Remember the McMartin preschool scare in the 1980s, when children — coached by therapists — began accusing their daycare providers of satanic ritual child abuse? The media bought the wild accusations of flushing children down toilets and underground sex tunnels hook, line and sinker. But in 1990, Peggy McMartin Buckey was acquitted and Ray Buckey was cleared on most of the counts, eventually having all charges dismissed.
But the McMartin witch hunt — which, according to some children literally included flying witches — was not the only case that attributed to the hysteria of the era.
In 1991, after charges against the Buckeys were dismissed, children at a preschool in Oak Hill, Texas began claiming they were abused and forced to drink blood-laced Kool-aid, watch animal sacrifices and fly to Mexico to be sexually abused by soldiers. Sadly, for proprietors Dan and Fran Keller, the charges against them were not dismissed. The two were found guilty of such lunacy and each sentenced to 48 years in prison.
On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the couple some relief by acknowledging that false testimony was used in obtaining the conviction. The Travis County District Attorney’s office is expected to dismiss the case.
The Kellers spent 23 years in prison before being released in 2013.
But dismissing the case is not exactly the exoneration the Kellers were looking for. Their attorney, Keith Hampton, vowed to keep fighting.
“I can take it to federal court, but there are some procedural complications I’ll have to mull over,” Hampton told KXAN, Austin’s NBC affiliate. “Second option: to bring it back to the Criminal Court of Appeals. Third option: District Attorney can also agree to their innocence, which they haven’t done before.”
No evidence was ever found that the Kellers had done anything they had been accused of doing. The case hinged on the findings of Dr. Michael Mouw, who mistakenly identified a normal bodily condition as evidence of sexual abuse.
In her concurring opinion, Judge Cheryl Johnson called the entire case a “witch hunt” and said she would never have found the Kellers guilty.
“It was not just Dr. Mouw who was too quick to believe,” Johnson wrote. “If he is to be blamed for the failure to provide applicant with a fair trial, the missteps of other persons and entities need to be examined also. We do not learn from our mistakes unless and until we are required to acknowledge those mistakes.”
