The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case of the 1980s. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1984 to 1987, and the trial ran from 1987 to 1990. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. It was the longest and most expensive criminal trial of its time, and is believed to have contributed to satanic ritual abuse, a moral panic of the 1980s and 1990s.
There has been no other case that has more clearly demonstrated the level of abuse that vindictive parents and police will perpetrate against children to attack innocent care providers. Much of this comes from the inability of and guilt that these people feel from their own abuse of children.
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