The Longest Criminal Trial In American History (Mcmartin Trial)
It was the longest criminal trial in American history and ended without a single conviction. Five people were accused of child sexual abuse based on extremely flimsy evidence. Some parents came to believe bizarre stories about ritual abuse and tunnels under the kindergarten. It’s no surprise that the McMartin case, once dubbed the largest “mass molestation” case in history, has come to be known as a witch hunt. In a commentary for Retro Report earlier this month, former Times reporter Clyde Haberman echoed the view that the case was a witch hunt and spawned a wave of other “suspicious origins” cases. But does this statement do justice to the facts?
A careful review of court records reveals that the witch hunt narrative about the McMartin case is a powerful but not entirely accurate story. For starters, critics have obscured the facts surrounding the origins of the case. Richard Beck, quoted as an expert in the Retro Report story, recently claimed that the McMartin case began when Judy Johnson “went to the police” to claim that her child was being molested. Fellow writer Debbie Nathan, quoted by Retro Report, went further, suggesting that “everyone missed the fact that Judy Johnson was psychotic.”
But the Manhattan Beach Police did not start this case with Judy Johnson’s word. Instead, they were impressed by the medical evidence of anal trauma on her son. Johnson did not come to the police station on August 12; she went to the family doctor who, after examining her son, referred him to the Emergency Room. That doctor recommended that the boy be examined by a specialist. The pediatric specialist is the one who reported to the Manhattan Beach Police Department that “the victim’s anus had been forcibly penetrated several days earlier.”
Judy Johnson died of alcohol poisoning in 1986, making her an easy target for those promoting the witch hunt narrative, but there is no evidence that she was “psychotic” three years earlier. A profile in the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, published after Johnson’s death, made it clear that in 1983 he was “strong and healthy” and that he was “jogging constantly and eating healthy food”. Yes, many strange things were said by parents in February and March 1984. But that does not mean that they were all “psychotic” even then, let alone half a year ago. The trial did not start with the rantings of a legendary madwoman.
Retro Report also dismissed the extensive medical evidence in the McMartin case with a single claim that there was no “conclusive” evidence. But defense attorney Danny Davis allowed that the genital injuries to one girl were “serious and credible.” (His primary argument to the jury was that much of the time this girl attended McMartin was outside the statute of limitations.) Vaginal injuries on another girl, one of three who participated in both McMartin trials, were described by a pediatrician as probative of sexual abuse “to a medical certainty.” Were the Retro Report reporter and the fact checkers aware of this evidence?
None of this is in defense of the charges against the five (possibly six) teachers in the case. Nor is it an endorsement of the claims by some parents that large numbers of children were ritually abused. Rather, it is a defense to treat the case as something that unfolded over time and the children as individuals, not as an undifferentiated mass. It appears that in both cases there were credible reasons for the jurors to vote in favor of a guilty verdict on certain issues. These facts do not fit the witch-hunt narrative. Instead, they depict the reality of a complex case.
When all the evidence in a child sexual abuse case is overshadowed by a story of prosecutorial excess, children are the ones being sold cheaply by the media. This is exactly what Retro Report did earlier this month. The injustices in the McMartin case were significant, many were directed at the defendants, and the story has been told many times. But there was also a body of credible evidence of misconduct that should not be ignored or erased from history because it got in the way of a good story.
The witch hunt narrative replaced all the complex facts about the McMartin case, and Retro Report, whose mission is to debunk media myths, stood firmly on the side of the myth. It wasn’t all a witch hunt.
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