McMartin preschool trial

So this collides head on with child care.

One of the things that broke the story really nationwide was the McMartin preschool case in California.

It was one of the highest profile examples of this, and it was based around the daycare abuse hysteria.

That's what I'm looking at right now.

Queen.

Yeah.

McMartin case wasn't isolated.

There were accusations that spread to over 100 daycares across the country.

To me, she was the one who propagated some of these notions.

She bankrolled the digging up of the alleged tunnels at the McMartin preschool.

She paid this archaeologist from UCLA, Gary Stickle, and he went and he dug up the grounds underneath the McMartin preschool where there were supposedly tunnels big enough for them to be sacrificing giraffes and elephants and things like that.

Eventually, They settled on this notion that they had dug up these tunnels, which were, you know, again, we're getting back to Ted Gunderson because he helped Stickle lead this this supposed digging up of these tunnels.

And, you know, what he did was he dug out these tunnels and then claimed that they were preexisting and that they were able to tell from the difference of the soil or something like that.

And this is by Gunderson's own description.

So Gunderson apparently beat him into submission to say like, oh yeah, there were clearly pre-existing tunnels and then they were filled in.

And then there was only a little bit of truth to that, which it turns out, that the McMartin Preschool was on a plot of ground that existed, and it's wherever it was, whatever beach in California.

He still sought something that might make him significant.

Richard Ramirez had perceived in the culture around him, he was not far from where teachers had been arrested in 1983 at the McMartin Preschool and accused as a ring of Satanists corrupting children, that people were afraid of Satan, and to him, that probably meant that aligning himself with the Prince of Darkness would uniquely empower him.

People would actually fear him.

So he cultivated Satanism's trappings that were popular during the 1970s and 80s.

Yeah, I think that, that...

You know, because, uh, it, it seems as though, and I'm, uh, people will argue with me on this, but the McMartin preschool thing was bullshit.

Mm-hmm.

And there wasn't...

And there's- I don't think there's even strong enough evidence to say there was sexual impropriety.

But Presidio daycare, you know, the kids did get chlamydia.

So, but, but because McMartin becomes the most famous one, that's, everything becomes McMartin.

Or they, like, promote the Paradise Lost kids, so everything becomes that, you know?

But, uh, once again, you're welcome.

Um, I think McMartin right after is when satanic panic was used.

That's how, uh, I remember first hearing about it.

Yeah, so McMartin was, was like the nationalization.

It was the, um- The McMartin case was, was the case that was used to turn the, the phrase Satanic Panic into a, uh, household name, if that makes sense.

Um, but I mean, if you look, if you look for them, um, I mean, I have tons of newspapers from all over the country, uh, regarding the term Satanic Panic.

Um, and I mean, you can f- you can find it used all over the place.

So, but yeah, Mc- you are right on that.

A lot of the things that are held up as proof of that satanic panic, of that concept, which is used to debunk ritual abuse, or RA, I'm sorry, these things are held up time and time again as proof of a satanic panic.

The McMartin preschool scandal comes to mind.

It turns out that years after the McMartin Preschool Candle was debunked as, quote-unquote, debunked as part of the Satanic Panic, excavations were done by credible academics, that is, archaeologists, university-employed, and they found that there were underground excavations chambers beneath the McMartin Preschool that had been filled in.

In total, what those children alleged was substantiated by the excavation.

they found exactly what those children said they would find.

And yet the people who those children alleged essayed them were exonerated the mainstream media.

And it wasn't just that they were molested underneath the McMartin preschool.

They were alleging that they were essayed by a wider ring in various other homes and structures around the area.

Its claims would later be heavily challenged, but the book became enormously influential.

Soon came allegations involving daycare centers, most famously the McMartin Preschool case here in California, where increasingly fantastic accusations included secret tunnels, ritual ceremonies, and organized abuse of children.

Similar claims spread across the country.

Television poured gasoline on the fire.

So part of the reason why this started was that there was a preschool case.

So this is, uh, McMartin Preschool.

It's in Manhattan Beach, and, uh, it was this, you know, family-owned preschool.

There's this little two-year-old boy who was attending that preschool in 1983, and one day he came home, and he had, like, he had a bit of a sore bum, basically, and the mum was like, "What on earth is going on here?" And, uh, he said that the, the, the, the male provider of the nursing home had taken his temperature by rectally, right, by using a-