The only good thing to come out of the McMartin trial was a close examination of the legal procedures relating to child-abuse in California. The seven defendants have had their lives wrecked. Mud, as they say, once thrown, sticks. One wonders where these people have been this last century or so, and what contact they have had with professionals, indeed what contact they have had with the world. One presumes they have never heard of the Somme, Belsen, Riga, Pol Pot, Stalin, the popularity of child prostitution in Victorian England and a thousand other things.
Nothing is too awful to be believed.
Some things are though too awfully short of evidence to be believed. The presumption being that children never lie about abuse. We refer you to the British legal system. While it was crucial that children should be listened to, it was equally important that what they say should be examined critically. Blind acceptance of what a child said was liable to have a snowballing effect and generate a presumption that the alleged perpetrators were guilty.