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….
Tortured by timidity in Texas
March 13, 2016
โFran and Dan Keller have been released from a Texas prison after 21 years, yet still have little freedom of movement or circumstance, or even quality of life. Their 1992 conviction on multiple counts of โsexual assault of a minorโ โ in the now notorious Fran’s Day Care case โ has effectively been overturned by a 2015 Court of Criminal Appeals ruling โgranting reliefโ to the Kellers on a single question of retracted medical testimony. But the ruling was not accompanied by actual exoneration from the allegedly heinous crimes.
โOnly a single appeals court judge โ Cheryl Johnson โ was willing to admit no crime had in fact occurred. โThis was a witch hunt from the beginning,โ wrote Johnson, in her opinion concurring with the opaque ruling of the full court. Johnson would have granted relief on all the Kellers’ claims, and would have acknowledged that the entire prosecution had been an egregious folly.
โThe limited ruling, while welcome in itself, left the Kellers in a legal limbo โ permanently accused but not cleared…. required to somehow further demonstrate their innocence โ of crimes that never happened….โ
โ From โLearning From Our Mistakesโย by Michael King in the Austin Chronicle (March 11) (cached)
So who thwarts the hapless Kellers? Yes, yet another prosecutor who sets the bar for exoneration stratospherically high. Although District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg (hereโs why her name rings a bell) supported their release,ย she now finds herself unable to โfind a path to innocenceโ without the deal-sealing exculpation of DNA evidence. Those darn imaginary criminals sure do clean up after themselves….
50 students now know the facts
Oct. 28, 2013
โWhat was surprising was that in a class of 50 students, none had heard of the day care allegations of the 1980s.โ
โ From a note from Catherine Caldwell-Harris,ย associate professor of psychology, Boston University
Well, thatโs a bracing dose of reality, isnโt it? But thanks to Dr. Caldwell-Harris, those students in her developmental psychology class now have an understanding of the moral panic. Hereโs herย lesson plan, which she doesnโt mind being borrowed, along with her comments on how students responded.
Maybe theย current generation of academics sees clearly what many of their predecessors so horribly misjudged?
Why SRA authors might’ve passed on responding
March 8, 2014
Last of three posts
As Iย recounted earlier, Dr. Jon Conte expressed a willingness to consider my expanded letter seeking a retraction of the Journal of Interpersonal Violenceโs past support of the โsatanic ritual abuseโ moral panic.ย So what might have happened after I submitted thatย October 25 letterย that resulted in Conteโs cutting off contact by email or phone?
I suspect the crucial clue lies in his specifying that โWe are probably going to invite the authors to respond, and if they choose to do so I will share their responses before we publish your letter or their responses.โย Those authors would include Susan J. Kelley (โStress Responses of Children to Sexual Abuse and Ritualistic Abuse in Day Care Centers,โ December 1989) and Barbara Snow (โRitualistic Child Abuse in a Neighborhood Setting,โ December 1990).
Kelley has been oft-recognized at littlerascalsdaycarecase.org, not only for her enthusiastically wrongheaded academic work, but also for herย prosecutorial interviewing techniquesย in the Fells Acres case.
Unlike Kelley, Snow eventually suffered consequences, however small. From the Salt Lake Tribune (February 22, 2008):
โA therapist accused of unprofessional conduct โ including imposing false memories on her relatives โ entered into an agreement Tuesday with (Utahโs) Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing.
โBarbara Snow is voluntarily being placed on probation, according to a statement from her attorney….
โThe disciplinary notice alleged Snow convinced a male relative he was sexually abused by his father. It also contended Snow convinced a female relative she was the victim of satanic abuse and military testing. When state investigators questioned Snow, she allegedly provided made-up notes about those sessions.
โIn the agreement, Snow admitted destroying a relative’s computer equipment (with a baseball bat!) and adding two incorrect dates to her psychotherapy notes….
โSnow was involved in the prosecutions of a string of child sex abuse cases in the 1980s. One man she testified against was granted a new hearing after the Utah Supreme Court questioned her credibility….โ
Should it surprise anyone that Kelley and Snow โ orย Dr. Richard Kluftย โ would be less than eager to look back at the toxic misconceptions they spread?
‘We’ve learned a lot….’ (Too bad it took so long)
March 30, 2012
Kee MacFarlaneย is the notorious therapist who led the ritual abuse scare of the late 1980sย (and pioneered the misuse of anatomically correct dolls in interviewing children). In just four months MacFarlane diagnosed more than 360 children at the McMartin Pre-School as abused.
In 2005 she declined to be interviewed by CNN but sent a statement:
โWeโve learned a lot in 20 years about how to interview children for forensic purposes and how to manage complex cases such as this one. It would be a sad commentary if we didnโt learn from such painful experience.โ
Not much of a mea culpa โ but still more than anyone connected with the Little Rascals prosecution has managed.
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