ABSTRACT
That dark, satanic mill of cultural imagination, the McMartin Preschool, occupied a small building on the main street of the southern California town of Manhattan Beach. The preschool was a family enterprise in 1983. Virginia McMartin, then 75 years old and confined to a wheelchair, was its founder and titular head. The day-to-day administration was left to her 55-year-old daughter, Peggy McMartin Buckey; her two grandchildren, Peggy Ann, 28, and Raymond, 25, were employed as providers. The rest of the staff, Betty Raidor, May Ann Jackson, and Babette Spitler, had been recruited from the family’s local Christian Science Church.
