Hollywood Tapes and Testimony

By Richard Lacayo, Michael Riley/Los Angeles

Three years ago, the nation's most infamous child-molestation case erupted in the Los Angeles suburb of Manhattan Beach. Seven teachers and administrators at the prestigious McMartin Preschool would eventually be indicted on hundreds of counts of child sexual abuse. There were tales of drugs, bondage and the mutilation of animals.

As bizarre as the stories seemed, another chilling possibility was yet to be raised: that none of it had happened at all. In January, after an 18-month preliminary hearing that was the longest in California history, a judge ruled that the prosecution of the seven could go forward. But a week later District Attorney Ira Reiner dropped all charges against five of the defendants, calling the evidence against them "incredibly weak." The two remaining accused, Raymond Buckey, 28, and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 60, were to be tried last month. Now their day in court has been postponed and the case against them thrown into turmoil by the only element the tale seemed to lack, a touch of Hollywood.

In September Screenwriter-Producer Abby Mann (Judgment at Nuremberg, The Atlanta Child Murders) handed to the defense 30 hours of taped conversations involving himself, his wife Myra, and Glenn Stevens, a former member of the prosecution team who is working with the Manns on a book and a film about the case. Based on those tapes, the defense now asserts that the prosecution acted improperly by withholding important evidence, among other things. Lawyers for the Buckeys are asking to have all remaining charges dropped or, failing that, to have the D.A.'s office removed from the case. Meanwhile, Stevens, the man at the center of the upheaval, could face legal troubles of his own.

The 34-year-old lawyer left his job in the D.A.'s office last January, after leaking to the press that there was dissension on the prosecution team over the soundness of the case. The charges against the defendants are based mainly on interviews with the children and physical traces of sexual activity; no other substantial corroboration like pornographic photos, was uncovered. Under cross-examination during the hearing, the children's stories seemed to Stevens to unravel. He came to agree with the defense that an expert on child sex abuse had asked leading and suggestive questions during pretrial investigations. "They're contaminated kids," argues Stevens.

Soon after leaving his job, Stevens was approached by the Manns with a book- and-movie contract. They saw him as a leading character, they said, perhaps played by Robert Redford--an ambitious lawyer but one whose conscience would not let him use a tainted case to advance his career. During long hours at the Manns' home in Beverly Hills, Stevens spilled his thoughts into a tape recorder. That material, it was agreed, would be considered confidential until after the trial. But some of what Stevens was saying seemed as if it might help the defense.

He mentioned strange conversations with the woman (her name has not been made public) who set the McMartin case in motion by complaining that her two-year-old son had been molested. In her talks with Stevens, he said, she claimed that she had been followed and that her dog had been sodomized. "I mean it's really beginning to be pathetic," Stevens says on the tapes, adding, "She had accused her husband of molesting the child." The woman, he concluded, was a "banana truck." Questions about the mental state of the boy's mother had also been raised by a letter mentioning witches and Satanism that she wrote to the D.A. in February 1984, a month before the seven defendants were indicted. Stevens claims to have been surprised when the Manns told him they had learned that the letter had not been made available to the defense. In criminal cases, evidence tending to support the innocence of the accused must be shown to his counsel.

In early September, after being advised by their lawyers that they might be withholding vital information, the Manns turned over the tapes to the defense without clearing their action with Stevens. Later they gave them to the state attorney general's office. "We had no choice," says Mann. News of the tapes distressed parents of the 13 children involved in the case. A lawyer for the families has asked the state attorney general to investigate whether Stevens violated a state law that bars a prosecutor from assisting in the defense of a case in which he had been involved. Others question whether he improperly used confidential information gained while working in the D.A.'s office. For its part, the prosecution claims that Stevens, motivated by money, has lied about his role in the case. They say he himself was responsible for the handling of the letter in question, and that no one else in the office knew about it until after he left his job, when it was found in his files. Stevens counters that the letter should have been turned over before he joined the prosecution team in April 1984.

Despite Stevens' charges, D.A. Reiner maintains, "there is strong, compelling evidence that the two are guilty." Whether Buckey and his mother will benefit from the disclosures is still to be decided. The personal costs of the McMartin case, however, have already been high. Raymond Buckey, who has been in jail for 33 months without bail, said on 60 Minutes last month that the sexual-abuse scandal had already ruined his life and that of his family. "They've burned a scarlet letter on me that I can never get rid of," he said. The McMartin parents must endure the dark question of whether their children have been grievously misused by abusive teachers or overeager prosecutors. "Who's going to survive McMartin?" Stevens glumly inquires. "Who's going to come out unscathed? Nobody." Perhaps the film will do well.