[From The Village Voice, January 12, 1990. Reprinted in Women and Other Aliens: Essays from the U.S.-Mexico Border, El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press, 1991. Copyright 1990 by Debbie Nathan. Reposted here with explicit permission of Debbie Nathan. Direct reposting requests to mc@ncrj.org.]
THE RITUAL SEX ABUSE HOAX
by Debbie Nathan
After the First McMartin Trial
The eight kids sitting in Geraldo Rivera’s New York studio after the first McMartin trial ended could have stepped out of a candy bar commercial on Saturday morning TV. They gleamed with the healthy tans, shopping-mall clothes, and moussed sun-bleached hair of the southern California suburbs; their parents looked equally affluent. But these families were far from cheerful. “We were molested,” a strapping blond teenager told the audience solemnly, “and that’s an honest-to-God fact.” When some of the children – most of them by now adolescents – described suffering flashbacks and night terrors, their mothers quietly dabbed at tears. Other parents seemed angry and driven. “The parents and children standing up here will not stop,” said Marymae Cioffi, who since the beginning of the case had been organizing to convince the public and the courts that bizarre sex abuse claims at places like the McMartin preschool should be believed