The whole thing was started by a schizophrenic

Judy Johnson, the woman who kicked off the whole hysteria when she accused a teacher at the McMartin preschool of sodomizing her son, was diagnosed with with acute paranoid schizophrenia, and ended up being involuntarily confined to a psychiatric hospital a couple of years after making the accusation. Some of her other accusations were that the day care providers were witches, and that they had forced her son to drink blood out of the head of a baby which had been sliced open. Prosecutors neglected to mention any of this, because, for some odd reason, they apparently were concerned that this might weaken the credibility of their case. Johnson drank herself to death shortly after being released from the nut house, but the tidal wave she had unleashed was only beginning to swell. - Prometheus