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Initial allegations

In 1983, Judy Johnson, mother of one of the Manhattan Beach, California, preschool's young students, reported to the police that her son had been sodomized by her estranged husband and by McMartin teacher Ray Buckey.[2][3] Ray Buckey was the grandson of school founder Virginia McMartin and son of administrator Peggy McMartin Buckey. Johnson's belief that her son had been abused began when her son had painful bowel movements. What happened next is still disputed. Some sources state that at that time, Johnson's son denied her suggestion that his preschool teachers had molested him, whereas others say he confirmed the abuse.[2][4]

In addition, Johnson also made several more accusations, including that people at the daycare had sexual encounters with animals, that "Peggy drilled a child under the arms" and "Ray flew in the air."[1][5] Ray Buckey was questioned, but was not prosecuted due to lack of evidence. The police then sent a form letter to about 200 parents of students at the McMartin school, stating that their children might have been abused, and asking the parents to question their children. The text of the letter read:[2]

<letter sent to parents: graphic, fear mongering, pre-emptive>

Johnson was diagnosed with and hospitalized for acute paranoid schizophrenia[3][7][8][9] and in 1986 was found dead in her home from complications of chronic alcoholism[2][10] before the preliminary hearing concluded.[11]

Interviewing and examining the children

Several hundred children were then interviewed by the Children's Institute International (CII), a Los Angeles abuse therapy clinic run by Kee MacFarlane. The interviewing techniques used during investigations of the allegations were highly suggestive and invited children to pretend or speculate about supposed events.[12][13] By spring of 1984, it was claimed that 360 children had been abused.[1][7][14] Astrid Heppenstall Heger performed medical examinations and took photos of what she believed to be minute scarring, which she stated was caused by anal penetration. Journalist John Earl believed that her findings were based on unsubstantiated medical histories.[15] Later research demonstrated that the methods of questioning used on the children were extremely suggestive, leading to false accusations.[12] Others believe that the questioning itself may have led to false memory syndrome among the children who were questioned.[2][4] Ultimately only 41 of the original 360 children testified during the grand jury and pre-trial hearings, and fewer than a dozen testified during the actual trial.[16]

Videotapes of the interviews with children were reviewed by Michael Maloney, a British clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry, as an expert witness regarding the interviewing of children. Maloney was highly critical of the interviewing techniques used, referring to them as improper, coercive, directive, problematic and adult-directed in a way that forced the children to follow a rigid script; he concluded that "many of the kids' statements in the interviews were generated by the examiner."[17] Transcripts and recordings of the interviews contained far more speech from adults than children and demonstrated that, despite the highly coercive interviewing techniques used, initially the children were resistant to interviewers' attempts to elicit disclosures. Recordings of these interviews were instrumental in the jury's refusal to convict, by demonstrating how children could be coerced to giving vivid and dramatic testimonies without having experienced the abuse.[18] The techniques used were contrary to the existing guidelines in California for the investigation of cases involving children and child witnesses.[19]

Bizarre allegations

Some of the accusations were described as "bizarre",[5] overlapping with accusations that mirrored the just-starting satanic ritual abuse panic.[4] It was alleged that, in addition to having been sexually abused, they saw witches fly, traveled in a hot-air balloon, and were taken through underground tunnels.[4] When shown a series of photographs by Danny Davis (the McMartins' lawyer), one child identified actor Chuck Norris as one of the abusers.[20]

Some of the abuse was alleged to have occurred in secret tunnels beneath the school. Several excavations turned up evidence of old buildings on the site and other debris from before the school was built, but no evidence of any secret chambers or tunnels was found.[4] There were claims of orgies at car washes and airports, and of children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they would be abused, then cleaned up and presented back to their parents. Some interviewed children talked of a game called "naked movie star" suggesting they were forcibly photographed nude.[1][4][21] During the trial, testimony from the children stated that the naked movie star game was actually a rhyming taunt used to tease other children – "What you say is what you are, you're a naked movie star," – and had nothing to do with having naked pictures taken.[4]

Johnson, who made the initial allegations, made bizarre and impossible statements about Raymond Buckey, including that he could fly.[1] Though the prosecution asserted Johnson's mental illness was caused by the events of the trial, Johnson had admitted to them that she was mentally ill beforehand. Evidence of Johnson's mental illness was withheld from the defense for three years and, when provided, was in the form of sanitized reports that excluded Johnson's statements, at the order of the prosecution.[22] One of the original prosecutors, Glenn Stevens, left the case and stated that other prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense, including the information that Johnson's son did not actually identify Ray Buckey in a series of photographs. Stevens also accused Robert Philibosian, the deputy district attorney on the case, of lying and withholding evidence from the court and defense lawyers in order to keep the Buckeys in jail and prevent access to exonerating evidence.[23]

Kern County child abuse cases:History

In 1982, Alvin and Debbie McCuan's two daughters, coached by their step-grandmother Mary Ann Barbour, who had custody of them, alleged they had been abused by their parents, and accused them of being part of a sex ring that included Scott and Brenda Kniffen. The Kniffens' two sons also claimed to have been abused. No physical evidence was ever found. The McCuans and Kniffens were convicted in 1984 and given a combined sentence of over 1000 years in prison.[5] The convictions were overturned in 1996 and the two couples were released. In 2001, a TV movie about the Kniffens titled Just Ask My Children (2001) was aired on Lifetime.[6]

Six similar cases occurred throughout Kern County. For instance, the testimony of five young boys was the prosecution's key evidence in a trial in which four defendants were convicted. John Stoll, a 41-year-old carpenter, received the longest sentence of the group: 40 years for 17 counts of lewd and lascivious conduct. "It never happened," Ed Sampley, one of the accusers, told a New York Times reporter in 2004. He claimed he had lied about Stoll. Stoll was in prison for 19 years before his conviction was reversed.[7] In 2009, Stoll sued Kern County and was awarded $5 million in compensation.[8] The county paid out nearly $10 million to settle claims made by the former prisoners and the alleged victims.[4] A documentary titled Witch Hunt, which focused primarily on Stoll's case, was produced and released in 2007. MSNBC also made a documentary on John Stoll and the Kern County cases.

Sampley and three other former accusers returned in 2004 to the courthouse where they had testified against Stoll, this time to say that Stoll never molested them. In their late 20s, each of them said he always knew the truth—that Stoll had never touched them.[9] However, Stoll's son has "continued to say that he had been molested."[10] In the case, the only defendant with a previous conviction of molestation was Grant Self, who rented Stoll's pool house briefly.[11] John Stoll had to wait until 2004 for the reversal of his convictions, but was released on the new testimony. Self was sent to a mental hospital for sexual offenders because he had two prior convictions for child molestation. Self was freed in 2009.[12] He was re-arrested in 2012 on suspicion of child molestation in Oregon.[13] In July 2013, Self pleaded guilty to sexually abusing three young boys and was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison.[14]

Prior to the start of the Kern County child abuse cases, several local social workers had attended a training seminar that foregrounded satanic ritual abuse as a major element in child sexual abuse, and had used the now-debunked memoir Michelle Remembers as training material.[15]

What I'm trying to point out here, is that throughout the last 70+ years, Satanism has constantly been falsely attributed as being the root of 'elite' pedophilia networks and other cases of morbid abuse/murder, which has in turn allowed the actual perpetrators/enablers of such crimes/networks, to operate 'in plain sight', with public funding and consent - while also consistently leading to false arrests/imprisonment and even assault/death of innocent/potentially innocent people.

This will rub some people the wrong way, but: Those who constantly feed into the false narratives by parroting the word "Satanic" whenever they mention ritualistic abuse or other sadistic crimes/abuse, are indeed doing more damage to the investigation than they think...

To be continued...

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