The McMartin Preschool trial started in August 1983 when Judy Johnson, the mother of a 2 1⁄2-year-old boy, reported to the police that her son was abused by Raymond Buckey at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California. After seven years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. As of 2006, it is the longest and most expensive criminal trial in the history of the United States. The accusations involved hidden tunnels, killing animals, Satan worship, and orgies. Judy Johnson was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia and in 1986 was found dead in her home from complications of chronic alcoholism. Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin, were eventually released without any charges. In 2005 one of the testifying children retracted his testimony and said he lied, to protect his younger siblings and to please his parents.

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McMartin Preschool

1983

Results

In The Devil in the Nursery in 2001, Margaret Talbot for The New York Times summarized the case:

"When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80s — the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities."