Mcmartin Case

I wish to take exception to your editorial (Dec. 3), "McMartin Debacle." In that editorial you not only question the ethics of my conduct and my motives as a "whistle blower," but also blame my conversations with a screen-writer for preventing the "McMartin" trial from getting under way. Abby Mann and I met in March of 1986 and agreed to produce a book and/or movie about the "McMartin" case. It was understood by both of us that nothing would become public until the trial was over, and all appeals were exhausted.

Dean R. Gits, who won an acquittal for his client Peggy McMartin Buckey in the infamous child molestation case of the 1980s and early 1990s and represented thousands of other clients during a lengthy career as a public and private defense attorney in Los Angeles, has died. He was 68. The chief deputy of the federal public defender's office for California's central district, Gits died Tuesday at his Los Angeles home of complications from cancer, said his wife, Christina Larson Gits.

These are important dates in the McMartin Pre-School case: September, 1983: Police notify McMartin parents of an investigation. Raymond Buckey arrested after a mother said her 2-year-old child had been molested. Buckey is later freed. March, 1984: Four McMartin family members and three other former teachers are indicted. Raymond Buckey is arrested a second time. August: A preliminary hearing for all seven defendants begins.

As a professional who has worked in the field of child abuse/neglect for Los Angeles County for 34 years, why do I think convicted child molester John Stoll is innocent (" 'Kids Don't Lie,' " by John Johnson, Aug. 10)? 1) In at least 90% of the cases I have seen where child-custody issues are involved, allegations of molestation made by the other spouse are unfounded. In Stoll's case, the allegations didn't start with his ex-wife but were planted by an incompetent investigator. 2) The children immediately should have had a "scan" exam.

I am so disgusted with Reiner and his decision regarding the McMartin case I could scream. Too bad he is not up for reelection this year. Those children deserve at least the chance of a trial. How are they ever going to understand? Do any of us? KATHLEEN FRANKENY Glendale

Betty Evans Raidor, a one-time defendant who later became a defense witness in the notorious McMartin Pre-School child molestation case, has died in Bakersfield at 81, her family said Wednesday. Raidor, who had lived in Bakersfield since her retirement a decade ago, succumbed to complications from a heart attack, said her son, Milan Raidor. Betty Raidor was one of seven employees at the Manhattan Beach school who were indicted on child molestation charges in 1984.

Day-care operator Peggy McMartin Buckey and her family became the closest things to witches that Southern California had in the 1980s. For years, Buckey had led a quiet existence, helping her family operate the McMartin Pre-School in the seemingly idyllic seaside community of Manhattan Beach. Then, in 1983, she suddenly found herself plucked from obscurity and vilified as an embodiment of evil--accused, with other family members, of molesting toddlers in her care.

It's natural for a teacher to hug a crying second-grader, to lift a distressed kindergarten student onto a lap. But a Santa Ana case unfortunately has prompted some teachers to consider tempering those spontaneous demonstrations of sympathy. A Santa Ana teacher, Jerome Thompson Wilhoit, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of child molestation stemming from alleged improper touching of three students.

Give the juror a few thousand dollars and save the county millions. That's the advice McMartin case judge William R. Pounders would give his colleague in the trial of O.J. Simpson. Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito is grappling with a plea from a juror who says that her public service has put her into financial distress and that unless she gets some help she has to bail out.

Hysteria is no stranger to the United States, witness its ongoing, TV-driven paranoia over violent crime, its internment of its own Japanese citizens in the 1940s and its bomb shelter mania and Red-scare witch hunts of the early Cold War.

Director Mick Jackson ("The Bodyguard") got heated reactions from people when he told them the title of his latest project, "Indictment: The McMartin Trial." The docudrama chronicling the controversial, highly publicized McMartin Pre-School case of the '80s premieres Saturday on HBO. "When the woman who cuts my hair said, 'What are you are you doing next?,' I said, 'I'm doing the McMartin case.' She said, 'Oh, you're not. Geez. Why do you want to do something like that? They were horrible.'

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge Friday dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by two defendants in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case against a former TV reporter who helped break the story of alleged abuses of children at the school.