Rascals case in brief
In the beginning, in 1989, more than 90 children at the Little Rascals Day Care Center in Edenton, North Carolina, accused a total of 20 adults with 429 instances of sexual abuse over a three-year period. It may have all begun with one parent’s complaint about punishment given her child.
Among the alleged perpetrators: the sheriff and mayor. But prosecutors would charge only Robin Byrum, Darlene Harris, Elizabeth “Betsy” Kelly, Robert “Bob” Kelly, Willard Scott Privott, Shelley Stone and Dawn Wilson โ the Edenton 7.
Along with sodomy and beatings, allegations included a baby killed with a handgun, a child being hung upside down from a tree and being set on fire and countless other fantastic incidents involving spaceships, hot air balloons, pirate ships and trained sharks.
By the time prosecutors dropped the last charges in 1997, Little Rascals had become North Carolina’s longest and most costly criminal trial. Prosecutors kept defendants jailed in hopes at least one would turn against their supposed co-conspirators. Remarkably, none did. Another shameful record: Five defendants had to wait longer to face their accusers in court than anyone else in North Carolina history.
Between 1991 and 1997, Ofra Bikel produced three extraordinary episodes on the Little Rascals case for the PBS series “Frontline.” Although “Innocence Lost” did not deter prosecutors, it exposed their tactics and fostered nationwide skepticism and dismay.
With each passing year, the absurdity of the Little Rascals charges has become more obvious. But no admission of error has ever come from prosecutors, police, interviewers or parents. This site is devoted to the issues raised by this case.
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Todayโs random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
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Todayโs random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
A familiar story of day-care sex abuse โ too familiar?
Oct. 16, 2014
โA 38-year-old man from Statesville has been accused of molesting children as young as 3 years old at the day care where he worked in the 1990s….
โPolice said a girl came to them in 1999 and said (Joshua Maurice) Young had molested her at the day care between 1994 and 1995, when she was 3 years old. The alleged assaults happened in a part of the building away from the other children….
โThe Statesville Police Department investigated then, according to Capt. David Onley… but no charges were filed….
โIn June of this year, another alleged victim came forward, Onley said. This one said she was molested by Young at the day care between 1995 and 1997. The earliest incidents happened when she was 3, she said.
โ โWe had a female tell us exactly the same story โ same place, same details as (the first) one,โ Onley said. โIt gave validity to that (first) one. And then we had to go track down that first victim.โ โ
โ From โDay care worker accused of sexuallyย assaulting 3-year-olds in 1990sโ by Cleve R. Wootson Jr. in the Charlotte Observer (Oct. 15)
Is Joshua Maurice Young guilty as charged? I have no idea. But given the history of day-care sex abuse prosecutions, the case against him certainly warrants a skepticism by police not indicated in this account.
‘Michelle Remembers’ spread its myth widely
Nov. 15, 2015
โIn 1977 the Canadian psychotherapistย Lawrence Pazderย published a memoir of one of his patients, โMichelle Remembers.โ…
โMichelleโs memoir had been preceded by a number of other books by survivors of child abuse, such as โThe Three Faces of Eveโ (1952) and โSybilโ (1973)…. What Michelle remembered, though, set her book apart. The narrative included lurid details of years of sexual abuse, satanic ritual, animal sacrifice, serial rape, baby killing and a climactic final battle between the devil (complete with horns and tail) and the Virgin Mary…
โMichelle had apparently repressed the memory of these events for something like 20 years. Only after sessions with her therapist (whom she later married) did the memories reemerge, from the couch to the printed page.
โโMichelle Remembersโ was the first to really discover satan, and many of its narrative moments would recur, endlessly, in the following decade in a series of expanding claims of a secret satanic conspiracy for world domination. As one law enforcement official put it, โBefore โMichelle Remembers,โ there were no Satanic child prosecutions. Now the myth is everywhere.โ โ
โ From โFrom History to Theoryโ by Kerwin Lee Klein (2011)
Shame links Edenton with other ‘ritual abuse’ sites
Oct. 11, 2015
โSatanism lacks a (Jim) Jones or (David) Koresh. Satanism has no Jonestown, no Waco, no Kool-Aid, no casual point of reference.
โThis is because Satanic cults, as imagined in popular culture, do not exist.
โStill, some places across the country โ West Memphis, Arkansas; Manhattan Beach, California; Edenton, North Carolina; Austin, Texas โ belong to a brotherhood of cities united not by the stunned, silent grief of a tragedy like Wacoโs, but by the shame of having left innocent familiesโ lives in ruin in the fervent pursuit of an imaginary evil….
โThe โSatanic Panicโ of the 1980s and early โ90s was arguably even more frightening than a typical cult precisely because of this lack of a central figure or place; anybody could have been involved, and nobody was above suspicion….โ
โ From โConviction of Things Not Seen: The Uniquely American Myth of Satanic Cultsโย byย Dan Shewanย at Pacific Standard (Oct. 8)
National borders were no barrier to panic
Oct. 15, 2012
โGerman television and the press (especially the tabloids) dwelled on McMartin with almost the same intensity as did the U.S. media….The impact was predictable: an immediate, steep increase in the number of abuse claims by children and their parents….
โIn the city of Muenster…. children (at a Montessori school) accused persons totally removed from the setting, including taxi drivers, and talked about coffins, mortuaries, trap doors, chaining and secret subterranean vaults. The panic spread to other schools.
โFinally, the (Montessori) investigation, which lasted from 1990 to 1993, resulted in dismissal for lack of evidence. A key role was played by a level-headed psychologist who submitted an analysis of the children and their parents forming a โgroup mindโ that had evolved through mutually reinforcing suggestion.
โA warning for the modern world: When analyzing childrenโs allegations, we also must analyze the role of the modern mass media, not only within national boundaries….โ
โ From โWitch-Children: From Salem Witch-Hunts to Modern Courtroomsโ ย by Hans Sebald (1995)
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