Ted Gorman found secret tunnels and underground chambers beneath the McMartin Pre-School: Kids molested
Former Los Angeles FBI chief Ted Gorman investigated claims of secret tunnels and underground chambers beneath the McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach during the 1980s-1990s
Some students once claimed they were taken to secret underground areas, but investigators could never find any. A Superior Court jury earlier this year acquitted one defendant of all charges and another of most.
The district attorney’s office, which is retrying former McMartin teacher Ray Buckey on eight molestation counts stemming from the alleged sexual abuse of three girls from 1979 until 1983, said the excavation is unrelated to its prosecution.
Accusations of child sexual molestation and Satanism at the McMartin Preschool resulted in one of the longest, costliest and most controversial trials in U.S. history.
Hundreds of preschool students were subsequently interviewed by employees at Children’s Institute International, a local non-profit that provides social services, with controversial techniques that were later criticized for planting ideas in the children’s minds.
The interviews pressured children to admit abuse, even if they initially said there was none, according to experts. The children recounted bizarre stories in the interviews — including descriptions of Satanic rites and animal sacrifice — leading to the arrests of Buckey and six other staff members on hundreds of counts of child molestation. Charges against five of them were later dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Ray Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, were brought to trial, but neither were ultimately convicted.
Children claimed they were molested in a number of locations, and that Buckey would murder and mutilate animals in front of them to scare them into silence, according to The Washington Post. Some said they were led through tunnels or flushed down the toilet to secret rooms underneath the school. Once there, they said they were sexually molested by men and women dressed in hooded black robes, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Some parents reacted hysterically and became obsessed with the idea of secret rooms and tunnels beneath the McMartin Preschool. In March 1985, the Associated Press reported that 50 parents descended on the property with shovels and a backhoe to dig for evidence.
In January 1990, the Buckeys were found not guilty. The entire affair lasted six years and cost $15 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. But after years of sensationalistic press coverage and some parents’ unwavering belief in their children’s stories, there was a massive public outcry. This resulted in Ray Buckey being retried on 13 counts of molestation and conspiracy in March 1990, and yet more digging at the former site of the McMartin Preschool.
