Peggy Ann Buckey

Peggy Ann Buckey, a former defendant in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, will resume her career as a special education teacher for the Anaheim-Union High School District in Orange County next week. Buckey, 32, will teach a small class of junior and senior high school students with learning and communication disorders at Trident Center, one of the district's alternative schools, Supt. Cynthia Grennan said.

INTRODUCTION * Twenty-one years ago, a child then known as Kyle Sapp told police that he had been the victim of sexual abuse at the McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach. Sapp, who attended the preschool from 1979 to 1980, was 8 when he first talked to authorities in 1984. He and hundreds of other South Bay children made allegations against the family who ran McMartin and against the employees who worked there.

A state commission narrowly decided today to allow Peggy Ann Buckey, a former defendant in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, to teach deaf and learning-disabled children. The Commission on Teacher Credentialing voted 7 to 6, with one abstention, to restore Buckey's teaching credential, following the opinion of an administrative law judge. There was no comment or debate.

Anaheim high school teacher Peggy Ann Buckey will receive more than $183,000 in back pay, interest and retirement benefits for the time she was on compulsory leave after being charged in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, a Los Angeles judge ruled Thursday. After a sensational trial, Buckey was acquitted of 14 charges of child molestation growing out of allegations leveled against her mother's Manhattan Beach preschool.

Completing her third day on the witness stand, former McMartin Pre-School defendant Peggy Ann Buckey directly contradicted the testimony of a 13-year-old boy who had said that she, her mother and brother and others had molested him. Peggy Ann Buckey testified at the trial of her mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 62, and her brother, Raymond Buckey, 30, that she did not even remember the child, who was one of her students in the late 1970s, before he testified against her at the preliminary hearing.

An administrative law judge has recommended that Peggy Ann Buckey, a former defendant in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, be granted a teaching credential. Judge Ronald M. Gruen sharply criticized testimony offered by the state to connect her with child molestation charges. According to the finding released Thursday afternoon, Gruen said no cause exists for denying Buckey, 32, a credential because of her fitness to teach.

Peggy Ann Buckey, a former defendant in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, heard herself described as both a victim and a lying child molester Thursday in the wind-up of a lengthy hearing to regain her teaching credential. It is expected to be weeks before Buckey, 32, will know which view of her--expressed by rival lawyers in their final arguments--has prevailed with Administrative Law Judge Roland E. Gruen, who presided at the hearing in the downtown State Office Building.

INTRODUCTION * Twenty-one years ago, a child then known as Kyle Sapp told police that he had been the victim of sexual abuse at the McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach. Sapp, who attended the preschool from 1979 to 1980, was 8 when he first talked to authorities in 1984. He and hundreds of other South Bay children made allegations against the family who ran McMartin and against the employees who worked there.

Peggy Ann Buckey, 30, who no longer faces charges in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, has asked the state to renew her lapsed California teaching license so that she may work with handicapped children. Walter Taylor, head of the professional standards division of the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said Buckey applied for the renewal last April, three months after charges against her and four other McMartin defendants were dropped.

A teacher acquitted of charges in the McMartin preschool molestation trial should receive back pay with interest for the time she was on compulsory leave to defend herself, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Thursday. Judge Robert O'Brien said the Anaheim Union High School District should pay $183,000 to Peggy Ann Buckey for time she was out of work.

A parent in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case slandered three former teachers when he charged on national television that they participated in satanic rituals and lewd acts at the school, a Los Angeles judge ruled Tuesday. But Superior Court Judge G. Keith Wisot awarded the teachers only $1 each, saying that they had not proved that their reputations were damaged or that parent Robert Currie set out to cause them emotional distress.

A judge has refused to grant $223,000 in back pay to Anaheim teacher Peggy Ann Buckey, a former defendant in a child molestation trial that became the nation's longest and costliest criminal proceeding. Her attorney, John J. Wagner, said he would file an appeal. Buckey, a special education teacher at Anaheim High School, was reinstated and rehired in 1989 after a battle with the state Board of Education.

The Supreme Court, refusing to get involved in the McMartin preschool molestation case, Monday dismissed a suit which contended that child therapists violated the civil rights of two McMartin family members by publicizing initial reports of sex abuse at the Manhattan Beach school. The justices let stand a state court ruling which deemed child care workers in California absolutely immune from liability for investigating child abuse or reporting evidence to law enforcement authorities.

Three former McMartin Pre-School defendants filed a slander suit Wednesday against a Hermosa Beach man who has gone on the national talk show circuit charging that his son was molested at the school and demanding a retrial. The suit accuses Robert Currie, a former mortgage banker, of making a series of false, malicious and slanderous statements regarding preschool founder Virginia McMartin, her daughter, Peggy McMartin Buckey, and her granddaughter, Peggy Ann Buckey. James H.

Three former defendants in the McMartin Preschool molestation case cannot press their claims of false imprisonment and false arrest against Los Angeles County and the city of Manhattan Beach, Superior Court Judge Warren Deering ruled this morning. Lawyers for Virginia McMartin, Peggy Ann Buckey and Babette Spitler should have filed their claims within 100 days of their arrests in March, 1984, or sought an exemption to the limit within a year, Deering said.

Thumbs up to The Times ("A Return to Classroom for Buckey," March 2) for revealing the truth about how citizens really feel about Buckey's return to the classroom. The California Education Code states that a teacher teaching special education students must have "impeccable character and reputation." The image of Peggy Ann Buckey has been tainted, and she has lost the public trust. That's grounds for dismissal. Shame on the Anaheim school trustees for not protecting our children, our most precious asset.

Peggy McMartin Buckey, acquitted of molestion charges in the McMartin Pre-School case, filed a $1-million federal civil rights lawsuit today against Los Angeles County, the city of Manhattan Beach and others. "We are all good Christian people. I say that if it can happen to us, it can happen to you," Buckey said at a packed news conference called to announce the suit. "If it weren't for God, I'd never have been able to survive jail, where I was mentally and physically abused," she said.

Thumbs up to The Times ("A Return to Classroom for Buckey," March 2) for revealing the truth about how citizens really feel about Buckey's return to the classroom. The California Education Code states that a teacher teaching special education students must have "impeccable character and reputation." The image of Peggy Ann Buckey has been tainted, and she has lost the public trust. That's grounds for dismissal. Shame on the Anaheim school trustees for not protecting our children, our most precious asset.