Kathleen 'Kee' MacFarlane (born 1947) is an American social worker known for involvement in the high-profile McMartin preschool trial in the 1980s. Before her arrest, Peggy McMartin Buckey, Virginias daughter, was the main administrator of McMartin Preschool. Peggy Buckey's bail was set at $1 million. One of the prosecutors was quoted as saying, "Kee MacFarlane could make a six month old baby say he was molested.". MacFarlanes findings and techniques were later criticized, as was her relationship with reporter Wayne Satz, who extensively covered the McMartin Preschool story for Los Angeles KABC, according to the Associated Press. A girl later testified that children were forced to play a game called naked movie star, during which they took their clothes off and were photographed, according to the Los Angeles Times. He also limited testimony to late 1983 to March 1984, when Ms. MacFarlane ended her interviews with children and indictments were issued. Following Buckeys arrest in 1983, police reached out to 200 parents whose children attended the McMartin Preschool. According to the Los Angeles Times, the boy claimed that after getting the coffin out, the teachers would cut the bodies up. In December, 1986, Johnson died of alcohol poisoning, less than a year before the first McMartin trial began. CBS2's Paul Magers spoke with key figures in the McMartin abuse case about what's happened in the years since. By the time the Buckeys trial began in the spring 1987, the case against them had been reduced to 99 charges of molestation and one of conspiracy involving 14 children. The judge ruled in the McMartins favor, but determined that the defendant couldnt have damaged their reputations any more than the subsequent six-year-trialthe longest and most expensive ($15 million) in U.S. history to dateand national media coverage of the sex abuse accusations. Some were things I didnt know., At another point she said, I remember being shocked at what kind of information he had. The attorneys also argued that her credibility might be damaged if jurors knew about the relationship. The social and political conditions at the time set the stage for the most destructive moral panic since the Salem witch trials. Its impossible to know the extent of the emotional damage that the McMartin children and others across the country suffered into adulthood (very few have spoken out publicly). Sign up forOxygen Insiderfor all the best true crime content. Some of the children came forward years later and revealed how they knew that they were lying with their allegations. This led her to question her own memories of what had happened (she still questions them to this day), though she initially told the police she wasnt molested. There were reports that McMartin teachers slaughtered animals and babies in front of the children before abusing them. But they no longer provide children interview services, medical exams or make any determinations of abuse. Kathleen 'Kee' MacFarlane [1] (born 1947) [2] is an American social worker known for involvement in the high-profile McMartin preschool trial in the 1980s. At the conclusion, charges were dropped against Virginia McMartin, Peggy Ann Buckey, Jackson, Spitler and Raidor. Peggy McMartin Buckey was eventually released from custody on an almost $300,000 bail, while Ray would spend five years in jail before being released in 1989 on $1.5 million bail, reported. Meanwhile, the prosecution tried to prove that sexual abuse had been occurring at a widespread level. Satanic rituals and secret dark tunnels were also described. Carolyn Cunningham, Kee MacFarlane. Coercive interview and interrogation tactics were used on children in many of the child sex abuse cases across the country. Although few children corroborated the allegations of abuse, those who did embellished Judy Johnson's stories. Upon reviewing the original interviews, prosecutor Glenn Stevens became uncomfortable with Kee MacFarlanes "leading questions," as he called them in an interview with The Washington Post, and had misgivings about the medical evidence of abuse. On Dec. 19, 1986, she was found dead in her home, and the coroners office listed her cause of death as fatty metamorphosis of the liver associated with alcoholism, according to, . mental stability was a major focus of the preliminary hearing. In January 1990, Buckey was acquitted on most of the charges, with the jury deadlocked on another 13 counts, according to The Washington Post. Another student named Kyle Zirpolo told the Los Angeles Times in 2005 that he had fabricated the allegations. She developed the concept of the anatomically correct doll for children to use during interviews concerning abuse and played a significant role in the McMartin preschool trial. According to the kids, the staff at McMartin could turn into witches and fly. Using puppets to communicate, children were "led, begged, bribed, cajoled, shamed and intimidated" during the interviews until allegations were finally made. Crime News is your destination for true crime stories from around the world, breaking crime news, and information about Oxygen's original true crime shows and documentaries. The. Some children said they never went to the McMartin School, even though they did.. By 1989, the number of charges had been reduced to 64, and the trial dragged on, according to the, In November 1989, after two and half years and testimony from 124 witnesses, a weary jury began deliberating the fates of Ray Buckey and Peggy McMartin Buckey. The thing was that, apart from the CII doctors, none of the 124 witnesses called during the trial, or 800 exhibits in court, offered an corroborating evidence to support the prosecutor's allegations. The case cost $15 million to prosecute, according to the Los Angeles Times. As with her grandmother and three co-workers, the charges against her were dismissed in 1986 for lack of evidence. Five McMartin teachers were ultimately arrested and charged, along with the schools administrator, Peggy McMartin Buckey, and its 76-year-old founder, Virginia McMartin, with what detectives and child therapists determined was ritualistic satanic abuse. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! [3] In the time leading up to the McMartin preschool trial, MacFarlane described herself as a psychotherapist but lacked any professional licenses. Testimony by Kee MacFarlane, Director of Children's Instititute International (Witness for the Prosecution) August 8, 1988. On March 22nd, 1984, three McMartin teachers, Mary Ann Jackson, Bette Raidor, and Babette Spitler, were indicted along with Ray Buckey, Peggy Buckey, Ray's sister Peggy Ann Buckey, and Virginia McMartin (pictured), who founded the preschool 30 years earlier. It took another two-and-a-half months for the jury to return with their verdict. On March 22, 1984, seven employees of the McMartin Preschool were indicted, including Virginia McMartin, then 76, Peggy McMartin Buckey, Peggy Ann Buckey, Ray Buckey, and employees Mary Ann Jackson, Babette Spitler and Betty Raidor. What were trying to show is that Kee MacFarlane had a relationship with Wayne Satz to enhance her career.. Photo: After years of sensationalistic press coverage of the McMartin case, many were outraged by the Buckeys almost complete acquittal. According to Abusing Religion: Literary Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions, during the course of the scandal Peggy Buckey was "stabbed in the crotch by a stranger," had her preschool torched, and at one point, "accusing parents located a hit man willing to bomb her car." What started with a lone accusation from a single parent snowballed into hundreds of child sex abuse claims at the exclusive Manhattan Beach, California, preschool. To say that these allegations were coerced is an understatement. Please try again later. That evidence from the prosecution, photographs taken at the Children's Institute International, showed what they believed was trauma to the genital area. Seven McMartin Preschool employees were arrested and charged with more than 300 counts of molestation and conspiracy, and by the end of the preliminary trial hearing, charges had been dropped against five of the them. The McMartin case was symptomatic of a nationwide panic about an epidemic of child sexual abuse at day-care centers in the 80s, with other high-profile cases in Minnesota, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Texas all fomenting media hype, legislative changes, and mass hysteria. Beck attributes societys unwavering belief in the 80s child sex abuse cases to a number of forces that came together in America at that time: a conservative backlash against the counterculture that had dominated the 60s and 70s, with its rejection of law enforcement and authority; a similar backlash against the sexual revolution and feminism, which dismantled the nuclear family, sending women to work and children to day-care centers; homophobia linked to the AIDS epidemic and an attendant fear that men who were caretakers outside the home were pedophiles; the rise of conservative Christian evangelicals, many of whom had helped elect President Ronald Reagan and feared the proliferation of pornography. McMartin died in 1995 at 88 after suffering a series of strokes, according to, Before her arrest, Peggy McMartin Buckey, Virginias daughter, was the main administrator of McMartin Preschool. By the end of December 1983, MacFarlane had interviewed more than 30 McMartin children, a number that would eventually balloon to 375. "The criminal justice system, interviewers and police, law enforcement are much more concerned about eliciting information from children, as opposed to giving them clues," Rubin said. They say 'No' and I say 'OK, let's not talk about it.' In cases across the country, medical professionals, detectives, prosecutors, parents, and therapists simply believed children had been sexually abused: They manipulated the truth to fit their version of the truth and fabricated evidence where none existed. Virginia McMartin died in 1995 at age 88, and her daughter Peggy died in 2000, at 74. Heger determined that 80 percent of the 150 children she examined had been abused, but she sometimes arrived at that conclusion even when she found no abrasions or variations. According to The New York Times, Stevens admitted that they were aware that "the evidence was so bad and so weak" but they decided to push ahead with the case anyway. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more. In addition to finding no evidence of child pornography, all of the investigations associated with sexual abuse at McMartin Preschool turned up empty. The prosecutor's case was presented in 13 days and the trial lasted three months rather than 30. But many of the stories, pursued with zeal through the courts, were false and extremely destructive. Over the course of a decade, seven teachers were arrested on more than 300 charges of child molestation and conspiracy, leading to the longest and costliest criminal trial in U.S. history, according to The New York Times. She was the Director of Children's Institute International. But according to Elephant Executed for Murder, the story told by Johnson's son wasn't so straightforward. In August 1983, Judy Johnson placed a call to the police claiming that her 2-year-old son had suffered sexual abuse at McMartin Preschool. Following the Buckeys acquittals, MacFarlane claimed she was, naive in never having been part of a case like this,. [9][10] By spring of 1984, it was claimed that 360 children had been abused. It was after March 1984, she said, but added she could not be sure because relationships evolve over time.. She was among those indicted and arrested in March 1984. "Oh, course I did. The preliminary hearing lasted 20 months and cost $4 million. The trial was also outrageously expensive, costing taxpayers over $15 million. Afterwards, one of the jurors said that they "now realize how easily something can be said and misinterpreted and blown out of proportion." Johnson believed one of his teachers, Ray Buckey, had sodomized the boy with his thermometer.. She would later claim that her dog had been sodomized and that her estranged husband molested one of their children, according to The Washington Post. Another student named Kyle Zirpolo told the. Magers asked Rubin. They first faced 115, then later 321 charges involving 48 children, according to, Photo: American social worker. Ms. MacFarlane said they met when Satz came to interview her for a general story on child molestations. Ray Buckey was held without bail, and would remain incarcerated for five years during the length of the trial. He said that, as a child, he claimed to have been abused by Ray Buckey, even though he had never met him. Some children claimed to have been photographed nude after being taken on a hot air balloon ride. One example can be seen during an interview about the "Naked Movie Star Game," claimed to be a pretense for taking nude photographs of the children. 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