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AUTHOR NOTE: In my initial review of PBS Frontline’s “The Search for Satan” for Treating Abuse Today I reported some of the problems I had discovered in this documentary: (1) In several clips, producer Bikel flashed a quick shot of a document and narrowed the camera focus to one statement. Using the pause button, I was able to read the rest of the document. There I learned that Mary Shanley was not, as the producers claimed, “having a normal life and doing normal things” before her hospitalization in Houston. (2) The film contained a surprising number of recreated scenes which were not labeled as such. (3) A supposedly direct quote from FBI agent Ken Lanning had been edited. (4) A call to the State of Illinois revealed that Shanley had not been “listed with the State of Illinois as a child abuser,” nor had her teaching certificate been listed as “restrictive.” (5) I did some research and found the producers failed to mention that Shanley had been hospitalized at four different hospitals and received a diagnosis of “mixed personalities.”

I titled my review “Smoke and Mirrors,” and it appeared in the Jan/Feb 1996 issue of Treating Abuse Today.

Two years later, the women featured in the film, Shanley and Pat Burgus, had both settled their lawsuits against their therapists. Shanley’s case settled with a gag order in place. Malpractice carrier AIG and two others had settled Burgus’s case for $10.6 million .The medical license of Burgus’s psychiatrist was suspended for two years. Five of Shanley’s mental health care providers were indicted on federal fraud and conspiracy charges.

I flew down to Houston in September of 1998 to cover the trial in federal court, and was in the courtroom when Shanley was on the witness stand. During cross-examination, defense attorney Rusty Hardin discredited virtually all of the claims Shanley had made in “Search.” Shanley acknowledged she recalled memories of cult abuse long before she met the defendants, and could not name any false memories that Peterson had supposedly implanted. The government rested its case after five months. All charges against the five defendants were then dismissed.

My follow-up review “The Search for Satan: Three Years Later” was published in the September/October 1998 issue of Treating Abuse Today.

In 2001, I reviewed the lengthy deposition of Pat Burgus, the second woman featured in “The Search for Satan.” I found that on January 17, 1997, Burgus had acknowledged that her psychiatrist had not implanted any false memories. Instead, he had only passed on to her what other patients at the hospital had reported about her (Deposition, pp. 912-913). Based upon Burgus’s deposition, her mental health had improved significantly during her hospitalization.

The following article has been slightly revised from the version that appeared in Treating Abuse Today in 1998.

“The Search for Satan”: Three Years Later

“Two troubled women. Both sought help from some of the top doctors in the country. The diagnosis? Satanic ritual abuse!..After millions of dollars in treatment, the women now say, ‘The doctors were wrong!’”

So begins Frontline’s 1995 film, “The Search for Satan.” The media hailed the film as an “indictment against therapists” and the film was re-broadcast by public television stations around the world.

The “two troubled women” were Mary Shanley and Pat Burgus. “Some of the top doctors” were Bennett Braun, Roberta Sachs in Chicago and Judith Peterson in Houston. “The diagnosis” was not “satanic ritual abuse,” but multiple personality disorder.

“The Search for Satan” on Frontline

“The Search for Satan” was produced and written by Ofra Bikel and Rachel Dreitzen for PBS Frontline. “Search” aired on October 24, 1995. At its website, Frontline describes its commitment to viewers.

From its inception, FRONTLINE has never shied away from tough, controversial issues or stories others avoided because they seemed too gray and complex for the black and white spectrum of conventional broadcast journalism. For there is an aesthetic goal as well: the fusion of credible, thoughtful reportage with compelling narrative, the story well told. In the end, that is the core of Frontline’s commitment to its viewers.

The following excerpts compare the Frontline producers’ “credible, thoughtful reportage” in 1995 to what their interviewees said under oath during US v. Peterson et al. in 1998.

MEREDITH SHRINER – MARY SHANLEY’S BEST FRIEND

Search – Shriner said the Shanleys were the typical loving family. Mary was a model wife and mother, her husband’s lover and best friend, a woman filled with patience, the perfect feminine presence in a typical, loving family. She had a wonderful relationship with her son, Ryan. Mary was a great mom, she had tons of patience.
vs.
Testimony: Shriner testified that Mary experienced panic attacks. Mary was increasingly disturbed by her angry outbursts against Ryan and Joe, and the Shanleys were experiencing marital problems.

MARY SHANLEY – FORMER HOSPITAL PATIENT AND GOVERNMENT’S STAR WITNESS

Search – “I was in very poor health [when I left SSG].”
vs.
Trial: Shanley, a slender woman, testified during direct examination that she had gained 25 pounds since her Spring Shadows Glen (SSG) release. During cross, Shanley appeared confused when shown hospital records indicating that she weighed 108 pounds when she entered SSG, her weight dropped to 105 pounds during her stay, and she weighed 108 when she left SSG. Shanley testified during direct that she was prevented from seeing a dentist despite her complaints of pain from an abscessed tooth. However, hospital records showed that she refused dental care for 2 months prior to November 3rd because she felt that dental care prior to that date would be “triggering.” She was prescribed antibiotics to contain the dental infection. She complained of back pain due to abreactive sessions and was prescribed additional voluntary restraints to support her back.

Search - NARRATOR: In 1988, Mary fell into a deep depression… MARY: Because I was suffering from seizures and blackouts, the counselor thought I might be suffering from a dissociative disorder. So I went for an evaluation at the best hospital in Chicago [Rush Presbyterian-St. Lukes’ Medical Center].
vs.
Trial – Two years prior to entering the dissociative disorders unit at Rush, Shanley was evaluated and hospitalized for memory blackouts and self-harming episodes at the following facilities: Alexian Brothers in May 1989, Forrest Hospital in January 1990, Old Orchard in March 1990 and Rush Memorial in 1990. She was hospitalized at SSG in Houston in May 1991, and discharged in June 1993. Under cross, it was shown that insurance claims reviewers determined that Shanley was “chronically suicidal,” hence, “untreatable,” and advised that she should be placed in a nursing home. Shanley refused this option, and SSG staff assisted her in finding housing and employment.

SALLY MCDONALD: UNIT NURSING SUPERVISOR AT SPRING SHADOWS GLEN

Search – ‘‘These kids [Pat Burgus two sons] came into the hospital as really stable, well-functioning kids.”
vs
Trial: Contrary to hospital records indicating the boys were very troubled, McDonald testified that the boys were stable because, in her judgment, they appeared stable. She further testified that she decided that a patient whose hospital records stated that she had been sexually abused could not have been sexually abused if a gynecological report showed that the patient’s hymen was intact

“Search – “It became very clear to the nurses that if we objected that there would be a reprisal, and that reprisal would be a transfer off the unit, a demotion and in some cases an actual termination’
vs.
Trial: Under cross, McDonald could name no instances in which nurses were transferred, demoted or terminated. McDonald was eventually demoted for below-standard nursing practices.

Frontline’s “Guidelines on Journalistic Standards and Practices”

Frontline’s Guideline #7 states that “where it may be appropriate to re-enact or stage an event, it must be labeled clearly and unmistakably as such.”

Readers may recall a powerful scene from “The Search for Satan” which showed Shanley seated in a large, crowded church sanctuary as the pastor supposedly told his congregation: “In April of 1989, satanism came out of the closet for all of us to see it in all of its ugliness. The satan worshippers that pose the greatest threat to our society are the secret splinter groups, scores of clandestine groups are meeting right here in our neighborhood and the amount of activity is on the rapid increase…”

Under cross-examination, Shanley testified that she had never attended this church. The scene was not labeled as a re-enactment.

The Guidelines say that producers “will exercise extreme care in checking the accuracy and credibility of all information they receive, especially as it may relate to accusations of wrongdoing.”

During her final day on the witness stand, Shanley testified that she now views her hospital treatment as “worse than it was” and that, at some future time, and she might “testify differently” regarding her hospitalization experiences.
In response, the defense stood to object, “But Ms. Shanley, these defendants are facing prison terms.”

For reasons that remain unexplained, PBS pulled “The Search for Satan” from its mail order list.

The ISSD Responds to “The Search for Satan”

The International Society for the Study of Dissociation (ISSD) issued a statement in December 1995 in response to the film’s characterization of the diagnosis and treatment of MPD (now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID]).

“The majority of people who suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder are not diagnosed impulsively or capriciously, as was implied by this Frontline segment . . . Research has documented that, on average, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder have spent seven years in the mental health system before the diagnosis is recognized and maximally effective treatment can be provided . . . Although some persons with Dissociative Identity Disorder allege that they experienced ritual abuse during childhood, most do not make allegations of this kind, as was implied by this segment of Frontline . . . The ISSD strongly discourages therapists and members of the media from sensationalizing the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder and from publicly appearing with, portraying, or otherwise exploiting individuals who suffer from this painful disorder. We urge the media to educate the public by presenting scientific information on this and all mental illnesses in a balanced and responsible manner.”

Co-producer Ofra Bikel Responds

Producer Bikel posted her response on the WITCHHNT listserve on January 3, 1996.

“I have made a point not to get involved in the arcane arguments among the various therapists, or schools of therapy, regarding my programs “Divided Memories” and “The Search for Satan.” But now that the ISSD official ‘response’ to my last program has appeared on the Internet, looking as if it sprang right out of Alice in Wonderland, I would like to say a few words about it . . . The program “In Search of Satan” [sic] was about two specific cases: two women, their children, and their therapists. The three therapists [Braun, Sachs, Peterson] were named repeatedly, as were their hospitals. . . . If I understand what I read correctly, it is supposedly a response to what the program ‘misleadingly implied’. But the program did not imply anything other than what it reported, and any answer to it must deal with the facts it exposed, before launching into their perceived implications . . . But a lofty declaration of principles and aspirations, cloaked as a damning response to myself and Frontline, while avoiding every single fact the program brought up, seems to me self-serving and cowardly.”

CONCLUSION

Dramatics accounts of satanic ritual abuse and years of “bad therapy” have caught the attention of the media. However, presenting uncorroborated claims as fact and failing to check an interviewee’s credibility cannot be excused on any grounds.

REFERENCES

Crook, L. (1996). Smoke and mirrors. Treating Abuse Today, 5(6) & (6)1, 87-93.

Guidelines on journalistic standards and practices. (1996, February). Frontline. Boston: WGBH.

Smith, M. (1998, October 9). Former patient can’t attribute false memories to therapy. Houston Chronicle. Online at: http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1998_3088693

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©Copyright R. Noblitt 2009. All rights reserved.

In recent days, an interest in the case of Fran and Dan Keller has reemerged and that reemergence has triggered new interest in the outcries of children that resulted in several investigations, trials, convictions, and tragedies throughout the 1990s. I can speak about Fran’s Day Care with some authority.

In 1992, the Travis County prosecutor’s office contacted me for advice as to how they should proceed with a bizarre case involving multiple child victims of sexual and ritual abuse in a day care. The accused perpetrators were the owners-operators of the nursery, Fran and Dan Keller. The day care was situated in a remote area beyond the suburbs of Austin, Texas. At this time, the legal community was reeling from the McMartin Day Care ordeal which was the costliest prosecution in California history up to that time, and had resulted in two hung juries in a seven-year prosecution. The prosecution, wishing to learn from the mistakes of McMartin, wanted advice regarding how to proceed without contaminating the children’s stories, compromising the alleged perpetrators’ rights, and getting to the truth of the children’s outcries.

Some of the parents whose children attended the preschool became suspicious when their children returned home wearing underwear not their own, or with their clothes inside out or with their hair wet. There were always reasonable explanations: the child had an accident and was changed into clothes on hand for that purpose; or the child splashed water on herself when the children were cleaning up; and so forth. However, when one of the children made an outcry, the parents more closely scrutinized the strange behaviors some of the children had started engaging in and the aforementioned episodes, and they took their concerns to the police. The police took the concerns seriously and collected statements and evidence. The grand jury found a basis for indictment. The Kellers responded to the warrant for their arrest by fleeing the state in disguise, obtaining false identifications in their new personas, and attempting to leave the country. They were apprehended in Las Vegas, Nevada and extradited back to Travis County.

It was at this point that I was introduced to the situation. I was in private practice in Dallas, two hundred miles north of Austin and had no knowledge of what was happening at Fran’s Day Care. The prosecutor, Judy Shipway, contacted me for advice on how to deal with the children, their stories, their parents’ reactions, and the impact of ritual abuse allegations on the court. I advised her to focus on the sexual abuse allegations for which there was substantial support and evidence. I expressed my opinion that introducing the topic of ritual abuse would be exploited by the defense as a means of discrediting the children. I also advised Ms. Shipway to make sure that every child had a therapist and that no therapist treat more than one child from Fran’s Day Care. Finally, I advised the prosecutor to request that the children’s parents not communicate with one another until after the trial to avoid inadvertent contamination of their children’s stories and their own interpretations. These suggestions were all implemented.

I was also invited to review the evidence which included drawings and writings produced by Danny Keller; the confession of co-defendant Doug Perry; the testimony of the children. I was able to describe for the prosecution the kinds of abuses ritually practiced by various groups and individuals and explain the psychological consequences of such abuse. I was able to interpret for the prosecutor the children’s stories in the context of what had been learned from other victims including the use of coercion, duplicity, threats, and other means of controlling survivors of such abuse.

Although several children at the day care were thought to have been sexually and ritually traumatized, some of them were so young that they did not yet speak in complete sentences. Some of them were identified by other victims. Three of the children were selected to represent the whole population. These were slightly older children, five and six years old, and they were able to convey their stories most articulately of all the child victims.

As the trial commenced, the prosecution developed an excellent case against the Kellers. I was surprised only by the defense attorneys’ rather blasé approach to their defense of the Kellers, perhaps operating under the assumption that the children would not be believed. In defense of the Kellers, their attorneys did raise the specter of ritual abuse by introducing into evidence the book Sex Abuse Hysteria: The Salem Witch Trials Revisited (Gardner, 1991), which promoted the idea that sexual and ritual abuse allegations by children were projections of their parents (and other adults’) latent pedophilia. It was at this point that I was asked to take the stand as an expert witness and address the topic of ritual abuse and Gardner’s book.

The case ended with the conviction of the Kellers and their sentencing to 48 years in prison each. They are in prison still, any efforts for appeal having failed to date. Shortly after the trial, the magazine, Texas Monthly, published a piece by Gary Cartwright in which he implied that the Kellers were the true victims in this sorry tale. He did me the courtesy of a call to “fact check” his story, particularly ideas attributed to me, except that it was only after the issue had been published.

Recently, the Fran’s Day Care case was dredged up by the Austin Chronicle, an alternative periodical produced locally in Texas. My son sent me the link in an email with the heading, “Dad, you’re in the news again.” Once more, the perspective was one of advocacy for falsely accused, persecuted, prosecuted, and convicted victims of a malicious or inept legal system that places too much trust in the stories children tell. A particular flaw in this story was the story. It was certainly not founded on anything I witnessed during my participation in the case. Evidence was not withheld from the prosecution to my knowledge. The defense was left flat-footed by their own conviction that the children would not be believed. And the advice I offered may have helped to prevent influence or contamination of the children’s testimony. The children’s stories were credible – Fran and Dan Keller’s defense was not. End of story? Probably not. I doubt that we have heard the last of Fran and Dan or of their day care or of their victims.

Interestingly enough, the Austin Chronicle article, Believing the Children, ended with a reference to one of the child victims, Veejay Staelin, a now 21-year old. Although he declined to be interviewed for the story, he re-asserted that he had been abused by Fran and Dan Keller.

Day Care and Child Abuse Cases

http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/day-care-and-child-abuse-cases/

This page has information on the McMartin Preschool Case, Michelle  Remembers, the Fells Acres – Amirault Case,the Wenatchee, Washington Case, the  Dale Akiki Case, the Glendale Montessori – Toward case and the Little Rascals  Day Care Center case.

Sexual Abuse in Day Care: A National Study – Executive Summary – March 1988 – Finklehor, Williams, Burns, Kalinowski “The study identified 270 “cases” of sexual abuse in day care meaning 270 facilities where substantiated abuse had occurred involving a total of 1639 victimized children….This yielded an estimate of 500 to 550 reported and substantiated cases and 2500 victims for the three-year period. Although this is a large number, it must be put in the context of 229,000 day care facilities nationwide service seven million children….allegations of ritual abuse (”the invocation of religious, magical or supernatural symbols of activities”) occurred in 13% of the cases.” The authors divided these cases into “true cult-based ritual,” pseudo-ritualism” with a primary goal of sexual gratification and ritual being used to intimidate the children from disclosing and “psychopathological ritualism” the activities being “primarily the expression of an individuals obsessional or delusional system.” http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1c/82/61.pdf

describes crimes - Reporter’s Notebook: 6 Months of California Case By Robert Lindsey Published: February 13, 1985 “Prosecutors say they intend to present as witnesses 41 former pupils of the school, almost all of whom, physicians testified at the hearing, showed physical evidence of having been sexually abused. The second of the children to testify at the hearing, a 10-year-old boy who attended the McMartin Preschool almost five years ago, has now been on the witness stand for nine days, including eight days under intense cross examination by defense lawyers who have been trying to find inconsistencies in his story. So far, often under rapid-fire questioning that might wither some adult witnesses, the child has stuck to his story with only minor contradictions. He described being sodomized or otherwise sexually molested by all seven of the defendants and asserted that children had been made to pose for pornographic pictures. The 10-year-old boy repeated under cross examination an account of how he and other children were taken to a church where he said adults wearing masks and black robes danced and moaned while Mr. Buckey went to the altar and killed pet rabbits, turtles and birds and threatened to kill the children’s parents the same way if the children told of the alleged abuse. http://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/13/us/reporter-s-notebook-6-months-of-california-case.html

describes crimes – Boy, 7, Is Witness in California Child Abuse Case by Robert Lindsey January 23, 1985 A 7-year- old boy testified today that he had played ”naked games” at the Virginia McMartin Preschool near here and that in at least one of the games teachers at the school had touched his genital organs….Prosecutors have asserted that more than 100 children were abused at the school in the past decade. All the defendants have denied the charges, which date from 1978….After pointing out his former teachers in the courtroom, the boy said he had played ”naked games” at the school. Describing a game called ”Cowboys and Indians” under questioning by Glenn Stevens, a deputy district attorney, the boy said the children playing the game were taken into a room. ”They’d put us in jail; they’d touch us in jail,” he said. ”How did the teachers touch you?” Mr. Stevens asked. ”In the penis,” the boy replied….While Mr. Stevens appeared satisfied with the answers regarding the first game the child mentioned, he was less successful when questioning the child about two other games, called ”the Alligator Game” and ”Naked Movie Star.” In both games, the boy said, children were asked by other children to remove their clothes, but he seemed to draw a blank whenever he was asked to give details. ”I don’t remember,” the boy said repeatedly. The first grade pupil also testified that Mr. Buckey had cut the ears off rabbits and injured other pets in front of the children and had threatened to harm their parents if they told anyone about the alleged sexual molestation. http://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/23/us/boy-7-is-witness-in-california-child-abuse-case.html

describes crimes of abuse

Satanism Linked To Scores of U.S. Child Abuse Cases Edward W. Lempinen. San Francisco Chronicle 11/5/87 p. A1 Satanism and cult rituals have been linked to scores of child-molestation cases nationwide in the past five years, including dozens in California. Children as young as 2 and 3 years old have come forward with harrowing tales of drinking blood, animal sacrifices and sexual abuse as part of rituals, according to law enforcement investigators, child abuse experts and parents. Others have even talked of cannibalism and ritual sacrifice of children. After hearing similar tales over and over from people across the country, many investigators and child abuse experts now have come to believe in the unbelievable….In San Francisco, police confirmed last week that they are investigating reports by a 3-year-old girl who claimed that she was taken from a day-care center at the Presidio Army base and driven to a home where she was molested by two men in costumes. Police suspect that the home was the headquarters of the Temple of Set, a Nazi-Satanic group, and they have listed the temple’s high priest as a possible suspect. No arrests have been made. Investigators and parents have declined to give details of the cases of at least 58 children who attended the Presidio Child Development Center, fearing that they might jeopardize the prosecution of a former day-care worker. But in other cases across the nation, experts say there is striking evidence of ritualized sexual abuse that recurs in case after case: — At West Point, N.Y., Army families have pressed an investigation into widespread child abuse at a military day-care center in 1983 and 1984….But an increasingly influential group of legal, psychological and medical experts say they are beginning to amass considerable testimony and circumstantial evidence of cult and Satanic abuse nationwide – and dating back four generations or more. Sandi Gallant, an intelligence officer with the San Francisco police and one of the nation’s most influential experts on cults, cautions that many cases are proving unfounded. But she says that there have been 60 to 70 “solid” cases of ritual sexual abuse in the past few years nationwide. She and others have heard hundreds of children and adult – people who have never met and who live a continent apart – tell stories that are fundamentally the same. “Independently, the victims are describing incredibly similar circumstances,” said Catherine Gould, a clinical psychologist in the Los Angeles district of Encino who has counseled dozens of children who claim they were molested in rituals. http://ezproxy.sfpl.org/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=65772423&Fmt=3&clientId=3266&RQT=309&VName=PQD

verification of the accuracy of the book “Michelle Remembers“by Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, MD from the book “A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER” pages xi – xiii”

“Dr. Pazder’s credentials are impressive. He obtained his M.D. from the University of Alberta in 1961; his diploma in tropical medicine from the University Liverpool in 1962; and in 1968, his specialist certificate in psychiatry and his diploma in psychological medicine from McGill University. In 1971, he was made a fellow of Canada’s Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a member of three Canadian professional associations and of the American Psychiatric Association as well. He practiced medicine in West Africa and has participated in medical task forces and health organizations. He has been chairman of the Mental Health Committee of the Health Planning Council for British Columbia. A member of the staff of two hospitals in Victoria, British Columbia -the Royal Jubilee and the Victoria General-he is in private practice with a group of five psychiatrists. His professional papers include a study of the long-term effects of stress upon concentration-camp victims.

Two experienced interviewers journeyed to Victoria and talked to Dr. Pazder’s colleagues, to the priests and the bishop who became involved in the case, to doctors who treated Michelle Smith when she was a child, to relatives and friends. From local newspaper, clergy, and police sources they learned that reports of Satanism in Victoria are not infrequent and that Satanism has apparently existed there for many years. Satanism in Western Canada flourished in many areas with activities far more ominous than some of the innocuous groups now found in parts of the United States who claim some connection with Satanism.

The source material was scrutinized. The many thousands of pages of transcript of the tape recordings that Dr. Pazder and Michelle Smith made of their psychiatric sessions were read and digested; they became the basis of this book. The tapes themselves were listened to in good measure, and the videotapes made of some of his sessions were viewed. Both the audio and video are powerfully convincing. It is nearly unthinkable that the protracted agony they record could have been fabricated.”

Thomas B. Congdon, Jr New York April 22, 1980

Fells Acres – Amirault Case

http://web.archive.org/web/20010719201703/http://www.vocal-nasvo.org /hardoon.htm

Letters to the Editor: The Real Darkness Is Child Abuse WALL STREET JOURNAL (J) 02/24/95

excerpts:

As the chief prosecutor of both of the Amirault cases I am writing to prevent the public from being misled into believing that an injustice occurred as Dorothy Rabinowitz alleges in her Jan. 30 editorial-page piece “A Darkness in Massachusetts.”

Her suggestion that the convictions were based on “some of the most fantastic claims ever presented” presumptuously ignores the reality of the cases. The three Amiraults — Gerald, Violet and Cheryl – were convicted after two trials before different judges and juries almost one year apart. They were represented by able and well-known defense counsel. The convictions were upheld after review by state and federal appellate courts. The McMartin case in California was the result of a botched legal system and Kelly Michaels’s conviction was overturned because of legal errors. Contrary to Ms. Rabinowitz’s implication, the Amirault convictions were neither of these.

Studies show, as did testimony from a nationally recognized pediatric gynecologist, that most sexually molested young children have absolutely normal physical examinations. However, in Amirault, the majority of the female children who testified had some relevant physical findings, as did several female children involved in the investigation who did not participate in the trial. The findings included labial adhesions and hymenal scarring of the sort present in avery small percentage of non-sexually abused children.

Ms. Rabinowitz’s article is a superficial, one-sided look at a case handled extensively and carefully by the legal system. The victims and their families in these cases have been irrevocably harmed by what was done to them by the Amiraults. Every argument raised by Ms. Rabinowitz was ably presented by the defense at the trials. The juries, by their verdicts, rejected these arguments. Justice was done.

see for actual case evidence http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/category/commonwealth-vs-amirault/

http://abusearticles.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/common -vs-amirault-424-mass-618-page-624.jpg

http://abusearticles.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/common-vs-amirault-424-mass-618-page-622.jpg

“All nine children testified in a broadly consistent way…The children testified to numerous instances of sexual abuse. Some of the children testified that they were photographed during this abuse, describing a big camera with wires, a red button, and pictures which came out of the camera. The children testified that the defendant threatened them and told them that their families would be harmed if they told anyone about the abuse….The Commonwealth also presented a pediatric gynecologist and pediatrician who examined five of the girls who testified…She made findings consistent with abuse in four of the girls.”

http://pqasb.pqarchive r.com/bostonherald/access/77139259.html?dids=77139259:77139259&FMT=ABS& ;FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Aug+7%2C+2001&author=Peter+Gelzinis&pub=Boston+H erald&edition=&startpage=002&desc=Amirault%27s+accusers+reveal+the ir+faces%2C+and+their+pain

Amirault’s accusers reveal their faces, and their pain Boston Herald – Boston, Mass. – Peter Gelzinis – Aug 7, 2001

http://web.archive.org/web/2001080701133 0/http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010802/us/preschool_abuse_3.html

Mass. Victims Fight Commutation Plea By Leslie Miller, Associated Press Writer

excerpts:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – Victims in the Fells Acres child abuse case broke down Thursday as they described their pain publicly for the first time in hopes of keeping the last person convicted in the case behind bars. Victims urged her to keep Amirault in prison. “During counseling meetings as a child, I would speak of a tall man touching me and taking pictures of me,” Phaedra Hopkins, 20, said at an emotional news conference. “So many times, Mr. Amirault hovered over me, touched me and hurt me and committed many disgusting acts of abuse.” Those children, now adults, stood by their testimony Thursday.

“This family raped me, molested me and totally ruined my life,’’said Jennifer Bennett, who was 3 1/2 years old when she started at Fells Acres. “We weren’t coaxed. We weren’t lying. We’re telling the truth and we always will,” said Bennett, 22. “I was there. None of you were there. We weren’t coaxed, nor were we ever ever ever brainwashed.”Brian Martinello, 21, said he was sexually abused by Amirault. His mother, Barbara Standke, claims her son came home from the day care with sores on his genitals and other people’s underwear. “I think it’s an absolute disgrace to let anyone out of prison for such a disgusting crime,” Martinello said.

Paul Ingram – Thurston County Washington Case

Seattle Post-Intelligencer – June 8, 1996 – News, Pg. B1 – Son of Deputy Says He Was Sexually Abused ; Dramatic Report in Testimony to Clemency Panel -: Rachel Zimmerman P-I Capitol Bureau – Olympia

excerpts:

The son of Paul Ingram, a former Thurston County deputy sheriff who confessed to raping his daughters during nightmarish satanic rituals but later recanted, said for the first time yesterday that he was physically and sexually abused by his father for eight years. Chad Ingram, 27, told the state Pardons and Clemency Board that his father, who is serving 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to six counts of third-degree rape – crimes he now says never happened – said he was abused by his father from ages 4 to 12. “He would put himself on top of me and I would perform oral sex on him,” Chad Ingram said.

Thurston County Sheriff Gary Edwards, though the case never went to trial, it was subject to intense judicial scrutiny, “all the way up to the Ninth Circuit.” Edwards added, “This case was not perfect but it had complete judicial review. “Paul Ingram did commit these crimes; he plead guilty to these crimes. I have no problem shaving in the morning. I can look myself in the mirror.”

The Facade of Scientific Documentation: A Case Study of Richard Ofshe’s Analysis of the Paul Ingram Case” by Karen Olio and William Cornell. APA’s journal “Psychology, Public Policy, and Law,” (1998, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1182-1197) “The case of Paul Ingram, a man who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing his daughters, has received widespread media attention. Richard Ofshe (1992, 1994) set forth a narrative of the case which included his account of an experiment to test the veracity of Ingram’s confessions and concluded that the inadvertent use of hypnosis during Ingram’s interrogation resulted in the creation of pseudomemories that convinced Ingram of his guilt. On the basis of an examination of the original source documents, the authors discusses the errors of fact, methodological flaws, and confounding factors in Ofshe’s rendering of this case of alleged child abuse. They also cite examples of the extent to which Ofshe’s imperfect narrative of this case and pseudoscientific conclusions have been uncritically accepted and repeated in the literature…”

Harvard Society for Law & Public Policy, Inc. Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy – Spring, 1999 – 22 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 523 The Guilty and the “Innocent”: an Examination of Alleged Cases of Wrongful Conviction from False Confessions by Paul G. Cassell -”According to the authors (Leo and Ofsche), in twenty-nine of these cases the false confession resulted in the wrongful conviction of an innocent person.” “examines nine of these twenty-nine cases in detail. Based on review of original trial court records and other similar sources, the part concludes that each of these nine persons were, in all likelihood, entirely guilty of the crimes charged against them.””Leo and Ofshe rely in large measure on secondary sources for the descriptions of the evidence against the defendants in their collection….For many cases, court records are available only in the local courthouses where the trial took place, while media accounts are often readily accessible in computerized databases. Relying on secondary sources, however, poses the risk of inaccurate recounting of the evidence. Examining primary sources for the cases in Leo and Ofshe’s collection reveals that this is a very real problem.” “The problems with the subjective determination of “innocence” in the Leo-Ofshe collection, like similar problems elsewhere, suggests that reliance on second-hand sources combined with understandable enthusiasm for the enterprise of discovering miscarriages may produce more such cases than really exist.” “Only a relative handful of Leo and Ofshe’s cases would satisfy the criterion of undisputed wrongful conviction.” http://www.kspope.com/memory/facade1a.php

Wenatchee, Washington Case

http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/category/articles-on-wenatchee/

information from articles :

At the trial, one girl showed “definite medical signs of sexual abuse” while “it could not be ruled out for two others.

In 1996, a consultant, retired Bellevue Police Chief D.P. Van Blaricom, hired by a city insurer who looked into how the Wenatchee police ran the child abuse investigations stated that the cases were handled properly. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation also found that there was no evidence of civil rights violations.

Cops Win Wash. State Sex Ring Case – June 29, 1998 – Aviva L. Brandt AP Online – Seattle “A jury on Monday rejected claims of police misconduct brought by four people who say they were falsely accused of child rape and molestation. After deliberating for more than five days, the King County Superior Court panel decided that the central Washington town of Wenatchee, the town’s police officials and three members of the Douglas County sheriff’s department did not violate the civil rights of the four, who said they were falsely accused in 1994-95. Douglas County Sheriff Dan LaRoche said the verdict allows police to keep investigating sex abuse and molestation cases without fear of lawsuits.

Debate Rages Over Wenatchee Sex-Ring Allegations – November 6, 1995- Aviva L. Brandt, Associated Press Writer – Wenatchee, Wash.

Excerpts:

A line divides this town. On one side are those who believe dozens of children were raped and molested over seven years by adults in two loosely organized sex rings. On the other are those who assert a rogue cop and obsessed social workers created a whirlpool of sexual hysteria- coaxing children into accusations and bullying bewildered, poorly educated adults into confessions. Gov. Mike Lowry, petitioned by critics who believe the case is a witch hunt, has asked for a Justice Department review and is awaiting a decision from U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Authorities say as many as 50 children were forced to have sex with adults since 1988 – sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. In the last year, 28 adults have been charged with child rape and sexual abuse. Five have been convicted, 10 have pleaded guilty.

“Every female victim had physical evidence of sexual abuse and the majority of the males did,” Smith said. “Clearly it’s pretty good evidence to show that this is occurring.”

Douglas County Prosecutor Steve Clem sounded frustrated when asked about allegations that his office hasn’t bothered to look for the truth. “The defense attorneys are using what I’m sure … some day in the future will be called the O.J. defense, where they sling mud, make wild accusations and see conspiracies all around them,” he said.” There’s physical evidence consistent with the stories they (the children) tell. There’s more than one person talking about the very same things going on,” said Tim Abbey, a regional supervisor with the state Child Protective Services. “And there are a lot of confessions, and many times they’re confessing to more than the kids said happened.”

Dale Akiki Case

describes crimes

Ex-School Volunteer Acquitted of Child Abuse Charges Verdict: After deliberating for just seven hours, jury finds Dale Akiki not guilty on all 35 counts. Trial was longest in San Diego’s history. Los Angeles Times – Los Angeles, Calif. – Michael Granberry – Nov 20, 1993
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/60254778.html?dids=60254778:6025 4778&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Nov+20%2C+1993& author=MICHAEL+GRANBERRY&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&edi tion=&startpage=29&desc=Ex-School+Volunteer+Acquitted+of+Child+Abuse+C harges+Verdict%3A+After+deliberating+for+just+seven+hours%2C+jury+finds+Dale+A kiki+not+guilty+on+all+35+counts.+Trial+was+longest+in+San+Diego%27s+history

A Superior Court jury concluded a 7 1/2-month trial Friday by acquitting a former nursery school volunteer of 35 counts of child abuse and kidnapping that had kept him jailed without bail for 2 1/2 years….

Nearly 170 witnesses testified during Akiki’s trial-the longest in San Diego history-which ended after only seven hours of jury deliberation….

Several on the (jury) panel sided with Akiki’s attorneys, public defenders Kathleen Coyne and Susan Clemens, who tried to show that Akiki’s alleged victims-nine boys and girls between the ages of 3 and 5-had been systematically brainwashed by parents and therapists.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Avery, the lead prosecutor, disputed such claims.

“The whole idea of contamination and suggestibility just does not account for the major behavior changes that occurred (in the children) while they were in Dale Akiki’s (nursery school) class,” she said, referring to such incidents as bed-wetting and nightmares.

Witnesses accused Akiki of sexually molesting and terrorizing children at Faith Chapel charismatic church in Spring Valley by hanging them upside-down from a chandelier, dunking them in toilets and making them drink the blood of animals in ritualistic ceremonies.

Molestation Hearing Continues Next Week – Los Angeles Times – February 8, 1992 – San Diego County Edition

.…Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Avery has called some of the parents to testify about behavioral changes they observed in the children. “There were drastic changes observed,” Avery said. Defense attorney Kate Coyne, however, maintains that Akiki has been falsely accused by parents who did not like his physical appearance.

Judge Rejects Bail for Suspect In Molestations at Preschool – Los Angeles Times – May 25, 1991 Amy Wallace; Times Staff Writer

….But Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Avery, the prosecutor, said that, in addition to the grand jury testimony of seven children who attended the Faith Chapel in Casa de Oro, her case will rely on behavioral symptoms observed by parents months before any allegations of abuse were raised.

One mother said her daughter was so terrified of having her head near water that it was impossible to wash her hair, Avery said. Grand jury testimony later revealed that at least one child had had her head dunked in a toilet, she said.

Testimony was also heard that a child became hysterical when he was taken to a hospital to get stitches, apparently because he had a flashback of “the defendant holding him down and hurting him,” Avery said. The indictment filed against Akiki said he inflicted injuries on children with a needle.

Avery maintained that some of the children remain so traumatized by Akiki’s treatment that they have attempted suicide–one by running in front of a car, another with a knife.

Other Suspects Added to Child Sex Abuse Probe - Los Angeles Times – May 15, 1991 – Amy Wallace; Times Staff Writer

As many as three former child care workers at Faith Chapel in Spring Valley are suspected of molesting and abusing preschoolers over a 15-month period ending in August, 1989, a San Diego County prosecutor said Tuesday.

Speaking after the arraignment of Dale Anthony Akiki, a former church volunteer who was indicted last week on 50 felony counts of child molestation and related charges, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Avery said two other former child care workers are being investigated….

According to the 13-page indictment, which a grand jury returned after hearing live televised testimony from seven of the children, Akiki abused them sexually and physically, at times using a bottle top, a toy, a glass, a stick and a needle.

Church Volunteer Indicted in Molestations – Los Angeles Times – May 14, 1991 – Amy Wallace; Alan Abrahamson; Times Staff Writers

….Soon, Avery said, a couple of parents noticed that their children were exhibiting similar “unusual” and “regressive” behavior. The children had not yet said they were abused, Avery said, but the parents observed a pattern.

“In thinking it over, they realized the one thing the children had in common was they went to the same church,” she said.

The church asked a licensed social worker to assess whether there was reasonable suspicion of abuse and, after talking to a few families, he reported the case to the authorities.

Avery began investigating in February, 1990. Since then, she said, the district attorney’s office has kept Akiki under periodic surveillance, “to make sure he was not working with children during the week or involved with child care in any way.”

Avery said her case is strengthened by the fact that it relies on the children’s behavior as well as their testimony. “It will focus on behavior that was observed prior to the initial disclosure” of the alleged abuse, she said. “So there cannot be a contamination issue regarding behavior that occurred prior to anyone ever mentioning this to the children.”

Unlike other child molestation cases that rely largely on the testimony of the victims, the Akiki case is “one which can be cleanly and coherently presented to a jury for their determination,” said Steve Casey, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.

Glendale Montessori – Toward case
describes crimes

Headmaster’s evil lives on in 20-year-old abuse case By Jill Taylor Palm Beach Post Staff Writer 3/1/08 Stuart – Twenty years ago today, on a quiet street in a guard-gated Palm City community, investigators snapped handcuffs onto the wrists of a respected Montessori school headmaster and delivered a message the people of Martin County did not want to hear. Little children, lots of little children, were raped and defiled in unspeakable ways by a man some of the smartest and richest people in the community had trusted to care for their sons and daughters….Hours later, Toward’s office manager, Brenda Williams, turned herself in at the Martin County jail to answer similar charges. Four months later, Toward was charged with molesting and kidnapping five more preschool boys, and Williams was charged in four of those cases. Investigators later learned of up to 60 victims, most ages 2 to 5….Toward, now 77, pleaded guilty to molesting or kidnapping the six boys and was sentenced to 27 years in prison. He was released from his prison term on probation after 12 years, but has remained in custody under the state’s Jimmy Ryce Act, which allows confinement of sex offenders deemed a continuing danger to the community. Toward is challenging his commitment and maintains his innocence, saying his plea was only to avoid a harsher sentence. No date has been scheduled for a civil trial on the issue. He did not respond to a request for an interview. Part of Toward’s plea deal prevented prosecutors from filing more charges or arresting others they thought were involved when dozens more victims came forward later….”We found there were literally dozens of kids who were affected by this guy for a long time,” Colton said. “He spent his life manipulating people. He convinced people they could trust him with their children.” Ralicki expects she will be called to testify at an upcoming Jimmy Ryce hearing. She says she has no doubt that Toward still poses a threat to children. She can never forget what he did to the 20 or so children she treated….Williams pleaded no contest to sex and attempted kidnapping charges involving five boys, and was released from prison in 1993 after serving five years of a 10-year sentence. She could not be reached for comment, but is listed in records as owning a home in Vero Beach….
The psychotherapist Jeanne Ralicki, who treated many of the victims stated “There’s this whole underbelly of evil here that just oozes…Who wants to think that that exists in the world?”
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/

Little Rascals Day Care Center case
(describes crimes)

Closing Arguments in Child-Abuse Trial By Ronald Smothers, 3/24/1992 New York Times – Calling the operator of a day-care center who is the defendant in a child sex-abuse case an “evil, evil man,” the prosecution in the eight-month-long case began closing arguments today, painstakingly recalling children’s testimony that jurors had not heard since September…. Mr. Kelly, 43 years old, is facing 100 charges of sexually abusing a dozen children in 1988 and 1989 at the Little Rascals Day Care Center in Edenton, N. C., 60 miles east of here. Originally there were 248 charges involving 22 children, but the prosecution has withdrawn many charges while Judge D. Marsh McLelland of Pitt County Superior Court has dismissed others. Six Others Charged – Still, the case remains one of the largest child sex-abuse cases in the nation’s history in terms of number of charges and alleged victims. The case also involves charges against Mr. Kelly’s wife, Elizabeth, three adult employees of the center and two other adults. All have been accused of fondling, raping and sodomizing the children at the center….Testifying on his own behalf in January, Mr. Kelly said he never touched any of the children in a sexual way….Using 8-by-10-inch color photographs of each of the dozen children who testified, Mrs. Lamb recounted their own childish words in testifying about what “Mr. Bob” did to them. The words, which were children’s euphemisms for sex organs and body parts, seemed incongruous coming from the adult prosecutor, but with repetition even that incongruity served to highlight the horror of the allegations. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/24/us/closing-arguments-in-child-abuse-trial.html

Man convicted in N.C. child sex abuse case M. Mayfield 4/23/92 USA TODAY In April 1992, “Robert Kelly Jr. was convicted of 99 of 100 counts of rape and related crimes against children.” One of the mothers of the 12 children that testified against Kelly stated that she felt “overwhelming relief.” The six other defendants, including Kelly’s wife, would face trials later. The jury believed the children on the witness stand. One juror stated “the children were convincing.” Kelly and his supporters believed he was innocent. He was sentenced to 12 consecutive life terms in prison. The trial “included 83 prosecution witnesses and 60 defense witnesses.” The children had testified that Kelly had forced them to have different types of sex. The parents testified that the children exhibited abnormal behavior. “Twelve children, between the ages of 4 and 7, testified, and the results of physical and psychological tests of them were presented as evidence.”

Child Abuse Conviction in Day Care Case; N.C. Man Was Subject of Sympathetic Documentary – The Washington Post – April 23, 1992- Megan Rosenfeld ” North Carolina’s longest and most expensive trial came to a close yesterday with the conviction of former child-care center operator Robert Kelly on 99 of 100 charges of sexually abusing 12 children. Kelly’s wife, Betsy, and five other people are also charged with abusing children at the Little Rascals Day Care Center, but have yet to stand trial. Kelly’s trial, which started in August, included 83 prosecution witnesses and 60 defense witnesses. In the end, juror Dennis Ray told the Associated Press, “the children were convincing.” Twelve children, between the ages of 4 and 7, testified, and the results of physical and psychological tests of them were presented as evidence.” http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1002268.html

Day-Care Owner Is Convicted of Child Molesting 4/23/92 The longest and costliest criminal trial ever held in North Carolina ended today when the owner of a day-care center was convicted on 99 of 100 charges of sexually abusing 12 children there. After 14 days of deliberating, a Pitt County Superior Court jury found the 44-year-old defendant, Robert F. Kelly Jr., guilty of 4 counts of rape, 46 of taking indecent liberties, 36 of first-degree sexual offense and 13 crimes against nature. He was acquitted only of a single charge of taking indecent liberties with one of the 12 children….one juror, Dennis Ray, did speak to reporters, saying the panel had rejected the defense’s assertion of widespread hysteria and had believed the children. “The children were convincing,” Mr. Ray said. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/23/us/day-care-owner-is-convicted-of-child-molesting.html

Six months after Betsy’s release, the Appellate Court of North Carolina overturned the convictions of both Robert Kelly and Dawn Wilson, stating that there were legal errors by the prosecution. On May 23, 1997, the prosecution dropped all charges related to the Little Rascals case against the two.

Fran’s Day Care Case – Randy Noblitt, PhD  http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/frans-day-care/

Baran case

Baran received a fair trial By William W. Simons – Pittsfield 9/13/03 “I have spent my professional life (going on 50 years) as a prosecutor, defense lawyer and Superior Court judge….I was the presiding judge in the Superior Court trial of Bernard Baran that took place in Pittsfield, extending for 10 days in January 1985. Baran was charged with rape and indecent assault and battery on six children while he was a child-care worker in a Pittsfield day care center. He was originally represented by the Public Defender’s Office but chose to obtain private counsel, Leonard Conway of Westfield. After his conviction on these cases involving five of the children, an appeal was taken on Baran’s behalf by Attorney David O. Burbank of Pittsfield, also an experienced and able trial and appellate counsel. The appeal was decided on March 27, 1986, affirming the convictions. Mr. Burbank sought further appellate review and that application was denied by the Supreme Judicial Court on May 30, 1986….The concern that young victims are prone to suggestibility pales in comparison to the suggestibility of grown and experienced newspapermen. A more serious injury is that distorted claims of injustice that seek freedom for Baran are not without consequences for society and this community, should they succeed.” http://www.berkshireeagle.com/

also see: http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/ctf/bib.html

Halsey case

The Legend of Robert Halsey – Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, v9 n3-4 p37-52 2001 – Cheit, Ross E. Abstract: A brief narrative description of the journal article, document, or resource. Examines the criminal conviction of Robert Halsey for sexually abusing two young boys on his school-van route near Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Based on a comprehensive examination of the trial transcript, suggests that the credulous acceptance of the “false conviction” legend about Robert Halsey provides a case study in the techniques and tactics used to minimize and deny sexual abuse. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ672707&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ672707

False-conviction chic in the Berkshires
Robert Halsey was convicted in 1993 of sexually abusing two boys on his school van route in Lanesboro, Mass. There was a mountain of evidence against him, and he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Now a growing movement is trying to suggest that Halsey was unjustly convicted. A country that cherishes the presumption of innocence still needs to learn something about the presumption of guilt. There is a dark side to the growing movement on behalf of persons falsely convicted by the criminal justice system: phony false-conviction claims. There is just such a phony claim currently brewing in the Berkshires….As long-time residents of the Berkshires will remember, Robert Halsey was convicted in 1993 of sexually abusing two boys on his school van route in Lanesboro, Mass. There was a mountain of evidence against him. The two boys…had clear medical signs of the abuse. Their disclosures were extremely detailed and they were written up well before the boys were involved in any repeat interviews, therapy sessions or other measures which are commonly cited as sources of “child suggestibility.”….Various parts of the boys’ testimony were corroborated by three other children, two of whom had moved to Florida nine months before Halsey was arrested.
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2002-03/02-009.html

The Legend of Robert Halsey: A cautionary tale about the dangers of “false-conviction chic”
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Taubman_Center/Manning/

chapter in book : A Tale of Two Communities” by Jane McCord

Do Children Lie? Not About This – Los Angeles Times – Los Angeles, Calif. Author: Tavris, Carol Date: Jan 19, 1990 Start Page: B7 Abstract (Document Summary) Carol Tavris says that children who are sexually abused almost always tell the truth about what has happened to them. Tavris comments on the McMartin Pre-School sexual molestation trial and says that she believes that the children in that trial were molested.

The Battle and the Backlash: The Child Sexual Abuse War by David Hechler (1988) Lexington Books ISBN 0-669-14097-x “What happened at the McMartin Preschool will be debated for a long time. Few aspects of the case are clear, but it requires no strain of credulity to believe that the children could have been abused at the facility without being diagnosed by a pediatrician.”

Paul and Shirley Eberle: A Strange Pair of Experts

by Maria Laurina

Paul and Shirley Eberle wrote The Politics of Child Abuse, a book that accuses mothers, mental health professionals, and prosecutors of feeding children stories about sexual abuse. Since the book was published by Lyle Stuart in l986, the Eberles have been cited as experts in sexual abuse trials. They were featured speakers at a conference of the Victims of Child Abuse Laws, a group formed to protect accused parents.

What is startling about the Eberles’ reputation as ground-breaking experts in the field is that their dubious credentials have not been widely challenged. Paul and Shirley Eberle edit a soft-core magazine in California called the L.A. Star that contains a mixture of nude photos, celebrity gossip, telephone sex ads, and promos for The Politics of Child Abuse.

In the 1970′s, however, the Eberles were also publishing hard-core pornography. Their publication, Finger, depicted scenes of bondage, S & M, and sexual activities involving urination and defecation. A young girl portrayed with a wide smile on her face sits on top of a man whose penis is inside of her; a woman has oral sex with a young boy in a drawing entitled “Memories of My Boyhood.”

The Eberles were featured nude on one cover holding two life-size blow up dolls names “Love Girl” and “Play Guy.” No dates appear on the issues and the Eberles rarely attach their names, referring to themselves as “The L.A. Star Family.”

The Eberles were the distributors of Finger and several other underground magazines, says Donald Smith, a sergeant with the obscenity section of the Los Angeles Police Department’s vice division who followed the couple for years. LAPD was never able to prosecute for child pornography: “There were a lot of photos of people who looked like they were under age but we could never prove it.” The pictures of young children in Finger are illustrations, and child pornography laws were less rigid a decade ago than they are today.

“Sexpot at Five,” “My First Rape, She Was Only Thirteen,” and “What Happens When Niggers Adopt White Children” are some of the articles that appeared in Finger. One letter states: “I think it’s really great that your mags have the courage to print articles & pixs [sic] on child sex…Too bad I didn’t hear from more women who are into child sex…Since I’m single I’m not getting it on with my children, but I know of a few families that are. If I were married & my wife & kids approved–I’d be having sex with my daughters.”

Another entry reads: “I’m a pedophile & I think its [sic] great a man is having sex with his daughter!…Since I didn’t get Finger #3, I didn’t get to see the stories & pics of family sex. Would like to see pics of nude girls making it with their daddy, but realize its too risky to print.”

Lyle Stuart plans to print the Eberles’ forthcoming book on the McMartins preschool trial. Carole Stuart, the publisher, describes the Eberles as “experts in the field,” and family friends “for years.” Reprinted in the ICONoclast, WINTER 1988 / VOL. 1, NO. 2 with permission from Ms. Magazine (December 1988)

“In August 1982, a mother claimed she noticed blood in her son’s diaper and an irritation around his rectum. A hospital exam confirmed her worst fears her son has been sodomized. Asked who was responsible, the toddler said, “Mr. Ray.” “Mr. Ray” was…a teacher at the McMartin preschool, which the boy had –been attending. Later, when the boy was questioned by local police, he named other children whom he claimed also were present during the sexual abuse.”

“What surprised me as an investigative journalist was that nobody looked beyond the seemingly fanciful nature of the disclosures. Nobody tried to interpret what the disclosures might mean through a child’s frame of reference and perception. Nobody searched for plausible explanation…children talked about…improbable events like jumping out of airplanes and seeing a horse killed. Yet, investigators did not track reports that Raymond Buckey had a friend who ran a special effects studio or that Virginia McMartin’s sister owned a horse ranch.”

Roland Summit is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (Building D-6, 1000 W. Carson St., Torrance, CA 90509). He has been the community psychiatrist to the South Bay area of Los Angeles County since 1966, specializing exclusively in child sexual abuse since 1975. He was assigned the role of county Department of Mental Health Liaison to the community of Manhattan Beach in the wake of the 1983-84 epidemic of preschool abuse allegations.

FALSE ARGUMENTS

The subject of ritual cult abuse of children is so loathsome and provocative that it is at risk of being regarded only in extremes. Those drawn into believing that there is such a thing become fascinated and terrified by its limitless implications while those who remain skeptical seem determined to quash and disqualify any evidence that it might exist. Most of those who believe have been personally touched and emotionally moved by association with alleged victims, while the skeptics enjoy the luxury of analyzing the phenomena in retrospect from a distance that passes for objectivity. Both sides of this divergent drift seem reluctant to acknowledge a possible intermediate reality: that while some aspects of the accounts are patently impossible, there remains an elusive core of sadistic obscenity.

It should be obvious that any possibility of such inconceivable and invisible cruelty must be confronted and understood before we as a people can move ahead to define the real dimensions of human experience and the remarkable complexities of personal and collective psychohistory. Considering the potential benefits of that confrontation-new insight into alienation, despair, rage, violence, dissociation, and the vagaries of memory and of ultimate accountability – it is all the more remarkable and lamentable that scholars are willing to harp at the extremes (worldwide satanic subversion versus therapist-induced hysteria) rather than to delve into the common ground of human perversity and deliberate psychic trauma.

The distractive, polarizing debate is renewed in David Lotto’s opening challenge in this scholarly Journal of Psychohistory (1). Must we start with witches and witch hunts? Should we cancel the message by attacking the character of the messengers? Can we define history by assigning cause and effect to untested post hoc connections?

Dr. Lotto traces the origin of ritual cult abuse survivor stories to 1980, with the patient/therapist collaboration of Michelle Remembers.(2) Such attribution of cause and effect is no less magical than assigning the power of spring time to the first crocus. And how is it relevant that Dr. Pazder divorced his wife and married his former patient, or that the psychologist who “interrogated” Ileana Fuster before her testimony in the Country Walk prosecution had himself been imprisoned for sexual assault of his clients? Such ad hominem examples assign a moral defect to the entire class of professionals who elicit lurid confessions from their clients. The credibility of every informant is similarly trashed by the droning presumption that they are all either infantile, mentally ill, or locked in a folie a deux with misguided therapists.

If post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments are to be honored, and if an author is to be equally empathic with all the players, one might consider that McMartin whistle blower Judy Johnson’s psychotic break and alcoholic toxicity were precipitated by, rather than precipitants of, her desperate concern that she and her not-quite three-yr-old son were victims of unfathomable treachery. Having met Ms. Johnson in February, 1984, I am convinced of the first option. Judy Johnson was quite sane and emotionally contained even as she described the improbable complaints of her child “He doesn’t like to talk about being buried alive or about large animals or that he was sodomized by a lion”. (3) Such complaints were unheard of in 1984, but they made more sense as older, less credulous children in the Netherlands (1987), England (1988) and North Carolina (1989) made quite independent observations that the wild animals had zippers on their costumes.

It is painful even to contemplate the stresses this young mother tried to endure during the succeeding years. She had always been an anomaly among McMartin parents, an outsider without access to the supportive social groups that had patronized the preschool. She was alienated from her husband and increasingly reclusive in a small house with her two children, one a putative victim of a formless conspiracy and the other dying of a brain malignancy. She barricaded herself against the menacing strangers who patrolled her yard. Who knows if they were intimidating conspirators or toxic hallucinations? Her hyperprotective stance toward her children warranted protective service and mental health intervention and she was hospitalized briefly. I did not recognize Judy Johnson the last time I saw her alive, in the summer of l986 she was bloated and somewhat incoherent, visibly damaged.

The extensive criminal investigation and the evidence selected by prosecutors for the McMartin trials had nothing to do with information gained from Judy or her child. Nor did she galvanize parental group hysteria. She lived and died an outsider in Manhattan Beach society. She was fair game for the posthumous recreation as the cause of it all. For the successful theory of defense and in the legacy of two mistrials she became the icon of hysterical misconception, the Chicken Little of a bird-brained gaggle of malicious parents. For those who knew her through those harried years she was the perfect embodiment of a sad truth: the individual who is suspicious enough to uncover a perfectly hidden evil will have to shoulder the blame for the chaos that is bound to follow. (4)

The Miami Country Walk convictions, featured in Dr. Lotto’s argument as a miscarriage of justice, are ripe for attack because they stand in the way of a backlash sweep. The case has remained as the most demonstrably real and potentially understandable of all the ritual prosecutions to date. Investigators found physical evidence, including photographs of unmistakeable fecal fetishism showing Frank Fuster’s wife and child soiled with feces. The crucifix described by the children as the instrument of Fuster’s bloody demonstrations of the rape of Ileana was found under the mattress of their bed. Frank Fuster’s own child described the private, utterly sadistic torture he and Ileana endured apart from the other children in their care. The case was not burdened with allegations of hooded strangers, satanic ceremonies, birth rituals or infant sacrifice; children described the stuff of exorbitant human perversity.

The Country Walk case is unique for the information and testimony gained from a co-defendant, but Ileana’s dramatic turnabout was not the pivotal element for the jury. Ileana decided to testify, at the urging of her attorney and with no plea bargain with prosecutors, only after jurors were reduced to tears in response to viewing the entirety of the videotaped interviews with the children. Earlier, Ileana had shown a slave-like loyalty to her husband. Her deposition just prior to testimony described a dismally recognizable pattern of teenage sexual enslavement: deception, kidnap, rape-marriage, perverse humiliation and torture imposed by her husband before he presented her to his Country Walk neighbors as an adult specialist in child care. When she finally renounced him in the courtroom, she was like a child cringing in terror against all-powerful retaliation.

The skepticism encouraged by the woeful lack of physical evidence in typical multivictim, sadistic sexual abuse cases can be artificially hyped by the double standard applied to victim disclosures: claims of the improbable are logically rejected while retractions are uncritically embraced as definitive. Recollections of unspeakable trauma are said to be distorted by dissociation or implanted by suggestion while denials are literally endorsed. The most misleading aspect of Dr. Lotto’s apparently sophisticated and psychologically enlightened opening article is its adherence to that simple and socially reassuring double standard. He dismisses Ileana’s elaborate and self-jeopardizing description of her as coached and coerced while her continuing selfjustification is advanced as the argument not only for her own innocence but for the exculpation of her codefendant.

Ileana couched her confession within a contradictory assertion of innocence. Such ambivalence and confusion invite psychological considerations beyond a simple truth-or-lie dichotomy. Instead, Dr. Lotto chooses one side of that uncertainty to nullify the judgment of the jury, the parents, and the children. But dissociation cuts both ways; if victims of unspeakable acts cannot accurately own the reality of their experience, can we insist that the accused are perfectly in touch with and accountable for their unspeakable actions?

When I had occasion to talk with Ileana Fuster after her testimony, she was irate in her self-defense, but more telling in the psychological complexity of her dilemma. I had asked her how it was that she had so perfectly protested her innocence, and how she had passed the polygraphs if she had done the things she described. “I didn’t do those things,” she protested,”I couldn’t do things like that. I’m not that kind of person! Frank made me do them.”

Who is to blame for the explosion of strange stories of sexual sadism? How are are we to interpret the quixotic reversals of ambivalent assertions? If we can’t consider some core of truth without physical proof, can we allow contrived “reasonable explanations” to prove everything is false? The reasonable explanations have proliferated in the wake of unreasonable allegations. That response is clearly opportunistic of the status quo, supported by no more relevant or verifiable evidence than the precipitating alarms. A jury found Frank Fuster guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, of incredibly obscene behavior. Investigative reporters, on a demonstrated mission to debunk “satanic panic,” have proclaimed him innocent. (5)

In his conclusion Dr. Lotto discounts the traumatic consequences for innumerable children as he defines Frank Fuster along with those accused in the McMartin trials as “the very real victims, innocent of any wrongdoing, who have suffered traumatic consequences from being caught up in a net of hysterical accusations.”

Who are we to be so sure of anything in the unresolved confusion of ritual allegations? How can we tolerate preemptive conclusions before we have examined the most rudimentary questions? If criminal conviction of defendants is not only irrelevant but prejudicial to the credibility of the complaining witness, what will it take to re-examine the potential reality of these unwelcome complaints?

Would additional material evidence vindicate the merely testimonial proofs already rejected? If Judy Johnson’s concern for underground terror, or the McMartin children’s claims of tunnels under the preschool had solid verification, would that make a difference? The tunnels, were, in fact, found in 1990, only to be met with massive indifference.

THE TUNNELS

Parents and therapists began hearing children’s descriptions of underground activities within months of their initial, more conservative disclosures. Children described tunnels under the floor of the preschool which led to an outside exit under the rabbit hutch, and another underground passage to the neighboring building. They explained they would be loaded into vehicles in the garage of that building for transport to other locations of group ritual. They described also a secret room accessed by the tunnels under the preschool.

As in other cases, such claims proved an embarrassing red herring for investigators. In common with descriptions of murder and pornography, they promise discovery of the tantalizing smoking gun, the concrete evidence that would confirm what might otherwise be dismissed as infantile fantasies. When there are no bodies or blood, or when the photos and videotapes can not be displayed, these “fish that got away” tend to cast doubt on the veracity of the more modest claims, no matter how plausible and recognizable the initial disclosures might have been. Since the elusive fish are also descriptive of the most threatening and grandiose scenarios-cult ritual with human sacrifice, pornographic exhibitions, profiteering in organized crime-they also precipitate an angry rift between believers and skeptics, especially between parents and police. Parents become preoccupied by the terrifying implications of these larger dimensions of victimization while police, trained to avoid speculation in the absence of evidence, view parents as alarmist and irrational in their naive credulity.

Priorities of prosecution further widen the rift. Child molestation is a recognizable crime which can proceed to conviction on the unsupported testimony of its victims. Religious ritual is constitutionally exempt from prejudicial harassment. In the absence of adult informants and incontrovertible evidence of criminal activities, the implications of multiperpetrator conspiracies, occult networks of religious fanatics-even the very existence of an undiscovered class of grotesque criminality-become ridiculous impediments to any hope of conviction. Parents see their children as spiritually mutilated while prosecutors seek refuge in the familiar confines of sexual touching. Lacking support from the institutions of justice, the more inventive parents will pursue their own investigations and develop their own conclusions, increasingly indifferent to the restrictions of conventional logic and restraint. Any information gained through such vigilant research is an embarrassment to the constraints of prosecution.

Such was the course of the McMartin investigation. A small assemblage of the most assertive parents pressured the district attorney to search for the tunnels and to find the off-campus locations where babies were slaughtered. When they met with stonewalling the parents began their own forays in the neighborhood. Children led them to a mortuary/crematory where they claimed to have pummeled dead bodies and watched people burn. Parents were convinced that interior decorating confirmed the identity with details anticipated by children’s descriptions (6)

Prosecutors received such information with resentment and distrust. It was both outside an acceptable chain of evidence and alien to what they could reasonably charge.

In order to force the prosecutor’s hands on the tunnel question, parents commissioned a backhoe one Saturday (March 16, 1985) and began digging in the lot next to the preschool, where children described the burial of sacrificial animals. The district attorney’s office them commissioned a limited archaeological survey of the site. The net effect of that effort was to disclaim any unusual underground activity. Although all of the digging was outside of the building, with no attempt to cut through the concrete slab floor of the preschool itself, the officials declared there were no tunnels on the site.

Although ritual elements were deliberately excluded from prosecution, defense attorneys ridiculed the willingness of therapists and parents to support the bizarre conspiracy theories implied by the children. A boy who had testified for prosecutors only about sexual touching responded to defense cross – examination with a typically grandiose, tough-kid description of physically lifting a body from an open grave. Other child witnesses described satanic weddings in neighborhood churches.

Prosecutors had two choices: Containment or chaos. Either the children experienced only sexual molestation at the hands of defendant employees within the McMartin Preschool itself, and they only imagined the tunnels, or someone had dug an escape route to an unrecognizable underworld of sex and death orgies. Prosecutors took the simple choice and thereby deferred to the skeptics, agreeing that children imagined the strange things-but they really were molested. The jury found the defense explanation more reasonable: a demonstratably crazy woman had initiated a satanic witch hunt which was swept into absurd illusion through leading questions from therapists and hysterical reinforcement by parents eager to put themselves in the limelight of the case of the century.

After more than five years of glaring public exposure and 33 consecutive months of the longest and most expensive trial in history, the verdicts of January 8, 1990 left most parents angry and confused but at least reconciled to a return to private life. The willingness of a few to protest the failure of prosecution on television talk shows exposed them to a peculiar kind of vilification. They were the perfect scapegoats for a small band of investigative journalists out to save the world from superstitious nonsense. The backlash gospel is simple: Those who trumpet the hazards of ritual abuse are the ones responsible for creating it. And they should be punished.

The decision (to retry Raymond Buckey on the undecided counts) came after a period of grotesque agitation by the parents of the supposedly abused McMartin children. They appeared on talk shows, and terrorized Los Angeles Board of County Supervisors into voting 4 to 1 to urge the district attorney to a new trial.

So now the McMartin parents can triumphantly torture poor Ray Buckey again, abetted by the cowards and opportunists in the justice system. But if people can be prosecuted on the words of children, then children should take full responsibility for what they are saying. If a child says he saw Ray Buckey kill a horsewith a baseball bat (which one did claim) and if this charge is disproved (which it was), then the child should be indicted for perjury, with present prohibition against such infant indictment removed.

If a parent abetted the child in this false accusation, then this parent should be indicted for perjury, too. If the court then establishes that parent and child were lying, at least the parent should suffer the consequences. A few well-publicized sentences of imprisonment of parents (along with “therapists” and social workers, it goes without saying) and we would see a speedy end to these disgusting miscarriages of justice. (7)

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT

Despite such pervasive scapegoating and predictable attrition, a few parents remained alert to some hope of vindicating their children. The opportunity came in April, 1990 with permission from the new owner of the preschool to search for the tunnels before he demolished the building and redeveloped the property These soiled but solid citizens managed to find what the district attorney had disclaimed: solid, scientific evidence that someone had not only dug tunnels under the preschool, but also had taken the trouble to try to undo them. The results of this definitive excavation are described in meticulous detail in the 185 page Report of the Archaeological Excavation of the McMartin Preschool Site by E. Gary Stickel, Ph.D., the UCLA archaeologist commissioned to do the study. (8)

My experience of the human background of this technical report adds insight into the difficulty of establishing proof beyond reasonable doubt of improbable claims, especially from a grass roots level of interest. On first gaining permission, parents began digging in the closet (in the northeast corner of classroom #3) described by children as the entrance to a tunnel leading to the secret room (see Figure 1, marked Unit 2). They found flecks of matching paint in the dirt they removed, which could have proved that a shaft had once been open to the closet above but their amateur efforts left open the possibility that those vital markers had merely fallen into the hold during their own excavation.

Such ambiguity led to some dissension among the parents and the burdensome decision to commission a professional, scientific study. From that point, established April 21, 1990, the project was impeded both by a conspicuous absence of funds and a diminishing number of participating parents. The financial and organizational responsibility settled on only one parent, Jackie McGauley, who, not unlike her one-time friend, Judy Johnson, is a single parent of two children, struggling to make ends meet, without traditional ties to other McMartin parental circles. Even the post-traumatic camaraderie that had once defined a larger parental affiliation had long since dissipated into somewhat alienated factions critical of one another for their divergent responses to the experience (9)

This left just one person responsible for soliciting funding for the project itself and the production of the report, with no apparent institution or avenue available for ultimate publication and distribution. Commercial publishers have a ready market for outrageously opinionated books like Paul and Shirley Eberles’ The Abuse of Innocence: The McMartin Preschool Trial. (10) Such revisionist manifestos proclaim a conspiracy of misguided prosecutors, therapists and parents as the sole abusers of the children. Who will pay for a dry, scholarly treatise that only implies that something monstrous really happened, especially if the report is promoted by the last remaining parental zealot? There is no really legitimate institution for rehabilitation of children’s's stifled complaints of mysterious exploitation.

AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD THEM

At least one child had a voice in the archaeological project. Time was running out before the bulldozers would obliterate the site and there seemed to be no trace of the children’s secret room. Joanie (11) 12 years old, was visiting her old preschool with her mother. Dr. Stickel asked her,”Can you tell us where it was that you entered the tunnels and which way you turned?” Joanie gave a meticulous description of every step along the way. Starting from the parents’ dig in the northeast corner of classroom #3, she described being lifted down a hole, turning right, going straight past the roots that brushed your face, turning right again where you were hurried through the long tunnel. “I liked to stop where the pipe was and swing on it. There was a little boy who couldn’t reach the pipe, and sometimes I’d lift him up so he could touch it. But right after that you had to duck down so you wouldn’t hit your head on the cement, then you had to run again to get to the secret room.”

Part of the course Joanie described corresponded to twin anomalies which had been detected earlier by ground penetrating radar. Corresponding openings had been cut in the concrete (Unit 1, classroom 3 and Unit 2, classroom 4, see Figure 1) but nothing unusual had been found. Encouraged now by Joanie’s explicit directions, the archaeologist extended the dimensions of the Unit 1 dig and discovered an interface of contrasting soil. The concrete cutout had matched the side walls of the tunnel so perfectly that the earlier dig had passed right through the filled-in tunnel without ever distinguishing its margins. Now that the profile of contrasting soil was defined the tunnel could be reopened with precision. It proceeded westward beneath a cast iron waste pipe, just as Joanie had described, and then passed under the deep concrete foundation of the wall separating classrooms #3 and #4. At the point where the tunnel passed under the foundation, and only at that point, the concrete had been arched upward and worn smooth, in contrast to the adjacent ragged contours and texture assumed by concrete poured into an earthbottomed trench. Under the classroom to the west the tunnel proceeded into a wide, room-like potential space of contrasting earth fill bearing remnants of timber, plywood and tar paper which appeared to have shored up the ceiling of a “secret” room. All this had been implied for years by numerous children and anticipated on the spot by Joanie.

There was no time to determine the entire parameters of the room-like space, but there was enough excavation to show that it was 6 feet 8 inches high and at least 9 feet in diameter, and that it connected through the predicted transit pattern to a previously discovered tunnel artifact turning to the north and exiting under the foundation of the west wall of the building, where the rabbit hutch used to be. Although this landmark had been a target for the first parental back-hoe expedition and the District Attorney’s archaeological search, and although those previous excavations partially obscured the outer feature, two of the project’s most definitive items were found just inside of the western foundation. One was a tree root that had originally grown across the path of the exit tunnel before being sawed away. The proximal section of that root, still feeding the distant avocado tree, had partially healed and sent out new sprouts where it had been cut some years before. The distal section, isolated at the other side of the exist, was withered and dead.

Beneath the floor of the exit, inside of the vertical plane of the foundation in fill undisturbed by the earlier excavations, a plastic lunch bag was found bearing the date of its distribution; “DISNEY CLASS 82/83,” also printed “c1982 Walt Disney Productions.” Except for some kind of clandestine intrusion, nothing in that location could have been newer than September, 1966, when the foundation was poured.

Besides being different in color, texture and compaction from the surrounding matrix, the dirt which filled the tunnel spaces varied in composition along the length of the tunnel itself, always at odds with the adjacent, indigenous soil. The western extremities of the fill, including the room-like space, were peppered with a kind of trash pit debris: old cans and bottles dating from the twenties through the fifties, as if to establish a provenance antedating the 1966 construction of the preschool building itself.

The most conspicuous and naturally inexplicable items were found placed exactly under the concrete arch between the two classrooms. These were four large containers, two enameled iron pots, a crockery jar, and a cast iron cauldron, arranged together in an upright position, resting not where the floor would have been but halfway up to the ceiling. There was no theoretical explanation for such location except that they were placed deliberately within a pre-existing, half-filled trench or tunnel. If all the artifacts represented random scatter of trash on an earlier dump site, as some skeptics have asserted, there is no justification for their exclusive delineation within a discrete pattern of tunnels or trenches. And if such conspicuous items as the four large containers had been littered on a dump site, they would not have survived clustered, upright and unbroken through the subsequent grading and levelling of the preschool site.

The pattern of tunnels conformed to the architecture of the overlying building but had absolutely no purpose or conformity to expected trenching for foundations or utilities. In fact, the profile of the shallow trench dug to accommodate the waste pipe leading across the main tunnel (Joanie’s reach-up- and-touch pipe) was clearly distinguishable as mechanically dug, showing the sharp angulation characteristic of a backhoe, whereas the tunnels had a rounded floor contour and shovel marks, showing that they had been dug by hand, presumably under the pre-existing concrete. The stainless steel pipe clamps joining an angle of the pipe where it crossed through the tunnel space had a different quality from clamps elsewhere which had remained buried since installation. The other clamps were corroded from years of soil contact, while those crossing the tunnel looked shiny and new.

Other features fell into uncanny, perversely predictable patterns, but scientific documentation was less definitive for lack of time or lacking permission to extend the excavations. There were roots protruding into the fill where Joanie had predicted, along with a linear succession of rotting posts that might have shored that portion of the tunnel (Marked 2 and 3 in Unit 3, Classroom 3, Figure 1)

There was tentative identification of a shaft and horizontal passage at the south-east end of the building, where children described going from the closet to the building next door. A discrete tunnel could be defined on the basis of differential fill and interruption of tree roots, leading under the eastern wall and several feet beyond the property line toward the adjacent triplex building (Figure 1). Owners of the property refused permission for further excavation, so the actual terminus of that tunnel feature remains open to speculation.

On May 29, 1990, I was invited to inspect the excavations. A district attorneys representative looked in from the surface, never soiling his suit to observe the demonstrated profiles of contrasting soil nor crawling under walls to appreciate the extent and utility of those potential tunnels. Prosecutors were at that time locked into the retrial, trying unsuccessfully to prove the few deadlocked counts of sexual molestation against a lone defendant. No one in authority could possibly want to reopen old wounds of putative conspiracy.

The bulldozer moved in that afternoon and quickly smashed the stucco building into splinters and dust. I have always wondered since that day why such a flimsy structure needed a 29-inch deep foundation to support a non-weight-bearing partition between two classrooms. The four-inch slab itself would have been code-sufficient. Could it have been designed as a strong-back girder over future sub-slab excavations? There is no sensible explanation better than Joanie’s naive observation than it was there to bump your head on. Dr. Stickel’s report (p.95) concludes:

There is no other scenario that fits all of the facts except that the feature was indeed a tunnel. The date of the construction and use of the tunnel was not absolutely established, but an assessment of seven factors of data all indicate that it was probably constructed, used and completely filled back in after 1966 (the construction date of the preschool). This age assessment has also been corroborated by the consulting Geologist for the project, Dr. Don Michael…

THE AFTERMATH

People magazine sent a reporter to interview Dr. Stickel. She reported to headquarters the remarkable misunderstanding that the project found nothing. Hearing this I called Dr. Stickel, who was dumbfounded: “I told her the children said there were tunnels and we found tunnels. It was as simple as that.” With some inside pressure, the magazine researched a more definitive appraisal of the project but it was bumped by more urgent priorities of space, perhaps by an unexpected celebrity marriage or divorce.

Dr. Stickel, Jackie McGauley, another patent and two now-adolescent McMartin children were brought face-to-face with debunking authors Paul and Shirley Eberele and defense attorney Danny Davis for the Maury Povich Show, broadcast June 21, 1993. In response to all the complicated and sometimes explosive arguments which erupted during that hour, Mr. Povich met Dr. Stickel’s description of the tunnels with the perfect dismissal: “What are we saying? Any *hard* evidence that abuse took place in these tunnels?” (emphasis his) (12)

At this point in the vastly larger, festering issue of ritual abuse, there is little hope of hard evidence for anything, especially for specific, ultimately trivial issues of individual criminal culpability. Frank Fuster’s conviction served best to excite more ingenious efforts toward blaming the victims. In the absence of a published tunnel report, the last word in print remains with award-winning Debbie Nathan:

The McMartin School was painstakingly proved for tunnels (by the District Attorney). None were found…(The McMartin) parents have invested years believing in demonic conspiracies and underground nursery tunnels. (Until recently the parents were still digging. They came up with Indian artifacts). They have spoken unremittingly of such things, to the world and to their sons and daughters. They have told their children, over and over, that they were abused, then rewarded them for being traumatized. They have put them in therapy with adult fanatics who have done the same, and enrolled them as guinea pigs in the “research” projects of zealots.

The McMartin kids, and hundreds of others in ritual abuse spinoffs across the country, have spent years trapped in clans whose identity derives from a tent-revival belief in their children’s imagined victimization. (13)

The McMartin Tunnels are just one more example of the continuing uncovering of evidence of a bizarre and industrious dedication to deception. The tunnels should raise serious questions against the reassuring premise that no one would go to such elaborate lengths to entrap children into illicit control. If the therapists were to blame, and they implanted only stories of tunnels, then who planted the pots in Joanie’s runway? The continuing obscurity of this potentially provocative archaeological discovery should give the lie to another reassurance: if things like this went on it would be impossible to hide the evidence. It is not so much that the evidence is difficult to hide as that we as a just and fair society are incapable of seeing it.

Judy Johnson saw blood on her infant’s diaper and has paid a terrible price for trying to find how it got there. Other McMartin parents, now distilled down to the essence of one, tried to find evidence for their children’s complaints, only to be reviled as a malicious threat to world serenity. Jackie McGauley has a hard-won documentation of physical evidence to share. Who will buy it?

Footnotes:

1. David Lotto, “On Witches and Witch Hunts,” this issue.

2. Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder , Michelle Remembers, New York: Congdon & Lattes Inc. 1980

3. Notes of an office consultation with Judy Johnson, February 9, 1984

4. It is no accident that the person who blows the whistle on previously unsuspected and unprecedented extremes of abuse proves to be especially vulnerable to ad hominem attack. It takes an eccentric, potentially alienated personality style to over-ride the shared reassurances of more comfortably socialized peers. All forms of child sexual abuse have been protected by what Jean Goodwin has called the shared negative hallucination among clinicians and other opinion makers in respected authority, who will not perceive abuse when they confront it. (Credibility problems in multiple personality disorder patients and abused children. In: Childhood Antecedents of Multiple personality, ed. R.P. Kluft. Washington: American Psychiatric Press, 1985, pp. 2-19). As Suzzen Sgroi observed at the dawning of the current wave of discovery, “Unfortunately willingness to consider the diagnosis of suspected child sexual molestation frequently seems to vary in inverse proportion to the individual’s level of training. That is, the more advanced the training of some, the less willing they are to suspect molestation” (p. 20, Sexual molestation of children: The last frontier in child abuse. Children Today 4: May-June, 1975, pp. 18-21,44).

In the many multi-victim cases I have studied, there is a prodromal pattern of parental group denial before an eccentric outsider triggers a threshold of recognition. Concerned parents are reassured by “reasonable explanations” for potential indicators of abuse. Nylon underwear, bubble baths, constipation, masturbation, self-exploration “explain” genito-rectal inflammation, even foreign objects in the vagina. Conventional, well-socialized parents (and professionals) receive these reassurances with relief, repeating and reinforcing them among one another in extended circles. It remains for the odd one, the unsocialized outsider to pursue the nagging suspicion that the authorities could be wrong and to develop an arrogant, quasi-paranoid reliance on personal, intuitive belief. Such a person is easily stigmatized as eccentric and unreliable, if not crazy. The absence of authoritative substantiation leaves each successive believer dependent on a reversal of the old standard of evidence: seeing is believing; if I hadn’t believed it I wouldn’t have seen it.

Judy Johnson was not only an eccentric but something of an irritant in Manhattan Beach society; she was at war with the local school board to acquire home care for her ailing older son. She was distrustful of doctors and devoted to holistic notions of diet and health. It was this very eccentricity which led her to go out of town for university confirmation of her suspicions of sexual abuse after local doctors dismissed them. It was that young child’s isolation from medical contact that led the mother to the telling question and which confirmed the truth of the child’s answer.

When I asked Ms. Johnson during the February 8, 1984 office visit how she discovered “David’s” abuse, she explained, “It just grew with me. He had such discomfort with school. He cried every noon. But (the school director) warned me that if I gave in to him I’d always be a slave to his whims. He kept trying to give me a shot. I’m a very organic person and he had no contact with shots. I took him to the doctor for the redness and he said it was either from constipation or worms. Then I saw the blood and I knew he was sodomized. But my friends assured me that kids are very anal. I asked David several times if (his teacher) put his penis in his rectum. He always said ‘no’. Then later it occurred to me to ask, “David, did (your teacher) give you a shot in your bottom?” and he said ‘yes’.”

5. Debbie Nathan “Reno Reconsidered,” Miami New Times, March 3-9, 1993, pp. 10, 12, 18, 20, 24, 27-29. Also “Revisiting Country Walk,” Issues in Child Abuse Accusations 5(1), Summer 1993 pp. 1-11. See note #7 for Nathan’s role in debunking the concept of ritual abuse. The investigative reporter who lived in the Country Walk community and who was a participant-observer throughout the development of the case wrote quite a different account. See Jan Hollingsworth, Unspeakable Acts, New York: Congden & Weed, 1986, for 592 pages of cogent narrative and authentic documentation of the case.

6. By reviewing the parental investigations in the light of official disapproval, I do not mean to trivialize nor to discredit their findings. The absolute confidentiality of criminal investigation makes communication a one-way process, with no opportunity to know how seriously the leads were taken or to what extent they were confirmed.

In addition to the mortuary discovery parents followed a child-guided route in search of “the doctor’s house” where blood rituals had been described. They found a residence in an affluent community some 20 miles away matching the description offered independently by several children. Authorities confirmed it was owned by a physician. No further information was ever divulged.

I had occasion to feel personally how the alarm of clinicians can be left unresolved by grudging investigation. I had been consulted in 1984 by a therapist who wanted help in reporting her suspicion of criminal conspiracy. She was concerned for the safety of two preschool-aged clients, brother and sister, and for their frightened mother, who believed her estranged husband was involved in large scale drug dealing and child prostitution. The children had led their mother to the place they had described where their father had taken them for encounters with naked adults and children (they denied ever being molested, but their drawings were full of decapitation and bloodshed). The children spoke of group encounters in other locations as well, involving both a defendant in the McMartin case and a suspect from a second preschool then under investigation.

The building shown to the mother, the Coco Palms Motel, had been the site of a babysitting service sex abuse investigation apparently unrelated to either preschool case. But two McMartin children, upon seeing a newspaper picture of the Coco Palms suspect, had independently identified him as the “Wolf Man” who delivered drugs to the abusive rituals of their own alleged experience.

The law enforcement team especially assembled to investigate the presumption of linkages among the seven suspected area preschools took my report on behalf of the anxious therapist, promising to follow it up immediately. I was told only months later than nothing had come of their investigation.

The therapist who had been involved in the identification of the “Wolf Man” was stigmatized by police for having deliberately left the newspaper in view of her young clients, and for reporting her observations to the local police rather than to the special preschool task force. The alleged wolf man died of a drug overdose and the man and woman named as his Coco Palms accomplices were spared prosecution when the children recanted their complaints.

Such complexities abound in putative but unproven conspiracies. While these apparent connections could have been coincidental and enhanced with parent-and-therapist-induced red herrings, the preemptory dismissal and the policy of with-holding the findings of official investigations leave the therapists caught in the unresolved position of amateur investigators, distrustful of the officials and unprotected against escalating fear.

7. Alexander Cockburn, Viewpoint: “The McMartin Case: Indict the Children, Jail the Parents.” The Wall Street Journal, February 8, 1990, p. A17. This virulent op-ed piece includes the standard backlash attribution of the case: “The allegations… had been extorted from her two year old by a mother-now-dead- with a history of mental illness…,” without acknowledging that the “history” occurred only after the allegations. Cockburn also cited Judy Johnson and her McMartin case as the harbingers of the entire ensuing “hysteria” over satanic abuse in an elaborate review of some 36 cases and 91 arrests. “In this purgative frenzy many lives were destroyed” (“Out of the Mouths of Babes: Child Abuse and the Abuse of Adults.” The nation, February 12, 1990, pp. 190-191) In his recurring column entitled “Beat the devil.” He invoked the McMartin case in deploring the prosecution of the Little Rascals Daycare case in North Carolina in his syndicated ‘Column Left.’ Citing “daycare panics in more than 100 cities,” he sums up his dismissal with, “Satan mongering is an industry of sorts, served by repugnant legal stratagems and nourished by bogus experts: Day Care Satanism and ‘therapy’”. Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1991, p B13

An early journalistic reinvestigation of the McMartin case identified the six people who successively created the incredible concept of massive abuse: “Mother,” “Cop,” “Social Worker,” “Politician” (District Attorney), “Reporter,” and “Prosecutor” (Mary A Fischer. “A Case of Dominoes?: Did six crucial players simply invent the longest, most expensive, most sensational-and most trumped up-case in LA.’s history? Los Angeles, October 1989, pp 126, 135). This scenario, which parallels the theory of defense in the already-acquited Jordan, Minnesota case, is offered as “the solution to the McMartin puzzle (which) eludes most of the public and the media” (p 135). The mother was, of course, Judy Johnson: “It was this call (to the police) on August 12, 1983 that sparked the biggest mass molestation case in history, but for Johnson, it was another in a series of steps toward madness and an early death from an alcohol-related liver disease” (p. 128). The article presupposes that the increasingly bizarre allegations were a product and not the producer of that decline. The article stresses the absence of evidence for the pornography and tunnel claims, exaggerating the scope and negative significance of the official excavation: “A Huntington Beach archaeological research team was hired to make a painstaking search for alleged underground rooms and tunnels where the children claimed they’d been molested. The researchers tore up the preschool floor and used an electronic scanning device to try to locate the secret passages” (p. 135). In fact, they merely peeled back some of the asphalt tiles looking for potential interruptions in the concrete slab floor and relied on an inappropriate instrument to disclaim the possibility of disturbance under the concrete. According to Dr. Stickel, who excavated the tunnels, the terrain conductivity meter used by the first archaeological team was powerless to penetrate concrete.

Debbie Nathan, a free-lance investigative journalist based in El Paso, is the most articulate and influential of the ritual abuse skeptics. She won the H.L Mencken Award for Investigative Journalism for “The Making of A modern Witch Trial” The Village Voice, September 29, 1987, pp 19-23, 26-32. In this vanguard standard of backlash rhetoric she deplores the criminal conviction of two El Paso women through a detailed analysis of the overzealous, children-never-lie crusades she attributes to the prosecutor, child protective service workers and parents. Citing the history of bizarre charges against unlikely female defendants initiated by the McMartin case, she traces the pattern through Jordan, Minnesota; Niles, Michigan; Memphis; Country Walk in Miami; Malden, Massachusetts; West Point; and Maplewood, New Jersey, she highlights the ritualistic and presumably absurd allegations in each and labels these cases “junior” McMartins. The sidebar feature entitled “Sex, the Devil and Day Care (pp. 23 & 26) defines ritual abuse as a contrived political tool to stigmatize working mothers and to scapegoat women as potential child molesters. Beneath a photograph of three female McMartin defendants in “the case that started it all,” Ms. Nathan proposes that the attempt to “satanize” day care is a strategic adjustment of the conflict between liberal feminist objections to patriarchy and the conservative pressure to protect intact families.

“But in the Reaganite 80′s, feminist consciousness-raising about sexual violence hasn’t led to a critique of the family; rather it’s encouraged moralism against evil people and narrowly legalistic remedies. The times demand a scapegoat, and what better one than daycare? If the private family is sacred then the public day care center is profane. If stay-at-home mothers are holy, then the people they pay to take care of their kids when they escape from the house are witches. Day-care hysteria is another instance of how conservatives have cornered the market these days, supplying fundamentalist rhetoric for a public trying to sort out worry and puzzlement over deep-seated social changes.”‘ (p. 26)

Debbie Nathan’s coupe de grace on ritual abuse was “What McMartin Started; The Ritual Sex Abuse Hoax (The Village Voice, June 12, 1990), beginning and ending with an attack on the parents and their children who appeared on the Geraldo Rivera Show in the wake of the January verdicts of acquittal. It decries these people’s diehard insistence on victimization. She challenges the credulity of the young people, who had such fantastic stories they could not be used as witnesses, citing especially the “Round-faced, 10-year-old” who according to her father, has “talked about being molested under the school in tunnels lined with flashing lights and pictures of the devil” (p. 36)

The article blames the case on the purportedly psychotic allegations of Judy Johnson. Nathan traces the subsequent spread of incredible allegations through-out the country and into Europe, stressing the stereotypic absurdity of children who said that “the abuse took place in churches; adults wore masks and costumes; they urinated and defecated on children; they burned, stabbed, cooked, or drowned babies; they sacrificed animals; they molested children in funeral homes and buried them in cemeteries; they mutilated Barbie dolls, extensive investigations have failed to support any of these claims.”

In questioning how “large numbers of literate, secular people” could be duped into a Christian fundamentalist “paranoia about satanism,” Ms. Nathan iterates what Dr. Lotto reiterates: the publication of Michelle Remembers. The article reveals “there is evidence that the details in ritual abuse charges came more from grown-ups than from children: co-author Pazder consulted with the police and met with parent Jackie McGauley during the early days of the investigation.” That is hardly news, nor “evidence” though it has been slow to be touted by the conspiracy theorists of rebuttal. I met with Dr. Pazder at that time too – when he had come to Los Angeles to appear with several parents on a nationally syndicated television news magazine and after he had addressed a public meeting in Manhattan Beach parents wanted to meet Dr. Pazder not to acquire details of ritual abuse but to make sense out of them, because their child were *telling them* stories of blood ritual with satanic trappings.

His conclusions about satanic cult ubiquity, however outlandish they may seem to others, offered a “reasonable explanation” for parents confronted with children growling obscenities and death threats in half-awake nightmares. As a participant observer in what the sages now dismiss as “satanic panic,” I can attest that the stories of costumes, ceremonies, chants, bloodshed and death came first from children to naive, incredulous parents and therapists, who sought in vain for a more reasonable explanation from local authorities before turning to occult literature and out-of-town experts who could offer a horrific kind of understanding of their inexplicable distress. Similarly, the television producers brought Dr. Pazder to Los Angeles not to introduce the concept of satanic ritual abuse but to *address* it, since it was by then common knowledge among journalists that children and parents were describing unearthly obscenities.

Debbie Nathan concludes her investigation of the Ritual Sex Abuse Hoax with the paragraph excerpted at the conclusion of this article (note 13) proclaiming the nationwide network of “clans” united with the”…tent revival belief in their children’s victimization. Right wing devil-mongers may find this subculture to their liking. But the rest of us ought to recognize the harm it wreaking, not only on civil liberties and the falsely accused, but also on day care on women’s rights, and especially on children. Because the kids involved in this hysteria have indeed suffered, but not at the hands of their teachers. Compared to the abuses of a child-protection movement gone mad, could incest be any worse?”

The “investigative journalists” have no need of evidence for their clan conspiracy theory. With no more foundation than the presumption that the satanic implications are not worthy of rational credence, they state without any apparent doubt that another international, interdisciplinary, intergenerational conspiracy to abuse children does in fact exist, with agents so powerful in their misguided beliefs that they can infuse death terror into the minds of children through mere suggestion. And the perpetrators of this abuse are just the sort of folks one would least suspect of terrorist agendas; they are the child abuse finders who follow the dictates of the clinical high priest of a child-protection movement gone mad.

Compared to the grandiosity of a backlash movement gone ballistic, could a shared belief in satanic conspiracy be any worse?

8. Pending publication, there is no general access to this report, and no assurance of when or how it might become available. Inquiries may be directed to me, including any interest in assisting in publication. Correspondence will be forwarded to the custodian of the McMartin Tunnel Project, Ms. Jackie McGauley.

9. This mutually antagonistic response to common disaster is described as typical of parents in cases studied by child psychiatrist Lenore Terr. Initial bonding and cooperative optimism gives way to displacement of rage toward one another as they discover no one can perfectly resolve the collective trauma. Some withdraw and become protective of their private lives and untarnished future, resentful of other parents who try to keep the memory alive, especially those who seem to revel in publicity and notoriety. Too Scared to Cry: Psychic Trauma in Childhood. New York: Harper & Row, 1990, pp. 66-72.

10. Paul and Shirley Eberle, The Abuse of Innocence: The McMartin Preschool Trial. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1993. The Eberles also wrote the Politics of Child Abuse (Secaucus, N.) Lyle Stuard Inc., 1986) which centers on the McMartin case as the bellwether of the nationwide “child abuse witch hunt” (p. 285) “resulting in the devastation of innocent peoples lives and families (p, 283). Both books lionized defendants and defense interests while defaming everything and everyone associated with child protection. Such polemics also illustrate the gospel of the dual attack on child protection. Ritual abuse cases are first debunked as de factor frauds, then all sexual abuse complaints are tarred with the same brush..” We believe that every molestation case in which there has been a conviction should be reopened and reviewed.” (The Politics of Child Abuse, p. 284)

11. In order to allow privacy for the child and her parents, “Joanie” is a pseudonym.

12. The Maury Povich Show, nationally syndicated. Broadcast June 21, 1993

13. Debbie Nathan, “What McMartin Started:The Ritual Sex Abuse Hoax,”The Village Voice, June 12, 1990. Also syndicated and reprinted in many independent newspapers, such as Metro: Santa Clara Valley’s Weekly Newspaper (AA) under the title, “The McMartin Syndrome” August 23-29, 1990, pp. 10-15

Roland Summit is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (Building D-6, 1000 W. Carson St., Torrance, CA 90509). He has been the community psychiatrist to the South Bay area of Los Angeles County since 1966, specializing exclusively in child sexual abuse since 1975. He was assigned the role of county Department of Mental Health Liaison to the community of Manhattan Beach in the wake of the 1983-84 epidemic of preschool abuse allegations.

Interview of Jackie MacGauley, mother of one of the McMartin Preschool children

Do you have any proof and references that the children at McMartin were abused?

We were in court for 7 years. Still the longest trial in U.S. history. My daughter and hundreds of people I know deal with the aftermath on a daily basis. Our children’s medical reports and the tunnels which corroborated one of the most ‘fantastic stories’ the children recounted. The tunnels are documented in a formal report now located at a Law University. The most compelling proof was living with my daughter and dealing with all of her revelations and fears.

Why were the defendants declared not guilty?

The jury very clearly stated that the prosecution did not prove their case. The jurors were convinced that someone did commit the crime. One juror said she would have liked to have heard more from the children. All 7 defendants were held over for trial after the pretrial. Criminal counts were added. Before the trial, when the case was not assigned to a courtroom or judge, District Attorney Ira Reiner decided to drop 5 of the defendants. A memo cited that he did not want any of “These kinds of cases anymore.” About 10 other preschools were closed, but there could be no arrests without any possibility of prosecution. It was becoming an embarrassment to his office. I was told by a witness family that one defendant had enough counts and enough evidence to be tried, but Mr. Reiner felt the case would not be successful if he included her. A mother/son situation seemed like a more plausible story. Some child witnesses refused to testify when parents saw how the children were treated on the witness stand by the 7 defense attorneys. Some families were still willing to testify but were never even notified that they were no longer needed.

How do you feel about the media and their involvement in the case and after the case?

At first I was amazed at the attention we got. This is a small town and it involved only a few local families, I thought at the time. I never really did understand why it mushroomed as it did. I ask experts and they give different explanations. Dr. Underwager was speaking out on behalf of the defendants in Jordan, Minnesota. Janet Reno was D.A. in Miami during the Countrywalk case. She won the case when Illiana Fuster testified against her convicted murderer husband, Frank Fuster. The giant Bakersfield case and others started well before the McMartin case.

The media likes to report things that they know will sell their newspapers rather than reality. What happened in court was far from representative of the reality of the crime. Moral of this story, do NOT believe much of what you hear or read in the media.

Do you believe there were tunnels at McMartin? What proof can you offer to verify this?

You are asking the person who actually did the project. We heavily documented our findings in photographs, scientists’ reports and analysis. There were also an abundance of witnesses, including the media. The formal report is housed at a University Law Library at the moment.

If you do believe the allegations at McMartin were true, how long do you believe they were going on? What evidence do you have for this?

My daughter attended the school for 4 months in (Sept through January when it closed) 1982-1983. The most recent allegations began in August, 1982 when Judy Johnson took her 3 year old son to a doctor who reported it to the authorities.

A lot of us parents still talk about what happened. A friend of mine was Mayor during that time. We still console each other over what happened. A lot of us still feel totally disgusted with the whole thing. Compelling (and corroborating) evidence for me and her family and Doctor was a friend who was 44 when she died last October. She was in the second class ever given at the old location, about 1958. Her psychiatrist introduced her to me in 1984.

Do you know about anyone writing articles trying to disprove the allegations at McMartin, and why do you feel they would do this? Do you have any evidence for this?

Some V.O.C.A.L., False Memory Syndrome type affiliates seem to make it a regular task to discredit our children. Their opinions have seeped into popular journalism and, I understand, are used as fact. If you want some good background on how this all began, start with Jan Hollingsworth’s book “Unspeakable Acts” for some fantastic documentation of the perp’s games. Another highly recommended book is “The Battle and the Backlash” by David Hechler.

“Since the Eberles’ first McMartin book appeared in 1989, they have achieved national status as child abuse experts. In courts of law their work is frequently cited, and they lecture widely to receptive audiences. The Eberles once appeared as featured speakers at a conference held by Victims of Child Abuse Laws (VOCAL), an organization that feted “The Politics Of Child Abuse” as positively revelatory….Blurbs in their own pornographic tabloid, L.A. Star, failed to mention that in the 1970s the authors once ran an underground tabloid for pedophiles in Los Angeles, Finger, which delved heavily into sadomasochistic sex, sex with children and sex acts involving human excrement. Finger contained sexual drawings by children and pedophile erotica…”

“In addition, some of authors of false memory hooks also turned out to be pedophile advocates. For example, one of the most widely cited books claiming that cult abuse reports were mass hysteria is Paul and Shirley Eberle’s The Abuse of Innocence: The McMartin Preschool trial.(6) Taken quite seriously by reviewers and widely quoted In later magazine articles as authoritative, the book makes such claims as that the over 100 McMartin children who reported they had been abused by a cult were all “brainwashed” and the mothers were all “hysterical” and that it was meaningless that physicians found three-quarters of the children bore physical evidence that corroborated their stories. What reviewers didn’t mention was that the Eberles had been called “the most prolific publishers of child pornography in the United States” by Sgt. Toby Tyler, a San Bernadino deputy sheriff who is a nationally recognized expert on child pornography.(7) Their kiddie porn material that I have seen and the articles they have published such as “I Was a Sexpot at Five” and “Little Lolitas” Included illustrations of children involved in sodomy and oral copulation and featured pornographic photos of the Eberles.”

6. Paul and Shirley Eberle, The Abuse of Innocence: The McMartin Preschool Trial. New York: Prometheus Books, 1993.

7. The Tampa Tribune-Times, July 25, 1993, p.10.

–

Gould, C. (1995). Denying ritual abuse of children. Journal of Psychohistory, 22(3), 329-339. http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/denyra.htm

“Corroboration and eyewitness accounts offered by children should also be given serious attention when therapists and investigators can demonstrate that no contamination of the children’s disclosures has taken place. In the case studied by Jonker and Jonker-Bakker (1991), children from different schools and different locales gave accounts of perpetrators, abuse locations, and abusive acts that were mutually corroborating. Accounts of tunnels under the McMartin preschool given by children claiming to have been ritually abused at the school were fully corroborated when the existence and location of the tunnels were documented by a professional team of archaeologists (Summit, 1994).”

“How can it be that, with significant numbers of criminal convictions of perpetrators of ritual abuse and laws against ritual abuse on the books in a growing number of states, with the clinical data amassed by thousands of therapists in the United States and internationally, with physical evidence like the tunnels found under the McMartin preschool corroborating children’s reports of abuse, that we cannot reach a consensus that ritual abuse constitutes a serious problem for us as a nation, and demands to be addressed? Why is it that media accounts of ritual abuse are often filled with so much obfuscation that the public is left wondering whether ritual abuse might not in fact be the “urban myth” or “mass hysteria” that certain skeptics have made a virtual career out of saying that it is?”

(http://web.archive.org/web/20010123212200/members.cruzio.com/~ratf/McMartin.html/)

Executive Summary

During the month of May 1990 an archaeological project was conducted at the McMartin Preschool site to determine, once and for all, whether or not there had ever been tunnels under the building, as described by various children. Excavation was carried out according to established scientific conventions with a careful research design defining what might prove or disprove the existence of “an underground feature that would connect to the surface of the site and extend underground for some distance. ” [with] dimensions large enough to accommodate adult human movement through it”. (p. 24)

The project unearthed not one but two tunnel complexes as well as previously unrecognized structural features which defied logical explanation. Both tunnel complexes conformed to locations and functional descriptions established by children’s reports. One had been described as providing undetected access to an adjacent building on the east. The other provided outside access under the west wall of the building and contained within it an enlarged, cavernous artifact corresponding to children’s descriptions of a “secret room”.

Both the contour signature of the walls and the nature of recovered artifacts indicated that the tunnels had been dug by hand under the concrete slab floor after the construction of the building. Whatever the purpose of this elaborate enterprise, even more effort must have been devoted to filling the tunnels back in and trying to conceal any evidence of their existence. Much of the fill dirt used for packing the tunnel spaces was mixed with historic debris, as if to mimic the surrounding terrain.

Not only did the discovered features fulfill the research prequalifications as tunnels designed for human traffic, there was also no alternative or natural explanation for the presence of such features.

Background

The McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California was the first of what has since been described as a national epidemic of multi-victim, multi-perpetrator accusations of sexual and sadistic abuse which erupted in the mid 1980′s. The McMartin case was encumbered with hundreds of charges against seven defendants and dozens of uncharged suspects. It became the longest, most expensive and arguably most controversial criminal trial in American history. The descriptions given by children to investigators and parents were unusual and unprecedented as they emerged in 1983, but they became so stereotypic to subsequent cases throughout the country as to become generic of presumed “ritual abuse”. Accusations of such extreme cruelty and bizarre perversity in the absence of physical evidence or obviously deranged suspects led eventually to increasing skepticism that such crimes could possibly exist. Simple alternative explanations emerged, first as criminal defense theories and then as common wisdom: very young children were moved by the hysterical overreaction of various adults to make unfounded accusations. Full-page newspaper ads placed in 1984 by McMartin criminal defense attorneys raised the specter of the Salem witch trials. The witch hunt analogy has since flourished to create substantial public distrust of preschool-age witnesses and of the adults who question them.

The failure of prosecutors to obtain even a single conviction in the McMartin trial has been taken by many as proof that the children’s allegations were merely fantastic. Various journalists have demanded punishment of the professionals and parents who had chosen to believe them. Similar allegations arising more recently in other cases in the United States and abroad are tested against the McMartin standard, creating a prejudice against investigating or substantiating even remotely “bizarre” complaints. Parents in such cases feel triply betrayed: first with the dreadful discovery of abuse; second with their abandonment by law enforcement, and third with being blamed for imagining the abuse and fomenting public hysteria.

One of the supposedly bizarre aspects of the McMartin case was the children’s insistence that they were taken into underground tunnels. They explained that the tunnels led to an underground “secret room” where abuse occurred, as well as providing a route for subversive transport to off-site locations for sexual exploitation. These stories were apparently considered fantastic by investigators, who made no attempt to search beneath the building.

A group of parents forced the hand of the district attorney on March 17, 1985 by initiating an excavation in the adjacent lot. The district attorney then authorized an archaeological inspection of that lot by Scientific Resource Surveys Inc. (SRS). There was no exploration beneath the slab floor. Instrumental survey with a terrain conductivity meter failed to detect alterations under the concrete. The SRS technician informed the district attorney’s investigator that the meter proved useless within the structure because of excessive interference from pipes and steel reinforcement. The preemptory conclusion at that time that there were no tunnels has become gospel among detractors of the McMartin families. Influential journalists ridicule parents for ever entertaining such a possibility and mock their subsequent attempts at exploration.

The first opportunity for private exploration came in April 1990 when the property was sold. Several parents obtained permission from the new owner to search for the tunnels. After cutting out a section of concrete and coming up with ambiguous findings, it became apparent that experienced supervision was needed. Gerald Hobbs, a professional miner, was engaged to insure safety and to better define the nature of the underground artifacts. When an apparent tunnel entrance was discovered and then verified by geologist Dr. E. Don Michael, parents sought out the archaeological team that completed the present project.

Method

The project was designed and conducted by E. Gary Stickel, Ph.D., on the recommendation of Rainer Berger, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the Interdisciplinary ?Program of the Archaeology Department at UCLA. Dr. Stickel is director of Environmental Research Archaeologists, a Scientific Consortium(ERA).

Several areas of the preschool site were designated and mapped as units for scientific excavation. These were selected according to differing criteria: re-exploration of sites documented in the district attorney’s SRS survey, children’s reports of entrance locations, anomalies detected through instrumental survey by ground penetrating radar (GPR), and the sites of significant discovery under Mr. Hobbs’ supervision.

Hypotheses and Test Expectations

The primary research problem was to determine whether or not there were a tunnel(s) and an underground room(s) at the site in question. To meet the test hypotheses, a tunnel would be an underground feature that would connect to the surface of the site and extend underground for some distance, possibly (but not necessarily) connecting to an underground room(s). It would have to have dimensions large enough to accommodate adult human movement through it. Such a tunnel on the subject property could have been constructed in two ways: 1) either dug out as a trench-like opening which would then be roofed over with wood and/or other materials and covered over with fill above to make a true tunnel (as opposed to an open trench), or 2) would be dug out completely underground, which would then leave a “ceiling” over its passageway formed of the naturally deposited soil. If the latter were the case, such a tunnel may or may not have been fitted with an underground “roof” of wood and/or other materials either to reinforce the strength of the “ceiling” of the tunnel or to keep loose soil and dust from falling down on people using it. In either scenario (l or 2) such a tunnel may have had posts of wood and/or other materials (e.g. iron) to serve as shoring reinforcements.

Thus, given the operational definition of a tunnel considered here, the following hypothesis and test expectations were considered (test expectations are specific, tangible data that are to be expected and are discoverable if the hypothesis is valid; Stickel, 1979).

If a tunnel(s) were present at the McMartin Preschool site, then the following test expectations should be present:

1. An opening(s) (entrance and/or exit) large enough for human passage should be present permitting access from the surface down into a tunnel feature.

2. Tunnel architecture should be linear or curvilinear (i.e. an elongated passageway leading in a definable direction(s).

3. Tunnel architecture (especially depth or height and width) should be large enough to accommodate adult human passage.

4. The walls and/or uncovered soil ceiling of the tunnel should have “signatures” of markings indicating whether the tunnel had been dug by hand and/or by a machine (e.g. a backhoe).

5. There should be a compacted dirt floor (compacted by human foot traffic) distinguishable from surrounding non-tunnel soil which should not be compacted.

6. The tunnel could be open (i.e. traversable and unfilled).

7. The tunnel may be naturally (i.e. natural processes of erosion and soil redeposition) or artificially (by human action) filled in with soil. Such fill should be distinguishable from the natural soil matrix of the site in terms of color and/or by texture, and compaction (i.e. would be less compact than the soil forming the tunnel’s walls, floor and ceiling).

8. The tunnel fill may have inclusions of:

1. Natural stones and/or other natural items or;

2. Artifacts and/or ecofacts.

9. Although a tunnel of the type sought in this project may not be directly datable (e.g. in contrast to a construction date molded into the concrete of a railroad tunnel), the tunnel may be dated indirectly by the dates on artifacts contained within it if any are present.

The test expectations for a subterranean room would be essentially the same as for a tunnel. The exception would be for test expectations 1, 2 and 3 above which would be modified to reflect necessary doorway(s) into a room, that the shape of the room would not be too linear (as a tunnel) but would be “room shaped”, i.e. square, round, or ovoid, and that a room would be of sufficient dimensions (length, width and height) to be distinguishable from a tunnel passageway. A room would thus be of sufficient size to accommodate a number of people interacting in a face-to-face manner as opposed to a tunnel which (depending on its size) would provide restricted possibilities for human interaction. Since, on balance, one would expect human usage of a room to be more prolonged than in a tunnel passageway, artifacts catering to prolonged usage would be expected in such a room, perhaps in the form of chairs, couches, tables, a lighting system, etc. These expectations were borne in mind during our search of the site.

Initial surveys would be conducted with remote sensing instrumentation. The author’s experience elsewhere predicted that Ground Penetrating Radar, rather than the terrain conductivity meter used in the previous survey, would be effective for anomalies beneath a concrete slab floor.

Findings

The profile of an entrance/exit tunnel was discovered under the foundation of the west wall of the building (Classroom #4, see map, p. 13, this summary). The signature of this feature was described and sketched by consulting geologist Don Michael, Ph.D. (p. 113). The feature was clearly distinguished by loose, disturbed soil and the artifacts contained within it. The outside margins had an inverted bell-shaped curve profile. The tunnel signature was established both by the sharp demarcation of soil color and texture, as well as by the exclusive presence within the cavity fill of assorted historic debris such as old cans and bottles, various metal fragments and small household items. The roof at that point was provided by the bottom of the concrete foundation. Inside the foundation a roof of soil was evident.

The profile was also demarcated by severed tree roots, the significance of which was described by professional tree surgeon Jerry Hobbs:

…running under the foundation from south to north was a large root which had been chopped off at the edge of where the large amount of cans, bottles, and plastic were being found. A growing root would have had to run in and through the cans and bottles but did not. The root, some 3″ in diameter had been severed with a hand saw about 90% through, then pulled off, peeling the bark of the root. The peeled layer of the cambium layer had well established healing already in progress. New feeder roots had started to grow from the cut portion of the root, and attained lengths of 6″ to 15″. A space of 59″ to the north the roots pick up again, only these had been chopped off from the larger root and were dead. [The dead root] was about 1″ in diameter and continued in the same 30 degree angle as the other root, the cambium layer was separating from the rest of the woody part of the root, indication it was probably severed at the same time the green root that was attached to the tree was severed. Both the feeder root lengths and the healing of the cambium layer indicate that the root had been cut at a time of 4 to 6 years earlier. I feel my determination is accurate due to my experience of the planting and removal and care of some of the same kind of trees for more than 25 years. To me this is conclusive that with the inconsistent soil area, the plastic bag dated 1982 [see next paragraph] and the old bottles, cans and debris, were put in the ground after 1982, and it was not an old dump area as it appeared. (Appendix III, pp. 174-176)

A plastic sandwich bag was found under the foundation at a depth of 42″ below the surface and 3-6″ inside the wall line of the building. The bag was imprinted with Disney characters and the words: “?1982 Walt Disney Productions”, along with a logo of a school house with “Disney Class of 1982/1983″ underneath. These factors led Dr. Michael to conclude “therefore, the cavity could be no older than 1983″ (p. 84).

Due to the crucial location and dating of the Disney bag as evidence of recent disturbance, alternate hypotheses were examined. Could the bag have been artifactual not of a clandestine, buried tunnel but rather incidental to the parents’ March 1985 dig or to the subsequent SRS excavation commissioned by the district attorney? After careful analysis of the parameters of each excavation, Mr. Langenwalter, senior author of the SRS study, concluded that since the parents’ backhoe trench was no less than 137″ from the northwest corner, it is clear that the plastic Disney bag was located by Hobbs in the virgin area between the SRS excavation and the parents’ dig. In fact, it was recovered 7″ south of the parameters of the SRS excavation and approximately 13″ north of the parents’ backhoe trench (p.184).

The emphatic correlation of definitive observations for this tunnel entrance feature is especially significant in view of its location: the decision was made to explore this precise area because some of the children had stated that there had been animal cages placed along the wall and they had entered a tunnel under the cages at that point (cf. Langenwalter, et al, 1985: 13).

Excavations where conducted in the westernmost sector of Unit 1 in room #3. This site was selected because a GPR anomaly was detected through the concrete floor in an area next to and continuing up against the west dividing wall between classrooms #3 & #4. Several human-introduced artifacts were encountered adjacent to a 3 inch cast iron waste pipe running northward from the dig. The size of the artifacts ruled out their introduction by burrowing rodents (bioturbation) and their distribution was confined within a shallow, trench-like profile of different colored soil. This proved to be a mechanically dug trench to accommodate the waste pipe from the bathroom in classroom #3, as substantiated also by the signature characteristic of a backhoe. However, one aspect of the pipe and trench complex was uncharacteristic and unexplainable at the time of excavation: the stainless steel clamps connecting an angle of the waste pipe. These two clamps were notable in that they appeared to be brand new, with a very shiny silver color, lacking the patina expected of objects buried long underground. That apparent disparity of age or use became more apparent as other clamps were unearthed elsewhere, all of which were considerably etched and discolored. There was no opening through the concrete floor which could have allowed for access to these clamps after the floor was poured, and there was no explanation for their like-new appearance if they had remained buried for the life of the structure.

A possible tunnel feature was excavated from the toilet areas in classroom #1 and the office. This feature was distinguished clearly by the color and compaction of the interior soil, which was much darker and more loosely compacted. The feature appeared to connect the area beneath the office and classroom #1 and to proceed eastward toward the eastern, outer wall of the preschool. Mr. Hobbs made a number of ancillary observations, summarized as follows:

The children stated that they had entered a tunnel from the south east corner of room 1. We dug down along the east wall of room one and the bathroom. As we followed the disturbed area south, it went under the wall into the now existing bathroom, after about 6 feet it made an abrupt right turn to the east and headed for the neighboring property. The children had told two different stories about this tunnel prior to the dig. One, that they had gone through the tunnel and come up in the house next door and two, they had come up in the garage, which blocked the house from the street. At any rate the tunnel went in that direction. I went to the house next door and followed the walk between the school and the house which were only about 4′ apart. I went under the house and bellied my way toward the southwest corner of the house. After going about 20′ I found an area inside the west wall of the house where the floor was cut out. If I remember correctly the area of the floor that was missing was 36″ by 38″ or 41″, you could reach up and touch the bath tub which was exposed. The plumbing in that area appeared to be quite new.

I went back to the school and continued to dig. The tunnel I had been following was now headed toward the corner of the house where I had found the hole cut in the floor. I was very close to the foundation of the house, I was sure, so I poked a hole up through to the surface. The hole I punched through was about 2′ beyond the west wall of the house and about 1′ outside the south wall of the house. This tunnel was in direct line with the cut out opening under the house.

In addition to the difference in soil composition, the tunnel feature was distinctive from the surrounding matrix and from some other tunnel features discovered later, in that it had been back filled with earth that contained virtually no large artifacts or ecofacts. It did contain numerous flecks of charcoal and carbon and pieces of plaster with green paint, which the excavators hypothesized might be the remnants of the green paint that had been applied to the school in 1984 or 1985 and possibly of the fire that had occurred within the building on April 8, 1984. The maximum depth of the feature was 6 feet, and its excavated length was over 26 feet. The feature fulfilled 4 of the 5 test expectations as a tunnel, lacking only a well defined roof contour.

Several units for study were established in the adjacent vacant property (sidelot) and in the play yard adjacent to the school building, in reference to both the prior archaeological project and anomalies detected by GPR. These digs turned up apparently irrelevant artifacts such as the cesspool of the earlier residence on the sidelot and some irregular chunks and slabs of concrete. A more surprising finding was the absence of toys or other playthings that would be expected from the use of the excavated area of the preschool play yard as a children’s sand box. The only exception was a 3 inch plastic plate bearing three hand-drawn five-pointed stars of differing sizes. These stars were drawn by an adult with a careful and deliberate style inconsistent with childrens drawings.

The most definitive discoveries came to light through following the vein of artifactual debris from the tunnel portal under the west wall of Classroom #4. An apparent tunnel signature veered southward once inside the foundation. The width and direction were clearly indicated not only by the abundance of historic artifacts contained within it, but also the soil color of the fill matrix was distinctly darker than the surrounding natural soil. The average width of the tunnel feature was greater than 4 feet as it extended on the diagonal completely across Unit 1 and under the concrete floor to the western edge of Unit One.

Proceeding southward, the tunnel feature widened at one point to the extent that it appeared less tunnel-like and more like a room. Also at that point a layer of plywood roofing material along with tar paper and roofing nails was found at the top of the tunnel fill material. Underneath the plywood and tar paper was a continuing abundance of bottles, wood and other debris. It became obvious that this densely packed debris-filled area was quite large in relation to the tunnel passage previously described. This room-like feature extended southward to the area under the doorway to Classroom #4 and the sidewalk corridor beyond.

It was observed that the layer of plywood and tar paper, which may have served as a kind of roof for the room-like portion of the feature, continued in an arc to the east across the east side of the southeast corner of trench Unit 1. There were obvious soil color and density demarcation lines at the roof, floor and sides. The overburden of soil forming. The existing roof of the tunnel at that point was 22 inches thick (measuring from between the bottom of the concrete floor and the demarcation of the former tunnel cavity). The walls of this wider area bore shovel mark “scars”. These “scars” indicated that the tunnel had been dug out with hand tools rather than mechanized equipment.

The depth of the tunnel in the room-like area was a little more than 6’8″, which would have permitted most adult males to stand upright. In contrast, the depth of the tunnel in the passageway leading up to the room-like feature was more shallow, at an average of 5’11″, which would have required most adult males to bend over when walking through the passageway.

A major artifact was found buried within the room-like feature: an intact rural, roadside style mailbox. This mailbox had the name and address of the last occupants of the house that stood on the adjacent lot until it was torn down in 1972.

The tunnel direction changed dramatically beyond the room-like area, turning to a “dogleg” headed acutely eastward. A crucial dilemma was imminent at this point. With only two days left to complete all excavation, there was not time to both explore the full dimensions of the possible room and to follow the ultimate extent of the tunnel. Although important data may well have been missed by not fully exploring the “room”, it was considered more important at that time to redirect full effort to explore the tunnel. It was hoped that the more the tunnel feature could be defined, the more possibilities there would be for making correlations with the eyewitness reports of the children.

In digging out the tunnel fill eastward under the concrete floor, it became apparent that the line of the tunnel continued across Classroom #4 and into the cut through the floor at Unit 1. The width of the tunnel was still about 3 feet. The height of the tunnel feature was unlike the “room” area, returning to the 5 foot, 11 inch average height of the western passageway. Some boards and a few tin cans were still found in the tunnel fill within Unit 2 but they petered out until no more major artifact inclusions were encountered beyond about three fourths of the way across the unit.

The tunnel feature ran completely across Classroom #4, up to the foundation under the dividing wall. The overburden “roof” above the tunnel gradually diminished as the tunnel came closer to the surface until, at the point where the tunnel went under the concrete foundation, there was no soil overburden or roof. Consequently the bottom of the foundation intruded into the tunnel’s roof at that point. At the precise width of the tunnel, at the point where it crossed under the dividing wall between Classrooms #4 and #3, the bottom of the concrete foundation was slightly arched. The depth of the foundation at the centerpoint of the tunnel passage was some 25 inches below the concrete floor. The depth of this foundation, which gave it enormous strength, is curious, given that it supported only a structurally insignificant secondary dividing wall between the two classrooms.

At that point it became obvious that the initial Ground Penetrating Radar survey had actually detected the tunnel at the locus of its crossing under the dividing wall. Indeed, the GPR was successful in detecting the tunnel feature on both sides of the dividing wall beneath the concrete pad floor. The two corresponding anomalies had been the reason to cut through the concrete pad floor to create Classroom #3, Unit 1 and Classroom #4, Unit 2 in the first place. And it was the reason the two units were directly aligned with each other, even though on opposite sides of a then-existing dividing wall.

An unexpected discovery was made in the tunnel directly under the foundation between Classrooms #4 and #3. Four large containers were found in situ standing upright and directly beside each other. Curiously, they were not found on the floor of the tunnel but had been placed on a de facto “platform” of fill halfway up to the arched foundation.

The four containers were comprised of two blue enameled metal cylindrical pots; one tall, cylindrical crockery pot; and one rusted cast iron cauldron. The smaller of the two metal pots had a loose, makeshift handle of twisted wire. The larger metal pot had one original looped metal handle still fixed to one of its sides. The crockery container, stamped “Red Wing Stoneware Co.”, was of a glazed tan color and had a decoration of one cobalt blue leaf and three stems painted on one side.

Further work revealed that the tunnel ran completely under the dividing wall foundation arch and eastward under Classroom #3. Digging backward and downward, it was then possible to observe a profile of the tunnel feature. The bottom of the tunnel was slightly U-shaped and clearly distinguishable from the lighter natural soil matrix below, which unlike the tunnel fill, contained some lighter and darker-colored small areas of rodent burrow disturbances.

Just 12 inches eastward of the dividing wall foundation another profile was defined. The tunnel again had a “roof” of compacted overburden soil. Therefore an inverted U-shaped soil boundary was very clearly defined both in soil color and texture at the top of the tunnel profile.

Unlike the tunnel passages in Classroom #4, there were virtually no inclusions of artifacts in the tunnel fill within Classroom #3. Following the tunnel fill, the team reencountered the area of the metal waste pipe with the shiny pipe joiner clamps previously described. Following the tunnel fill eastward down trench Unit 1, it became apparent that the original tunnel virtually coincided with the size and length of the concrete cutout for that unit. This coincidence was the reason the tunnel was not discovered in the initial excavation of Unit 1. Digging downward precisely within its margins, it had been impossible to visualize the lateral signature of the tunnel.

Summarizing the excavation under Classrooms #3 and #4, there was a clearly defined tunnel whose data conformed to virtually all of the test expectations for the discovery and identification of such a tunnel. Indeed, it had been possible to follow the orientation of the tunnel for some 22 feet in Classroom #4 and for an additional 28 feet where it went in an east/west direction across Classrooms #4 and #3. Thus the explored portion of the tunnel extended for a total of more than 50 feet.

With what little time there was left, attention was directed to Unit 3 of Classroom #3, which contained the intriguing remains of wooden posts. These were found in situ, still in upright positions. Both posts were the remains of 4 x 4″ timbers. The first one had been burnt. The second post was more intact, and only slightly burnt. Due to their relationship parallel to the east wall of the preschool and relative to wood fragments to the north in Unit 2 found earlier by Jerry Hobbs, these posts seemed to be spaced at regular intervals, extending from north to south in classroom #3. They may have been part of a shoring system for an underground passageway, but there was no longer any time to explore for corroborative evidence.

In addition to discoveries underground, there were observations within the building itself which remain unexplained. A stack of twenty or more unused, light brown asphalt tile, appearing to be exactly the same as the tile used throughout the entire interior floor of the preschool, was discovered in the cupboard under the kitchenette sink in the office (p.181). This discovery raised the question of whether or not the floor had been patched, or perhaps replaced in its entirety. Several sections of tile had been removed by the District Attorney’s investigators in 1985 but the black mastic under the tile remained on the concrete slab. In order to check the preschool floor thoroughly for any patches or replaced areas of concrete, all of the tile would have to be removed and then the mastic would have to be sandblasted or chemically removed. Because of financial and time constraints, these ideas were quickly abandoned in favor of trying to locate and identify any tunnels or rooms under the school.

Several days into the project one of the workers noticed that Classroom #3 did not have a door knob (p.182). Instead, there was a single cylinder dead bolt with a flip latch on the inside, with only a keyhole on the outside. Once latched from the inside, there could be no entry to this classroom without a key. The face of this door was obscured from outside view due to its placement within the inside corner of the L shape of the building, recessed behind the north wall of Classroom #2. The absence of any exterior knob was thus undetectable whenever the door was open, since the face of the door backed onto the deadend of the hallway.

Several parents remembered that when they were present at the school during operating hours, the door had always stood open. A mother who had occasion to visit with her two-year-old son stated that whenever she was there the toddler would run into the vacant room and reach for the children’s paint and brushes. The child did this several times and each time the director would scold the mother and tell her it was not safe to let her baby go into the room because there were too many things he could get into. Yet the door was never closed.

Conclusions

The project determined the existence of two extensive tunnel complexes beneath the concrete floor of the McMartin Preschool building. One, toward the south, was consistent with the location and function described by children; it appeared to connect the interior of the preschool with the adjoining triplex structure and it had a distinct signature where it exited under the foundation of the east wall. Since it lacked dateable artifacts and a consistent demarcation of floor profile, it was classified conservatively as a “possible” tunnel.

The feature that conforms scientifically to the predetermined attributes as a tunnel was the complex on the north. This tunnel feature was clearly distinguished from the other subsurface features encountered during our excavations at the site. The northern tunnel feature conformed to virtually all of the test expectations, as follows:

1. An identified entrance;

2. The architecture was both linear and slightly curvilinear;

3. The architecture was large enough for adult human passage;

4. There were characteristic scars indicating that it had been dug by hand;

5. The feature had a compacted dirt floor;

6. The tunnel was found not open;

7. The tunnel had been completely, artificially filled in with fill which was distinguishable on the basis of color, texture and compaction from the original soil depositat the site;

8. The fill contained inclusions in the form of a large number of artifacts;

9. The probabilistic dating of the tunnel can be estimated by recovered artifacts.

The following seven factors determine probable age. First, it is unlikely that the bright, stainless steel straps had been placed on the pipe in 1966, when the structure was built. Second, the placement of the mailbox most probably dates to the time following the destruction of the neighboring house in 1972. Third, the Disney bag has a date of 1983, which indicates that the tunnel fill dates to that time or thereafter. Fourth, the arching of the foundation precisely over the tunnel was obviously a feature made to accommodate the tunnel and there is no other conceivable scenario to account for it. Fifth, the four large containers which were placed by hand into the tunnel fill indicate the use of the tunnel after the preschool was built. Given their position under the foundation, there is no possibility that they would not have been knocked out of place and their intact glass bottle and jar contents broken when the trench was excavated in 1966 for the pouring of the concrete foundation. Sixth, the ceiling of the tunnel was simply too shallow to have withstood human foot traffic on it in an unprotected state. If the tunnel feature had existed prior to the construction of the preschool, its covering or roof would have been so shallow that a person walking on the surface would have easily caved it in, thus exposing the tunnel. Finally, the soil deposit at this part of the property had been put into place and compacted at the time of the building construction. Therefore any holes or openings found in that area extending up to or near the surface would necessarily date to a time after 1966.

Therefore, given the evidence of the seven factors above, the time of the construction and use of the tunnel postdates 1966.

Summation

This report describes the efforts of a group of parents to explore the meaning of several issues raised by their children after attending the McMartin Preschool. Reports of the existence of underground passageways had not been confirmed in the limited exploration conducted by the office of the District Attorney. At the first opportunity of private access to the preschool property, these parents secured permission from the new owner to search more extensively for pertinent information. By engaging a highly recommended professional archaeological team, they hoped to bring scientific authority to whatever might be found or a definitive resolution for whatever was not to be found.

The present project started where the earlier investigation left off, re-examining the previous digs outside the school structure, using new technology to survey for possible anomalies beneath the floor of the structure, and then actually cutting through the concrete floor and scientifically evaluating the consistency and integrity of the underlying soil.

The results of the survey by Ground Penetrating Radar proved consistent with discoveries of the subsequent excavations, all of which confirmed not only the basic descriptions of children but also specific details of location, interior features and putative function.

The McMartin Tunnel Project confirms that a functional pattern of tunnels once existed under the McMartin Preschool, that the tunnels provided access outside the walls of the structure, that they must have been constructed after the structure was built in 1966, and that they were subsequently completely repacked with extraneous soil and implanted artifacts at some time prior to May, 1990. While this project had no way of determining who dug these tunnels, or for what purpose, the discoveries stand in stark contrast to the skeptical position that the children only imagined what they described as activities underground.

If the stories of the children were bogus fantasies, there is no excuse for the tunnels discovered under the school. If there really were tunnels, there is no excuse for the glib dismissal of any and all of the complaints of the children and their parents.

References

Langenwalter, Paul E., Kevin Peter, Jane King, and Robert Beer, 1985. Report on a forensic archaelogical investigation conducted at the Goldstein property at Manhattan Beach, California. Report prepared for the Los Angeles County District Attorney. Unpublished report on file at the contracted firm of Scientific Resource Surveys, Inc., Huntington Beach, California, and at the Office of the District Attorney.

Stickel, E. Gary, 1979. More on Theory Building in Archaeology. Current Anthropology, Vol. 10, pp. 621-622.