Indictment: The McMartin Trial

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Indictment: The McMartin Trial is a made for TV movie that originally aired on HBO on May 20, 1995. Indictment is based on the true story of the McMartin preschool trial. A defense lawyer (played by James Woods) defends an average American family from shocking allegations of child abuse and satanic rituals. After six years and $16 million, the trial ends with the dismissal of all charges. 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.