Witch Psych

The South Bay is where I grew up. We have beautiful beaches. We are the home to bands like The Beach Boys, Black Flag, and Pennywise. The South Bay has it’s share of oddities, curiosities, true crime, and the paranormal. Today’s story sits somewhere between true crime, paranormal, and psychology. Welcome to the hysteria involving McMartin Preschool and some Satanic Panic!

In August of 1983, a woman named Judy Johnson called the Manhattan Beach Police Department to report that her 2-yr-old son had been abused, specifically sodomized, by a teacher named Ray Buckey (Kettler 2022). Sources say that she had taken him to be examined because his butt was really red and that the doctors had found no evidence of sexual abuse. Buckey was then arrested the following September.

A letter was sent to the parents of the children attending McMartin Preschool which ignited a massive, for all intents and purposes, witch hunt. Parents and guardians were absolutely hysterical because this whole ordeal took place during the Satanic Panic. 200 letters asked parents and guardians to question their children about witnessing crimes. The letter also detailed the sexual abuse acts to ask about and the name of the alleged abuser.

The problem is that a child is vulnerable to leading questions due to their desire to please adults (MacLeod et al 2021). Historically, this case is what drove that point home. The desire to please an authoritative figure has been illustrated by Stanley Milgram’s electroshock experiment. Also, equally as notable is the suggestability of memory, research on false memory, and of course the Mandala effect. As for the capacity to intentionally lie, “…studies have shown that children show rudimentary conceptual and moral understanding of lying around 3 years of age but take more than a decade to reach maturity (e.g., being able to consider intention when categorizing a statement as a lie and evaluate its moral values).” (Talwar & Lee 2008).

Depending on the source, either 400 or 450 children were interviewed. Ages ranged from 4 to 10 years old due to the questioning of former students. Interviews appear to mostly be conducted by Children’s Institute International (CIT). These children were interviewed by social workers who used questionable techniques. “Kids were given anatomical dolls and encouraged to use puppets, such as Pac-Man, to communicate what was otherwise unspeakable.” (Goddard 2024).

I couldn’t find much on what the children said exactly. The majority of articles summarize the interviews likely due to their sensational nature. There is mention of underground tunnels, Satanic cult rites, sacrificing animals, orgies in various places including a car wash, hot air balloon rides, and some bizzare game called “Naked Movie Star”. Of course, because they are children, the information changed throughout this entire process and consistency was not maintained. Evidence of a pornography ring wasn’t found.

This Pac-Man thing really bothers me. I can tell you right now as a gamer, psych student, and logical human being that Pac-Man is not anatomically correct. How is a child going to relate physical structures to Pac-Man? Pac-Man has no body parts. Only on the arcade art do you actually see limbs. Alright my gamer geek rant is over.

Buckey, his grandmother, his mom, his sister, and three other teachers were brought up on charges by the District Attorney Robert Philibosian (Kettler 2022) (Goddard 2024). Buckey and his family worked at the school. His grandmother actually owned the preschool and the full name was Virgina McMartin Preschool. Eventually, due to the lack of evidence, only Ray Buckey was charged.

This ordeal started in 1983 and didn’t end till 1990. There were no convictions but the damage to their lives was already done. Peggy Buckey allegedly developed agoraphobia and, to be honest, I can see why. It is regarded as the most expensive trial in the nation’s history at 15 million dollars. Ultimately, this entire thing could have been avoided if someone where to have first investigated Judy Johnson throughly.

Judy Johnson, the mom who started this all, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1985. It is worth noting that the paranoid subtype was removed from the DSM-5. Previously, the American Psychological Association (APA) described the disorder as:

“…characterized by prominent delusions or auditory hallucinations. Delusions are typically persecutory, grandiose, or both; hallucinations are typically related to the content of the delusional theme. Cognitive functioning and mood are affected to a much lesser degree than in other types of schizophrenia.” (APA 2023).

This fact was then withheld from the defense team but I am not sure for how long. Apparently someone didn’t think it was information of the upmost importance since the trial ended in 1990. It is a gigantic tragedy that likely serves as a source of psychological trauma to this day. It has shaped how investigations and interviews are conducted. I can’t imagine the amount of guilt that the children who testified now deal with as adults.

If you want to learn more then there are a few books about the subject that I have not yet had time to read:

“The Abuse of Innocence: The McMartin Preschool Trial” by Paul and Shirley Eberle

“Anatomy of the McMartin Child Molestation Case” by Edgar W. Butler, Hiroshi Fukurai, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, and Richard Krooth

“They Must Be Monsters: A Modern-Day Witch Hunt – The Untold Story of the McMartin Phenomenon: The Longest, Most Expensive Criminal Case in U.S. History” by Matthew LeRoy

References

American Psychological Association. (2023). Paranoid schizophrenia. https://dictionary.apa.org/paranoid-schizophrenia

Cherry, K. (2024 August 13). Understanding the Milgram experiment in psychology. VeryWell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/the-milgram-obedience-experiment-2795243#:~:text=Results%20of%20the%20Milgram%20Experiment,before%20reaching%20the%20highest%20levels.

Goddard, C. (2024 July 17). Wild claims of mass child molestation rocked an L.A. beach town. Truth was the first casualty. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-07-17/crimes-of-the-times-mcmartin-preschool

Haas, M. (2022). McMartin preschool trials. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/mcmartin-preschool-trials

History.com Editors. (2025). Defendant in McMartin preschool trials is acquitted. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-18/the-mcmartin-preschool-trials

Kettler, S. (2022). The McMartin preschool case: satanic panic and child sexual abuse allegations. https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/mcmartin-preschool

Macleod, E., Hobbs, L., Admiraal, A., La Rooy, D., & Patterson, T. (2021). The use and impact of repeated questions in diagnostic child abuse assessment interviews. Psychiatry, psychology, and law : an interdisciplinary journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 29(3), 364–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2021.1910586

Malloy, L. C., & Stolzenberg, S. N. (2019). Editorial Perspective: Questioning kids: applying the lessons from developmentally sensitive investigative interviewing to the research context. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 60(3), 325–327. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13005

Talwar, V., & Lee, K. (2008). Social and cognitive correlates of children’s lying behavior. Child development, 79(4), 866–881. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01164.x