The McMartin Preschool Case - What Really Happened and the Coverup

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Ray Buckey's Press Corps and the Tunnels of McMartin - From: Psychic Dictatorship in the USA, Alex Constantine (Feral House, 1995).

Apparently Abby Mann has a need for Ms. Fischer and the other writers in his employ. A best-selling Hollywood biographer (speaking on condition of anonymity) offers this insight into the career of Abby Mann. "He's incapable of writing scripts himself. It's true," he said, "he can't write. Abby keeps a fairly large stable of ghost writers to produce scripts in his name." Who is Abby Mann? Mae Brussell, the late Carmel-based political researcher, speculated in a November, 1987 radio broadcast that Mann is a covert operator posing as a Hollywood progressive, plying extensive media connectioins to influence public opinion. Mann's behind-the-scenes manipulations, ghosts and an exhaustive supply of funds and press contacts, support the hypothesis that Abby Mann is a media mole. Indictment, yet another disinformation effort supposedly written by Abby and Myra Mann, premiered on May 20, 1985 on HBO. The movie was produced and directed by Oliver Stone. As a political researcher, I had taken more than a passing interest in Stone's film JFK, and couldn't help but note that the media assault on Stone's bore a resemblance to Mann's campaign to discredit the McMartin children. The day after an announcement of the "secret" project already underway appeared in Variety, I contacted Stone's office and spoke with Jean Marie Burke, a researcher for Ixtlan Productions, Stone's company in Santa Monica. I informed Ms. Burke that much of the information about McMartin in the corporate media was disingenuous, beginning with the Eberles.

She brightened up. "Oh, the Eberles - I have their books right here!" She went silent when I told her that Paul and Shirley Eberle were child pornographers. I sent her a package of accurate information on the case by certified mail, then contacted her boss with a letter informing him simply that he had hold of a bad project, which had already been shot and was in the editing stage Stone wrote back, asking me to clarify. My response follows:

Mr. Stone: McMartin is poorly understood by most people because a disinformation gambit is afoot to discredit the children's¹ testimony -- a fusillade, in fact, similar to the one you were treated to after JFK. You asked me to clarify my objections. Consider how difficult it was to sort through and communicate the multitude of facts relevant to the killing of John Kennedy. And then recall how a carefully-conceived film on the assassination can be explained away with a glib "no evidence" from an Edward Epstein or Dan Rather. This is the problem I¹m up against with McMartin. There is a complex story behind the abuse -- it involves CIA mind control experiments, and this is largely what the plants in the establishment press, and fronts like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, are concealing. (Nine out of ten psychiatrists in both the U.S. and Great Britain from large samplings believe ritual abuse to be a very real social problem. But the media inevitably talks only to the one of ten who deny, and many of those are experimental scientists on the CIA payroll.) You now find yourself on the same side (of the McMartin argument) as Alex Cockburn (you recall the knock-down-drag-out Nation debate with a leading progressive who rejects key crimes of government ((including the Kennedy assassination)) for high-toned, but ultimately silly reasons), Newsweek, etc. That alone should make you uncomfortable in the extreme. One of your researchers brightened up when I mentioned the only two books available on McMartin, both written by Paul and Shiirley Eberle. She knew those books inside out. The problem is, the Eberles published child pornography in the 1970s -- garishly packaged in an underground rag called Finger -- featuring adults having sex with children, children with excrement smeared on them, children in lewd positions and posing provocatively. This ludicrous pedophile sheet ran stories with such unsavory testimonials as "She was Only Thirteen," "What Happens when *beep* Adopt White Children," "My First Rape," and so on. Don¹t bother to read the McMartin books, if you haven¹t already. Each page is full of factual errors and conscious distortions. Your movie will perpetuate the Eberles' disinformation. But the LA Times will love it. (Buffy Chandler told a source of mine, in a moment of rage at her family, that her parents (the owners of the L.A. Times) funded weird genetic experiments years ago. This is no more bizarre than some of the things done in pre-schools around the country, and may explain the newspaper¹s change of attitude after the initial reporting.)

But Noel Greenwood, a Times editor, knew what he was talking about when he said there is a "mean-spirited campaign" in play to slant the truth about McMartin. Abby Mann is a key proponent. His attorney threatened to sue if I didn't retract my comments when an early version of my research appeared several years ago. I did not retract. In fact, the newspaper, Random Lengths in Long Beach, backed me. Others appearing in the story threatened me. They did not sue. Why not? They made such a noise. Now they are the sources of your movie, still making noise about "innocence abused," and it¹s hollow.

They contend there is no evidence that children were abused at McMartin. On the contrary, there is an abundance of evidence. But the DA had no real intention of gathering it. Neither did the press. Same as JFK, eh? The CIA connection to cults around the country began in 1963. The story was told by a Berkeley psychologist in a thesis entitled "The Penal Colony," which was presented at a psychiatric conference in San Francisco by Congressional aide Joe Holsinger after Leo Ryan was killed at Jonestown. The hybrid was conceived because people were asking questions about experiments at McGill, the University of Pennsylvania, John Hopkins, UCLA, Honeywell, NASA and other haunts of the CIA's MKULTRA mind control fraternity. Jonestown was one product of the association. Another, more recent example was the Solar Temple killings in Switzerland. The British press reported that this cult was running arms to Australia and South America, and laundering the proceeds at BCCI. The American press couldn't find this information. What does this tell you?

Buckey Sr. testified that he did not have tunnels dug beneath the preschool. Why would anyone do that? Five scientists have put their reputations on the line to confirm that there are tunnels. One, a carbon-dating specialist, discovered that the tunnels were excavated in 1968. That was the year the preschool was built. It was built by Charles Buckey. He lied on the stand. The kids gave fairly accurate descriptions of the tunnels. Did Abby?

Regards, Alex Constantine

Despite this protest, and threats of a boycott of HBO from children's advocacy groups around the country, Indictment aired anyway. The movie simply reinforces the many misconceptions the public has been force-fed since Abby Mann became involved in the case. The Most Hated Man at the L.A. Times In January, 1990, after the anti-climactic, deadlocked verdict of the second trial, the Los Angeles Tmes ran a four-part series by media critic David Shaw, trashing the paper's own coverage of the McMartin case. Shaw described press coverage of the case as a "media feeding frenzy" ranking with exposes of Gary Hart, Oliver North and Dan Quayle. "More than most big stories," Shaw explained, "McMartin at times exposed basic flaws in the way the contemporary news organizations function. Pack journalism. Laziness. Superficiality." Daily newspaper coverage, he argued, was contaminated by "cozy relationships with prosecutors," and a competitive furor "that sends reporters off in a frantic search to be the first with the latest shocking alllegation."

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Cult and Ritual Abuse - It's History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America - Noblitt and Perskin - Prager (2000) p. 141 - 142 (1995 book - p.184 2000 book) "The McMartin Case is also the subject of the cable movie, Indictment, produced by Home Box Office. Several children's advocacy groups have expressed concerns that the film's focus appears to be slanted in favor of the accused perpetrators. The newsletter for the organization, Believe the Children, contains an impassioned plea to its readers to relinquish their subscriptions to Home Box Office (HBO) in protest of the film's airing. An article featured in the newsletter entitled "Sex Abuse, Lies and Videotape"(1995) describes the genesis of the program and voices its concerns that the true victims of the McMartin case, the children, might be damaged by the perspective of the film's author, Abby Mann. According to the article, Mann and his wife, Myra, became advocates of the operators and staff of the McMartin preschool during the course of their trial. Because of the Mann's involvement in the case and their relationship to the accused perpetrators, the article expressed the concern that the film might reflect an unbalanced portrait of accused and accusers such that roles might be reversed in the eyes of the viewing public. This has, in fact, been proven to be a correct assumption. Reviews of the cable movie featured in magazines such as Time (Bellafante, 1995) and TV Guide (McDougal, 1995) on the film's depiction of an overzealous prosecuting attorney, a mentally unbalanced parent of a child victim, and a punitive therapist all lend themselves to the perpetuation of the ideas that the true victims are the alleged perpetrators. Ironically, this film also casts the media in an unfavorable light implying that the media's over-the-top reporting of the event led to a veritable witch hunt."

"The movie "The Indictment," produced for Home Box Office, about the McMartin trial, was criticized by several children's advocacy groups for being slanted in favor of the accused perpetrators. According to an article featured in the newsletter "Sex Abuse, Lies and Videotape," (1995) the film's author Abby Mann and his wife Myra became advocates of the operators and staff of the McMartin preschool during the McMartin trial. The article expressed the concern that the film might reflect an unbalanced portrait of accused and accusers such that roles might be reversed in the eyes of the viewing public. This has been proven to be a correct