2 in McMartin Case File Damage Claims Against County

Virginia McMartin and her 30-year-old granddaughter, Peggy Ann Buckey, filed claims against Los Angeles County on Monday, asserting that their lives were ruined when they were unjustly prosecuted on charges that they molested children at the family-run Manhattan Beach preschool.

The amount of the claims were not specified.

At a press conference held to announce the claims, which typically are forerunners of lawsuits, a wheelchair-bound McMartin pronounced her judgment on “the whole doggone system.” She called it “awful.”

She was arrested and endured a year-and-a-half preliminary hearing before Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner concluded that she was probably innocent and dropped the charges against her early this year.

Speaking outside the county Hall of Administration, McMartin said that presumption of innocence was disregarded in her case, and that just about everyone, including the media and the courts, “treated me like I was guilty.”

She said she lost her school and her oceanfront home to lawyers, and all she had left was her Social Security check.

“I’ll be 79 this summer,” she said. “And don’t you think, when a person has given the greater part of their life to a community and to children, that they deserve to live--at least decently--in their old age?

“I mean, I owned a home. It was all clear by 1962. It’s right near the ocean. . . . The attorneys have it.

“Everything’s gone. My school’s gone. My bank account. I even had to borrow on my life insurance to pay attorneys. Don’t you think I’m entitled to something? I haven’t had a decent day of living for 2 1/2 years.”

McMartin disparaged the charges that several children were molested and otherwise abused at the school, indicating that she felt the accusations were incredible and should not have been believed.

“How could they just think and believe that 3- and 4-year-old children went with pickaxes to dig up a cemetery?” she asked, citing, as an example, testimony by a child at the preliminary hearing that preschoolers had dug up a body in the graveyard of a church and then watched a teacher hack it up.

Buckey said that she, too, had lost everything.

She was teaching deaf children at a high school in Orange County when she was arrested in 1984 in connection with molestations that allegedly occurred at the preschool, where she had worked briefly in 1978.

She said she has lost her teaching certificate and life savings “because of a witch hunt.”

“I personally have lost everything,” she said. “I lost my freedom. I lost my career. . . . And fortunately now the truth will come out and our story will be told. . . . Absolutely nothing happened at that school.”

Unfortunately, she said, “the witch hunt is continuing.”

Her brother, Raymond Buckey, 27, and mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 59, remain charged with molestations and are awaiting trial. Raymond is in jail, where he has been since his March, 1984, arrest. His mother was recently freed on bail.

Two other former teachers at the preschool, against whom charges were also dismissed by Reiner, have filed claims against the city of Manhattan Beach. They are Babette Spitler, 38, and Betty Raidor, 66.

Raidor’s claim has already been rejected, which means, procedurally, that she has given the city government a chance to pay her for damages, has been rebuffed, and is now free to sue the city government.

One Asks $5 Million

Each of the claims cites grounds of false arrest and imprisonment. Spitler is seeking $5 million. The others have not specified how much they want.

James H. Davis, a lawyer for McMartin and her granddaughter, said that they also will file claims against the city of Manhattan Beach.

Davis said he expects the city and county to reject the claims. And he said he would then sue on behalf of his clients for “seven figures.”

Gary Martin, risk manager for Manhattan Beach, indicated he was not worried.

“We have no liability in the matter,” he said. “Our feeling is that the police investigation was proper and appropriate, and the other investigation and licensing responsibilities lie with the state and county, not the city.”

Times staff writer Dean Murphy contributed to this article.