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Liber XXIV · Satanism

Liber XXIV · Satanism · Chapter IV: Satanic Panic

The McMartin Preschool Trial: Satanic Panic Case, 1983–1990

The McMartin preschool trial (1983–1990): how one complaint became a Satanic ritual abuse case, why it ended without convictions and what it changed.

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Everett Weinreb, photographer MODERN SLIDING DOOR FROM TRAIN CONCOURSE TO RECEPTION HALL, LOOKING SOUTH - Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal, Tracks and Shed, 800 North Alameda Street, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CAPublic domain · Wikimedia Commons

The McMartin preschool trial was a criminal case in Manhattan Beach, California, in which staff of a family-run nursery school were accused in 1983–1984 of abusing hundreds of children, including in alleged Satanic rituals. After the longest and most expensive criminal proceedings in American history to that date, it ended in 1990 without a single conviction. It became the defining case of the Satanic ritual abuse scare and a turning point in how courts and psychologists question children.

The McMartin Preschool and the First Complaint§

The Virginia McMartin Preschool had operated in the beach town of Manhattan Beach, in Los Angeles County, since the 1950s. It was run by its founder, Virginia McMartin, her daughter Peggy McMartin Buckey and other staff; Peggy's son Ray Buckey worked there as an aide. In August 1983 Judy Johnson, the mother of a two-year-old boy, told police that Ray Buckey had molested her son. A medical examination was inconclusive, and her account soon expanded to include claims that other investigators found implausible. She was later diagnosed with a serious mental illness and died in 1986.

The police response turned an individual complaint into a community crisis. In September 1983 the Manhattan Beach police chief sent a letter to around 200 families of current and former pupils, naming Ray Buckey as a suspect and asking parents to question their children about specific forms of abuse. The letter spread alarm across the town, and parents began to seek specialist help.

Interviews at Children's Institute International§

Many families were referred to Children's Institute International (CII), a Los Angeles child-abuse clinic, where the social worker Kee MacFarlane and colleagues interviewed several hundred children from late 1983 into 1984. The interviews used puppets and anatomically detailed dolls and were videotaped. By early 1984 CII had reported that a very large majority of the children it interviewed had been abused.

llustrated metamorphic trade card depicting a "before using" and "while using" scene of children playing inside. Before using, the children are seated and sullen with their heads in their hands because they…
llustrated metamorphic trade card depicting a "before using" and "while using" scene of children playing inside. Before using, the children are seated and sullen with their heads in their hands because they…Library Company of Philadelphia · No restrictions · Wikimedia Commons

The recordings later became central evidence for the defence. They showed interviewers repeatedly asking leading questions, praising children for disclosures, telling them that other children had already "told", and treating denials as signs of fear or repression. Psychologists who later studied the tapes argued that these methods could produce detailed accounts of events that never happened, especially from very young children who wanted to please adults.

From Abuse Allegations to Ritual Claims§

As interviews continued, the allegations became more extraordinary. Children described secret rooms and tunnels beneath the school, trips in aeroplanes and hot-air balloons, the killing of animals, men in robes and ceremonies in churches. In one widely reported episode a child is said to have picked out a photograph of a famous film actor as an abuser. Investigators searched the school and nearby sites but found no physical evidence of ritual activity, animal remains or underground rooms.

These claims did not arise in a vacuum. The bestseller Michelle Remembers (1980), discussed in Michelle Remembers, had already spread the idea of organised Satanic cults that abused children in elaborate ceremonies, and its co-author Lawrence Pazder was reported to have met McMartin parents. Television coverage, notably by a Los Angeles reporter who broke the story in early 1984, amplified each new claim.

Charges, Preliminary Hearing and Dismissals§

In March 1984 a grand jury indicted seven people: Virginia McMartin, Peggy McMartin Buckey, Ray Buckey, his sister Peggy Ann Buckey and three other teachers. The charges eventually ran to more than two hundred counts. The preliminary hearing, held to decide whether there was enough evidence for trial, lasted some eighteen months and is often cited as the longest in Californian history. Children testified for days at a time and were cross-examined by several defence lawyers at once.

In January 1986 the newly elected Los Angeles District Attorney, Ira Reiner, dropped all charges against five of the seven defendants, describing the evidence against them as very weak. Only Ray Buckey and his mother Peggy McMartin Buckey went forward. By then the school had closed, the defendants had lost their livelihoods, and Ray Buckey had been held in jail without bail; he would spend about five years in custody before his release.

The Trials and the Verdicts of 1990§

The first trial opened in July 1987 and lasted until January 1990. The prosecution relied on the children's testimony, the CII interviews and medical evidence that defence experts disputed. A former member of the prosecution team, Glenn Stevens, left the case and publicly expressed doubts about it, and the defence argued that the allegations had been created by the investigative process itself.

Panoramic view of downtown Los Angeles, looking south between Spring Street and Broadway from the Courthouse, ca.1905 Photograph of a panoramic view of downtown Los Angeles, looking south between Spring Street…
Panoramic view of downtown Los Angeles, looking south between Spring Street and Broadway from the Courthouse, ca.1905 Photograph of a panoramic view of downtown Los Angeles, looking south between Spring Street…Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

In January 1990 the jury acquitted Peggy McMartin Buckey on all counts and acquitted Ray Buckey on most counts, deadlocking on the remainder. Several jurors told reporters that the CII interview tapes had made it impossible to know what the children had really experienced. Prosecutors retried Ray Buckey on a reduced number of counts later that year; the second jury also deadlocked, and in July 1990 the district attorney decided not to try him again. The total cost of the proceedings was widely estimated at around fifteen million dollars.

The Tunnel Excavations§

The belief in tunnels outlasted the trials. After the building was sold, a group of parents organised an excavation, and in 1990 an archaeologist they engaged reported features that he interpreted as filled-in tunnels. Other specialists and an earlier search found nothing of the kind and explained the disturbances as ordinary fill and debris from the site's earlier use. For believers the tunnels remained proof of a cover-up; for critics they illustrated how an unfalsifiable conviction could survive any amount of negative evidence.

Aftermath and Lasting Influence§

The McMartin case was followed by dozens of similar prosecutions involving day-care centres in the United States and, later, in Britain, New Zealand and elsewhere, which are surveyed in the main article on the Satanic Panic. Several convictions from this period were later overturned on appeal, often because of the methods used to interview children. In 2005 one of the McMartin child witnesses, by then an adult, publicly stated that he had said what interviewers wanted to hear and that the abuse he had described had not happened.

The most durable legacy lay in psychology and law. Research by Stephen Ceci, Maggie Bruck and others in the 1990s demonstrated experimentally how repeated, leading and rewarding questions could lead young children to give confident accounts of events that never occurred. Their work, and that of others, helped shape the structured forensic interview protocols now used by police and child-protection services in many countries, which emphasise open questions, a single recorded interview and the avoidance of props that invite fantasy.

Historians and sociologists such as Jeffrey Victor, Debbie Nathan and Richard Beck interpret the case as a modern witch-hunt: a moral panic in which anxieties about working mothers, child care, sexuality and religious decline were projected onto a small group of scapegoats. The comparison with the European witch trials is imperfect but instructive, since in both cases accusations multiplied through interrogation, and an imagined conspiracy of devil worshippers proved impossible to disprove to those who already believed in it.

The case also had consequences for real Satanist groups. Organisations such as the Church of Satan, whose actual teachings are described in LaVeyan Satanism and the Church of Satan, found themselves associated in the public mind with crimes that no investigation ever connected to them. Later reviews by law-enforcement analysts, notably the FBI's Kenneth Lanning, found no evidence for the organised Satanic abuse networks that the McMartin allegations had seemed to reveal.

Frequently asked questions§

Was anyone convicted in the McMartin preschool case?§

No. Charges against five of the seven defendants were dropped in 1986. Peggy McMartin Buckey was acquitted on all counts in 1990, and Ray Buckey was acquitted on most counts; two juries deadlocked on the rest and prosecutors abandoned the case.

Why did the children describe Satanic rituals?§

Most researchers attribute the ritual claims to the interview methods used, which relied on leading questions, rewards for disclosure and props, combined with intense media and community pressure. No physical evidence of rituals, tunnels or animal sacrifice was ever found.

How long did the McMartin trial last?§

From the first complaint in 1983 to the end of the second trial in 1990, the case lasted almost seven years. The first trial alone ran from July 1987 to January 1990, making it one of the longest criminal trials in American history.

What changed after the McMartin case?§

The case prompted research into children's suggestibility and led to more careful interview protocols for child witnesses. It also became a central example in studies of moral panics and the Satanic ritual abuse scare.

Sources and further reading§