In this novel the authors; Paul & Shirley Eberle, explore the corrupt world of child protection services. They provide a very convincing and intellegent arguement that the very government agencies that are supose to protect children are infact the ones who cause the most harm.

By the end of this novel you will not help but agree with the author's theory that a child abuse industry does indeed exist.

This industry mainly consists of social workers, police, and poliicians. You will find that the purpose of the industry is to find as many "victims" as they can. The methods they use to acomplish this goal are morally bankrupt. They brainwash little children to believe that they have been sexually molested when they clearly have not been. Their motives for doing this are new grants for child abuse clinics, promotions, and politcal gain.

In conclusion I would recomend this novel to everyone. Or more specifically I would recomend this novel to people who are interested in reading about justice or more correctly in this case injustice.

This book consists mostly of extremely lengthy excerpts from trial testimony as recorded by the husband and wife authors, who attended the McMartin trials.

The book does not follow the standard true crime formula and takes some diligence to read. There are hardly any breaks in the text or chapters in the trafitional sense, so stopping in a convenient place can be difficult.

The authors do a good job in showing how the overzealousness of the L.A. County D.A's office lead to the abuses suffered by the defendant's in the McMartin case.

However, at times the authors go off on what seem like paranoid tangents as they rail against what they perceive as the ritual child abuse industry.

If you saw the HBO movie about this case, the book is an interesting companion and goes into more detail.

With all the publicity surrounding the McMartin preschool trial, now over a decade removed, one would suppose that the definitive book on the subject-and this is certainly the definitive book, and a good one at that-would be a best seller, but it didn't happen. Why? Because the public wanted a villain, somebody to hate, and what they got were some innocent people wrongly accused. With that kind of result the public lost interest. The Jon Benet Ramsey case sold a lot better because the public had clear targets for its hate, John and Patsy Ramsey. Here, Ray Buckey was to be the designated fall guy with his creepy glasses and his nerdish style, but he wouldn't fall because he was clearly innocent of the sensational charges against him. So the public was stuck with no clear villain on whom to vent. The real villains, as graphically revealed in this book, were the press, the prosecutors and the social workers, especially Kee MacFarlane, who indoctrinated the children into describing perverted events that never took place.

This was written from the trenches on a daily basis when the overwhelming tide of public opinion was that of a lynch mob desperate to hang Buckey and his family from the nearest tree. The Eberles built a strong case in blaming the media for poisoning the public's understanding of the case, partially through incompetent reporters, and partially through a media lust to sensationalize. Part of what's interesting about this book is how it presages the O.J. trial, especially in the incompetence seen in the district attorney's office. Ira Reiner was D.A. at the time with Garcetti as a critical underling. It is scandalous that they would find the need to use a paid felonious informant to bolster their case against Buckey. He was a five-time loser, no less, who previously had falsely testified for the prosecution in exchange for favorable treatment. Also stupid was the prosecution's use of an incompetent and prejudicial child abuse "expert," Dr. Gordon, who said that he possessed "the largest collection of photographs of children's anuses in the state of California." [p. 106] The authors estimate that 97.5 percent of the people in L.A. thought Buckey was guilty. The sad truth is what he was really guilty of was being a young man who liked to work with preschool children. Now THAT ain't natural was what a large number of people thought. I hope we're getting over that prejudice because what our children need are role models and guides from both sexes.

The book is peppered with courtroom asides from an unidentified lawyer. Here's one of the most pertinent from page 105, a exchange between a friend of the Buckeys and the lawyer:

"They're putting on witnesses who they know are lying. They concealed exonerating evidence. Don't we have enough criminal conduct by the prosecutors to put them behind bars?"

"It doesn't work that way," the lawyer laughed. "The law is just for the little people. When we break the rules we go to jail. When they break the rules they go to lunch. And maybe get a promotion if they do it right."

"But what about the law?" the woman gasped. "What about the Constitution?"

"I'm afraid that's just one of those nice, comforting fantasies like the tooth fairy. There are only two classes of people. Those who hold power and those who do not. And in any dispute the guys who hold power will decide which way it's going to go. And if there's any problem the rules go out the window. I hope you understand that this is not about child abuse, just as McCarthyism was not about Communists." Amen.

I LOVE THIS NOVEL!

The reason I think this novel is so great is because I completely agree with the author's view that it was the McMartins that were abused not the children. This family was wrongly accused of child molestation by a mentally disturbed woman. They had everything they owned in the world taken from them. They were thrown jail for years without bail. Yet this family kept their heads up high and they never gave up.

I also liked the author's up beat writting style and their bitter irony. They never talked down to the reader. Also they always kept an open mind as far as ideas that were different from their own beliefs.. That is probably what kept the reader reading.

BUCKEY RULES!