Abuse of Innocence [Hardcover]

Paul Eberle (Author), Shirley Eberle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1993

On 12 August 1983, Judy Johnson called the police and told them her two-year-old son had been sexually abused at Virginia McMartin's Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California. Mrs. Johnson accused a teacher, Raymond Buckey. After searching the school and the homes of the owners and teachers, police distributed a letter to parents of children attending the McMartin Pre-school urging them to ask their children if they have witnessed any acts of sexual molestation by Buckey. The result was mass hysteria. None of the allegations were true. Investigative journalists, Paul and Shirley Eberle witnessed the McMartin Trial and uncovered stunning amounts of prosecutorial misconduct, all revealed in this disturbing book.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1983, the family-run McMartin Preschool Nursery in Manhattan Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles, was subjected to a sexual-abuse investigation that lasted six years, cost taxpayers $16 million and initially identified 42 children as victims. Children testified about being sodomized, fondled, forced to drink blood and made to watch teachers hacking up dead bodies and live animals. At the pretrial hearings, there were seven defendants, including school founder Virginia McMartin, her daughter Peggy McMartin Buckey and Peggy's son Raymond. The Buckeys were indicted. There were two trials--only Raymond was charged in the second; both ended in mistrial, the last in 1990. The Eberles ( The Politics of Child Abuse ) show that the prosecution was a witch-hunt complete with suggestible children and hysterical parents as well as sleazy lawyers and "sex-abuse" experts whose vested interests perverted justice. Trial testimony, juicy courthouse asides and the authors' keen descriptive powers make the proceedings come alive. 30,000 first printing; $30,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In August 1983, the owners and teachers of the McMartin PreSchool in California were accused of sexually abusing one of their students. The accusations quickly mushroomed, until almost all of the children who attended were suspected of having been molested. A six-year trial and re-trial followed, with the McMartins eventually found not guilty. An interesting book, worth reading, could doutbless be written about the McMartin trial. This is not it. The Eberles provide an almost word-for-word transcript of the trial. Although the material is explosive, the authors indicate that the jury was often bored by the repetitive, nonresponsive testimony. Unfortunately, so is the reader. In addition, the Eberles are totally one-sided. They believe that the charges were completely trumped up and that the McMartins are "innocent victims." On the other hand, they argue that the prosecution was incompetent. Yet they provide no real documentation to back up their "facts." Somewhere in this horrible story there lies a kernel of truth. Were children molested? Were the McMartins subjected to a modern-day witch hunt? Does the truth lie somewhere in the middle? To answer these questions, the material in this book would have to be reduced and summarized and cogent analysis applied. Not recommended.
- Sandra K. Lindheimer, Middlesex Law Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books; First Edition edition (March 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879758090
• ISBN-13: 978-0879758097
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,827,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book that deserves a larger readership, September 6, 2000

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Abuse of Innocence (Hardcover)

With all the publicity surrounding the McMartin preschool trial, now over a decade removed, one would suppose that the definitive book on the subject-and this is certainly the definitive book, and a good one at that-would be a best seller, but it didn't happen. Why? Because the public wanted a villain, somebody to hate, and what they got were some innocent people wrongly accused. With that kind of result the public lost interest. The Jon Benet Ramsey case sold a lot better because the public had clear targets for its hate, John and Patsy Ramsey. Here, Ray Buckey was to be the designated fall guy with his creepy glasses and his nerdish style, but he wouldn't fall because he was clearly innocent of the sensational charges against him. So the public was stuck with no clear villain on whom to vent. The real villains, as graphically revealed in this book, were the press, the prosecutors and the social workers, especially Kee MacFarlane, who indoctrinated the children into describing perverted events that never took place.

This was written from the trenches on a daily basis when the overwhelming tide of public opinion was that of a lynch mob desperate to hang Buckey and his family from the nearest tree. The Eberles built a strong case in blaming the media for poisoning the public's understanding of the case, partially through incompetent reporters, and partially through a media lust to sensationalize. Part of what's interesting about this book is how it presages the O.J. trial, especially in the incompetence seen in the district attorney's office. Ira Reiner was D.A. at the time with Garcetti as a critical underling. It is scandalous that they would find the need to use a paid felonious informant to bolster their case against Buckey. He was a five-time loser, no less, who previously had falsely testified for the prosecution in exchange for favorable treatment. Also stupid was the prosecution's use of an incompetent and prejudicial child abuse "expert," Dr. Gordon, who said that he possessed "the largest collection of photographs of children's anuses in the state of California." [p. 106] The authors estimate that 97.5 percent of the people in L.A. thought Buckey was guilty. The sad truth is what he was really guilty of was being a young man who liked to work with preschool children. Now THAT ain't natural was what a large number of people thought. I hope we're getting over that prejudice because what our children need are role models and guides from both sexes.

The book is peppered with courtroom asides from an unidentified lawyer. Here's one of the most pertinent from page 105, a exchange between a friend of the Buckeys and the lawyer:

"They're putting on witnesses who they know are lying. They concealed exonerating evidence. Don't we have enough criminal conduct by the prosecutors to put them behind bars?"

"It doesn't work that way," the lawyer laughed. "The law is just for the little people. When we break the rules we go to jail. When they break the rules they go to lunch. And maybe get a promotion if they do it right."

"But what about the law?" the woman gasped. "What about the Constitution?"

"I'm afraid that's just one of those nice, comforting fantasies like the tooth fairy. There are only two classes of people. Those who hold power and those who do not. And in any dispute the guys who hold power will decide which way it's going to go. And if there's any problem the rules go out the window. I hope you understand that this is not about child abuse, just as McCarthyism was not about Communists." Amen.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An informative book -- but a flawed one, March 11, 2008

By 

Wayne Engle "Wayne Engle" (Madison, IN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Abuse of Innocence: The McMartin Preschool Trial (Paperback)

The Eberles have shone a much-needed spotlight of analysis on one of the worst miscarriages of justice in U.S. history: the McMartin Preschool case. After a brief introductory section to tell of how the fiasco all began, they give a detailed, blow-by-blow accounting of the trial, often with lengthy, word-for-word quotes of the lawyers' questions and the witnesses' responses. This is a good journalistic technique if not overdone; I often used it in reporting on criminal trials during my 39 and one-half years as a daily newspaper reporter.

The couple also illuminates the "child molester" witchhunt which has preoccupied this country for a number of years now. The battle cry, "We must protect the children!" which any sane adult obviously wants to do, has been used to justify some hideously extra-legal investigations, arrests, and prison sentences for palpably innocent people. The Eberles tell us about this in some detail.

The flaws in their book come in the areas of attribution and of sources. Over and over the authors tell of "a lawyer in the cafeteria" or "a heavyset woman" approaching them to comment on the trial, with no names or other hints as to identity. While this is sometimes necessary in reporting, excessive use of it as is done here makes the reader suspicious about the authors' fairness. At any rate, it made THIS reader suspicious. Several instances are recounted in which someone approaches outside the courtroom and says words to the effect, "You don't REALLY think they're innocent, do you?" Then one or the other of the Eberles proceeds to make the person look like an ignorant fool with a brilliant interrogation as to what they really know about the trial (nothing, in each case.) Once again, it's a little too pat, especially with no names to pin the quotes to. Did the Eberles make up any of the anecdotes? I'm certainly not accusing them of that, since there is no way to know for sure. But they leave themselves open to such suspicions by the way they wrote their book.

In addition, there are no notes at the end of the book -- zero. Now the Eberles might say that this is because the "original sources" for this book were their own experiences. But again, a book that describes a major public event, and related events that they learned about somehow from all over the country (a witchhunt for "child molesters" in practically every county in the country, thousands of people imprisoned unjustly, the law and Constitution dragged through the mud, according to various overheated passages in the book) should have cited some news media sources, at the very least.

I agree with the Eberles' premise: That the McMartin Preschool case was a huge and hugely expensive farrago that wrecked the lives of a number of innocent people, and that never should have happened, and that it led to other, similar witchhunts across the country. But they have damaged their own credibility by the above careless practices in writing their book.

7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Difficult Read Pays Off for McMartin Buffs, March 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Abuse of Innocence (Hardcover)

This book consists mostly of extremely lengthy excerpts from trial testimony as recorded by the husband and wife authors, who attended the McMartin trials.

The book does not follow the standard true crime formula and takes some diligence to read. There are hardly any breaks in the text or chapters in the trafitional sense, so stopping in a convenient place can be difficult.

The authors do a good job in showing how the overzealousness of the L.A. County D.A's office lead to the abuses suffered by the defendant's in the McMartin case.

However, at times the authors go off on what seem like paranoid tangents as they rail against what they perceive as the ritual child abuse industry.

If you saw the HBO movie about this case, the book is an interesting companion and goes into more detail.