About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

34 J. Soc. & Soc. Welfare 9 (2007)
Two Decades after McMartin: A Follow-up of 22 Convicted Day Care Employees

handle is hein.journals/jrlsasw34 and id is 645 raw text is: Two Decades After McMartin: A Follow-up of 22 Convicted Day Care Employees MARY DEYOUNG Grand Valley State University Department of Sociology It has been more that two decades since the notorious McMar- tin Preschool case created a day care ritual abuse master-narra- tive that recruited many social workers into becoming involved in case-finding, investigations, interviewing and advocacy. The purpose of this article is threefold: it introduces a sample of 22 day care employees who were convicted in day care ritual abuse cases; it updates their current legal status; and it discusses the relevance of these cases to social workers who currently are being recruited by today's new master narratives about extrafamil- ial sexual threats to children, whether from neighborhood pedo- philes, child pornographers, parish priests or internet predators. Keywords: day care, ritual abuse, social work It has been more than two decades since the notorious McMartin Preschool case came to public attention. At the Nightmare Nursery, as the Manhattan Beach, California pre- school was quickly tagged by the popular press (Green, 1984), more than 350 past and present enrollees accused their provid- ers of sexually abusing them in rituals that included such acts as blood-drinking, cannibalism and infant sacrifice. The appalling nature of the allegations in the McMartin Preschool case not only contributed to that era's rising social anxiety about the sexual abuse of children (Best, 1990), but Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, December 2007, Volume XXXIV, Number 4 9

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most