This is a story about one of america's biggest injustices of all time and it to show that if the outrages enough no one care if you're innocent.

PS this is James Woods of all time

This tells the true story of the infamous McMartin preschool trial.I ordered this a while back and finally got around to watching it.I bought it because I was fascinated with this case after watching a CBS movie of the week called "Do You Know The Muffin Man".This true story focuses on The McMartin Family's Attorney.This film portrays the Family as innocent people which is what I believe is true.There is no medical evidence that anyone was molested at the preschool.A woman named Kee McFarlane was brought in to interview the children.Her interviews with the children were videotaped.The McMartin's lawyer viewed the tapes and noticed she used methods that might have possibly brought in false memories into the children's minds.The videos were shown in the courtroom during the trial when Kee McFarlane was on the stand.The McMartins ended up winning the case.James Woods gives a wonderful performance as The McMartin's attorney.

This film is very interesting and entertaining.I highly recommend it to anyone that was fascinated by the Day Care which hunts of the 1980s.

Cult and Ritual Abuse - It's History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America - Noblitt and Perskin - Prager (1995) p. 141 - 142
"The McMartin Case is also the subject of the cable movie, Indictment, produced by Home Box Office. Several children's advocacy groups have expressed concerns that the film's focus appears to be slanted in favor of the accused perpetrators. The newsletter for the organization, Believe the Children, contains an impassioned plea to its readers to relinquish their subscriptions to Home Box Office (HBO) in protest of the film's airing. An article featured in the newsletter entitled "Sex Abuse, Lies and Videotape"(1995) describes the genesis of the program and voices its concerns that the true victims of the McMartin case, the children, might be damaged by the perspective of the film's author, Abby Mann. According to the article, Mann and his wife, Myra, became advocates of the operators and staff of the McMartin preschool during the course of their trial. Because of the Mann's involvement in the case and their relationship to the accused perpetrators, the article expressed the concern that the film might reflect an unbalanced portrait of accused and accusers such that roles might be reversed in the eyes of the viewing public. This has, in fact, been proven to be a correct assumption. Reviews of the cable movie featured in magazines such as Time (Bellafante, 1995) and TV Guide (McDougal, 1995) on the film's depiction of an overzealous prosecuting attorney, a mentally unbalanced parent of a child victim, and a punitive therapist all lend themselves to the perpetuation of the ideas that the true victims are the alleged perpetrators. Ironically, this film also casts the media in an unfavorable light implying that the media's over-the-top reporting of the event led to a veritable witch hunt."

There is something here in this movie beyond the veil of truth that the media never spoke of during the actual witch-hunting of the 1980s. I grew up in the aftermath of these California trials and it was with much angst that I met with families affected by them.
Indictment looks at the era from the point of view of the real "victims," which are the McMartins. If you speak with any of the surviving families they will tell you that they "believe the children" which was the slogan adopted by families during the actual era.
However the ones that never got to speak are the ones who knew what had actually happened. At the time I didn't know that it was from a paranoid schizophrenic woman that these charges came about, even more shocking was that she continued to send her son to the McMartin preschool after the allegations were made.
What followed in this woman's wake was a series of events that nobody could control. There was too much power in the hands of too few. At that time, in the early 1980s, California law was trying to come down hard on pedophiles. They needed someone to blame to move legislation forward. So they used the McMartin case to their advantage.
The power that they used over the McMartins and the children "interviewed" violated just about every civil right law in the constitution. It a was scary time for anyone working with children.
There was a woman, Kee McFarlane who had no valid credentials for "interviewing" kids suffering from abuse trauma. One of my friends had come into contact with her through the CII organization which at the time was trying new methods of bringing repressed memories of abused children to the surface.
During his sessions with her he was put through so much trauma he was willing to tell anybody what they wanted believe.
Kee McFarlane's power came from the public who wanted "justice" for their children. Little did the public know that all of these allegations came from fabrications by Kee McFarlane.
The only change to come from this case and the trial was the questioning of children because they are impressionable and vulnerable to suggestability.
For those interested in the era that drove most families in California into hiding, see this movie but be aware, it's a horror story.

It is my favorite James Woods performance, and it made him a hero to me.