playing doctor and giving
people "injections," she asked Matthew if Ray had ever done that to
him. Again, he said no. However, he did admit that Ray had taken his
temperature, and Judy Johnson jumped to the conclusion that this was a
disguised form of sexual abuse. She took Matthew to the hospital for
a rectal examination.
From there, reports are conflicting. Some say
that there was no evidence of actual sexual abuse, while others say
that Matthew admitted that he had seen Ray Buckey's penis and that Ray
had photographed him. Judy contacted the police.
This was not the first report about child abuse
in a daycare center, so the authorities were determined to find out
what was going on. Judy spoke on her son's behalf, claiming that he
had been photographed naked and tied up. Not only that, he'd seen
this done to other children as well. Judy was told to take Matthew to
some specialists in child abuse at Children's Institute International
(CII) at UCLA.
Unfortunately, the person who examined him was
an inexperienced intern. She saw the redness and accepted Judy's
interpretation. Based on no real evidence and on no experience with
such injuries, the intern diagnosed penile penetration as the cause of
the irritation. Thus began the terrible saga that was to be labeled as
America's twentieth-century witch-hunt.
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