sent to parents<\/a>\u00a0of children attending McMartin Preschool after the arrest of Ray Buckey on Sept. 7, 1983:<\/p>\n\u201cThis Department is conducting a criminal investigation involving child molestation…. The following procedure is obviously an unpleasant one, but to protect the rights of your children as well as the rights of the accused, this inquiry is necessary….<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease question your child to see if he or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a victim.\u00a0 Our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include: oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttock or chest area, and sodomy, possibly committed under the pretense of \u2018taking the child’s temperature.\u2019\u00a0 Also photos may have been taken of children without their clothing.\u00a0 Any information from your child regarding having ever observed Ray Buckey to leave a classroom alone with a child during any nap period, or if they have ever observed Ray Buckey tie up a child, is important.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease complete the enclosed information form and return it to this Department in the enclosed stamped return envelope as soon as possible….\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease question your child….\u201d<\/p>\n
As would be demonstrated in McMartin, Little Rascals and dozens of other day-care ritual abuse cases, these four words ensured that anxious parents interrogated their children until they at last \u201crevealed\u201d stories of sharks, witches and murdered babies.<\/p>\n
The chief\u2019s letter showed his na\u00efvete not only about the allegations of\u00a0 \u201cpossible criminal acts\u201d at McMartin, but also about the inevitable hysteria they would produce. \u201c….Please keep this investigation strictly confidential,\u201d he advised parents, \u201cbecause of the nature of the charges and the highly emotional effect it could have on our community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Feb. 15, 2013 From a letter that the police chief in Manhattan Beach, Calif.,\u00a0sent to parents\u00a0of children attending McMartin Preschool after the arrest of Ray Buckey on Sept. 7, 1983: \u201cThis Department is conducting a criminal investigation involving child molestation…. The following procedure is obviously an unpleasant one, but to protect the rights of your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":815,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions\/815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}