July 25, 2012

“The terms of (Shelley Stone’s release on $342,000 bond) included an order to stay out of downtown Edenton so she would not run across any children – or parents of children – who had attended Little Rascals.

“One exception came two years ago, when she was allowed to attend her daughter’s high school graduation.

“Stone and her family live in Tyner, a few miles outside Edenton. They receive public assistance.

“‘I’ve had people say to me point blank: “Gee, Shelley, I would hire you, but I’m afraid I’d lose customers,”’ Stone says. ‘Now, when you can’t a job within 30 miles, that’s bad.’

“Prosecutors say they still have not decided whether to try her on 12 charges of sexual abuse, which could mean life in prison. Meanwhile, she waits….

“‘It’s been going on for seven years. Is it going to go on for another seven years, or 10 years or 20 years? Am I going to die with this still going on?…

“‘I worry every day. Are they going to come and say, “We’re going to take you to trial now”?’”

– Adapted from the Associated Press, Sept. 23, 1996

Three months later the state dropped all charges against Stone (and Robin Byrum and Darlene Harris).

As in other Little Rascals cases, Nancy Lamb attributed the dismissals to  concern for the child-witnesses and to limited resources in the DA’s office, not to any belated recognition of the defendants’ innocence. “We didn’t bring charges in 1989 and 1990 thinking that these people weren’t guilty,” she told the AP. “Why would we do such a thing? We had enough evidence all along to convict all three, or we would not have brought charges.”

But Lamb needn’t have been too disappointed. After all, how many juries would’ve rendered harsher punishment to these three innocent young women than the seven years of torture the state inflicted?

Jan. 25, 2015

Q:  You said that Mr. Bob made spaghetti at the day care…. Now, when did Mr. Bob say that there was poop in the spaghetti?

A:  After we, um, ate it.

Q:  All right. Did – did you ever have to eat poop at the day care?

A:  No.

Q:  Okay. Did anybody try and make you eat poop at the day care?

A:  Yes.

Q: Who?

A:  Mr. Bob.

Q:  Tell me about it.

A:  I don’t remember it.

Q:  You don’t remember it?

A:  No.

Q:  Well, how do you know Mr. Bob tried to do it?

A:  What?

Q:  Did somebody tell you about it?

A:  No.

Q:  Okay. Well, then tell me how Mr. Bob tried to make you eat poop.

A:  Um, he told me, um, to eat it.

Q:  Okay. Where was it?

A:  I forgot.

Q:  You forgot. Well, was it in Ms. Shelly’s room?

A:  No.

Q:  Was it in the kitchen?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Okay. Well, did he make other kids eat poop while you were there?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Okay. Well, um, what happened when they ate it?

A:  I don’t know.

– From defense attorney Jeffrey Miller’s cross-examination of a child witness in the trial of Bob Kelly

This exchange represents only a tiny fraction of the 7-year-old girl’s testimony, which stretched over two days and included similarly incoherent references to Kelly and other defendants having raped her, urinated in her mouth, threatened to kill her parents, sodomized her with pencils and sewing needles, taken her on boat and truck rides, forced her to witness the killing and burial of babies and small animals…..

How funny and trivial such childish imaginings would seem, if only the jury’s gullibility hadn’t sent Kelly to prison for six years. “The children were convincing,” insisted rogue juror Dennis T. Ray.

Oct. 28, 2013

“What was surprising was that in a class of 50 students, none had heard of the day care allegations of the 1980s.”

– From a note from Catherine Caldwell-Harris, associate professor of psychology, Boston University

Well, that’s a bracing dose of reality, isn’t it? But thanks to Dr. Caldwell-Harris, those students in her developmental psychology class now have an understanding of the moral panic. Here’s her lesson plan, which she doesn’t mind being borrowed, along with her comments on how students responded.

Maybe the  current generation of academics sees clearly what many of their predecessors so horribly misjudged?

Aug. 24, 2012

My EDENTON7 license plate recently caught the eye of a former Little Rascals Day Care parent who left Edenton.

Although Maria – a pseudonym, as she still has family back home – withdrew her daughter from Little Rascals in 1989 after less than two months, it was because of outside circumstances, not because of any dissatisfaction with the care received. “It was a normal day care, clean and quiet,” she says.

The torrent of ritual-abuse rumors started soon after.

She was unsure what to make of it all until a former classmate, Dawn Wilson, was caught up in the dragnet. “Dawn had sat in front of me in high school,” she recalls. “She was quiet and shy, but she opened up to me about wanting to have a baby. She was a loving person. When I heard her name mentioned, I knew right then it couldn’t be true.”

Maria worked at Hardee’s, where she found it “painful to watch” Betsy Kelly’s parents, Warren and Alice Twiddy,  being ostracized by their Wednesday-morning coffee klatch. “They were respected people…. She was the clerk of court. It was like she couldnt believe the town was doing this to her.”

Maria’s most surprising observation: “I think PBS (“Frontline”) changed the minds of a lot of people in Edenton. They saw how the gossip and innuendo had worked.”