The Witch-Hunt Narrative by Ross E. Cheit

A good book for people who want to learn more about the McMartin case is Brown University professor Ross E. Cheit's book The Witch-Hunt Narrative. Nearly every piece written about McMartin nowadays will invariably call it nothing more than a mass hysteria, but Cheit takes a more nuanced view based on a perusal of the trial transcripts and law enforcement records. He finds that, while the interviewing techniques of Children's Institute International were atrocious and likely did produce many false accusations, there were numerous early disclosures of abuse which were credible in their spontaneity, independence, and/or substantiation through medical evidence of abuse. And ultimately Cheit concludes that the main defendant Ray Buckey really was guilty of sexually abusing children at the preschool, while also finding that the additional defendants implicated in the case were unjustly accused. It is certainly not the hardline conspiracy position that the likes of Alex Constantine take, but illustrates that there was a miscarriage of justice and a case of real abuse was disgustingly cast as a witch hunt by poor "scholars" of that era like Debbie Nathan.