Do you want to know what incest is? What it really is? No ...

hired Gary Stickel, Ph.D., an internationally known archaeologist.
Stickel says he began the dig skeptical of the charges against the Buckeys. But three
days before the building was demolished, he and his crew found the tunnels and the
chamber exactly where the children had said they were. The spaces had been filled in
with dirt. Objects found inside included a plate from a child's tea set, inscribed and
painted with three pentagrams arranged in a pattern known as the witch's foot—a cult
symbol—and four large containers, including a breakable ceramic crock and a large iron
cauldron. The diggers also found a plastic Walt Disney bag with a copyright date of
1982, which indicates that the tunnels had not been filled in by then. Significantly, that
was the year before the first charges were lodged.
In my conversation with Stickel, he expressed regret and frustration that even though
the trial was still going on when his dig was completed, the district attorney refused to
enter into testimony evidence about the tunnels' existence.
Jeambey dismissed the published details of the McMartin case and insisted that the
whole thing had been masterminded by a madwoman for reasons he didn't venture to
explain. Then he changed the subject: "You know where Jim Jones got those children
he killed in Jamestown, don't you? From social services. He killed over two hundred of
his foster children from social services to satisfy his sadistic and satanic practices."
VOCAL’s Goals
VOCAL seeks to narrow the definition of child abuse ("There are states where you can't
even spank 'em," says Jeambey), to eliminate mandatory reporting except when the
person making the report actually saw the abuse occur, and to eliminate immunity for
those who report suspected cases of abuse. "Children do lie," Jeambey told me.
Prosecutions
The most difficult cases for judges to verify are those involving extremely young
children. There are usually no witnesses to incest except the adult and the child. Most
abusers don't leave physical marks. And most toddlers can't explain what happened in
language that an adult can accept as reliable enough for a conviction.
I am talking to a Manhattan family court judge of whom it has been said that "she runs
her courtroom as if her car were double-parked outside." If she didn't, she'd never get
through her caseload. In moments grabbed between sessions, she talks to me about
what every judge I met talked about: the problem with expert witnesses, or "validators."
"We have no fixed criteria for proving allegations of child sexual abuse," she says,
"especially of a very young child. If a three-year-old is the victim, how do we get
evidence?"
"Gonorrhea?" I offer. "Syphilis? Vaginal and rectal tearing? Fractured pelvis?"
" "
Sometimes," she says. But take a sexually transmitted disease like chlamydia. Five
years ago I had chlamydia cases every day. Children were taken away from their
parents if they tested positive. But I haven't had a good chlamydia expert in over a year,
and I almost never see any chlamydia cases now. The test used five, six years ago
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