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 – 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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Little Rascals Day Care Case
This Facebook page is an offshoot of littlerascalsdaycarecase.org, which addresses the wrongful prosecution of the Edenton Seven and other such victims.
Meanwhile in Edenton....
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Allies for our cause!
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The courts have a long history of capriciously pulling the rug out from under Junior's appeals, but maybe this time....
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Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
Ever so slowly, progress made toward DAs’ accountability
July 1, 2016
“Prosecutors should have to disclose evidence of innocence obtained after a person is convicted, a North Carolina State Bar panel agreed Wednesday.
“The ethics subcommittee voted 3-2 at a meeting in Greensboro to support the general principle that a prosecutor’s duty to disclose innocence evidence continues after a defendant is sentenced, although the members didn’t settle on specific language. A federal prosecutor and a former district attorney opposed the motion, while three attorneys in private practice supported it….
“The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys had said in a letter to the State Bar that prosecutors say that the rule is unnecessary….
“The panel is just the first step in a lengthy process that – if the rule is approved at each step – involves the full ethics committee, public comment, the full State Bar Council and finally, the state Supreme Court.”
– From “NC panel: Innocence evidence right continues after sentence” by Martha Waggoner of the Associated Press (June 29)
Read more here.
‘Fear of closets’? Get that child to a therapist!
Oct. 22, 2012
In the Dark Ages of social science – the 1980s, give or take a few years — unfounded concepts were treated as received truth: satanic ritual abuse (later recast as sadistic ritual abuse), multiple personality disorder (later, dissociative identity disorder), repressed memory syndrome.
On what possible grounds did California clinical psychologist Catherine Gould determine that satanic ritual abuse was indicated by a child’s “Refusal to eat red or brown food” or “Fear of closets and small spaces” or “Preoccupation with cleanliness”? Did this crazy quilt of symptoms come to her in a hallucination.
Regardless, Gould’s list, widely photocopied, contributed to parental panics at day cares across the country. After all, she was “a licensed psychologist specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of adult and child victims of ritual abuse”!
So just how reliable an authority was Catherine Gould? Well, it was she who first claimed the Los Angeles County Ritual Abuse Task Force was being poisoned with diazinon.
Later, according to the Associated Press, “She said her blurred vision and failed memory weren’t psychosomatic, but she admitted she never visited a doctor to be tested for the pesticide.”
Refusal to eat red or brown food
Fear that food is poisoned
Bingeing, gorging, vomiting, anorexia
Problems Associated with Doctors
Fear of doctors
Fear of injections, blood tests
Fear of removing clothes
Toiletting/Bathroom Problems
Bathroom avoidance, toileting accidents
Preoccupation with cleanliness
Preoccupation with urine and feces
Ingestion of urine and feces
Family Problems
Fear of death of parents, siblings, pets
Separation anxiety
Avoidance of physical contact
Threatens or attacks parents, siblings
Sexual Problems
Age-inappropriate sexual knowledge
Fear of touch
Excessive masturbation
Sexually provocative behavior
Vaginal or anal pain
Relaxed anal sphincter,enlarged vaginal opening
Venereal disease
Emotional Problems
Rapid mood swings
Resistance to authority
Hyperactivity, poor attention span
Anxiety
Poor self-esteem
Withdrawal
Regression and babyish speech
Flat affect
Nightmares, night terrors
Learning disorders
Fear of closets and small spaces
Fear of being tied up, ties up others
Problems Associated with Colors
Fear of colors red and black
Preoccupation with color black
Problems Associated with Death
Fear of dying, preoccupation with death
Play and Peer Problems
Destroys toys
Death, mutilation, confinement themes in play
Inability to engage in fantasy play
Problems Associated with Supernatural
Fear of ghosts, monsters, witches, devils
Preoccupation with wands, spirits, magic potions, curses, crucifixes
Odd songs and chants
Preoccupation with occult symbols
Fear of attending church
Other Fears and Strange Beliefs
Imaginary friends
Fear of police, strangers, bad people
Fear of violent films
Fear of aggressive animals
Fear of cemeteries, mortuaries, churches
Fear of something foreign inside body, e.g. bomb, devil’s heart
Downloaded Oct. 22, 2012 from http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~kquach6/common.html
Nancy Lamb, DA? It’s up to Gov. McCrory
Oct. 18, 2013
Because the Elizabeth City Daily Advance rejected my letter to the editor questioning its support of Nancy Lamb for district attorney, I’ve been posting comments in the online Advance, these two most recently:
Oct. 2: “It was no ‘technicality’ that led the North Carolina Court of Appeals to overturn the conviction of Bob Kelly (and of Dawn Wilson). The court focused on three glaring reversible errors in Kelly’s trial and implied it could have cited many more had that been needed. You can read the decision here.
“Little Rascals was only one of a wave of ‘ritual abuse’ day-care prosecutions during the ’80s and ’90s – virtually all of them based on hysteria rather than facts. You can read more here.
“Thank God, ‘Frontline’ put a national spotlight on the shameful abuse H.P. Williams, Bill Hart and Nancy Lamb – and their team of ill-trained therapists – were inflicting on the Edenton Seven, but the miscarriage of justice was clear even without it.”
Oct. 12: “Unfortunately, the most salient example of Nancy Lamb’s ‘ability to think for herself’ was her irrational, hysterical, unprofessional prosecution of the Little Rascals Day Care case. It would be easier to forgive her role in perpetuating the myth of ‘satanic ritual abuse’ in day cares were she finally able to admit her mistake and to apologize for crushing the lives of seven innocent defendants.”
After the death of District Attorney Frank Parrish, Gov. McCrory gave Lamb a 60-day appointment as interim DA. He is now deciding who should complete Parrish’s term. Next election for DA will be in November 2014.
Prosecutors went out of way to inflame public
April 15, 2013
This from Detroit reader P. Karr:
“Raised by a mom who survived the Blitz of London, I was taught that fascism often appears at the hands of lawmakers and is then carried forth by the public at large – said public believing whatever convenient lie is crammed down its throat….
“The Edenton prosecutors’ refusal to apply reason was frightening. But not near as frightening as their hubris, their moral flogging of the accused and their trotting them out in order to inflame the public. They may as well have sewn gold stars on the shirts of the Edenton Seven….
“I wonder if it ever occurs to the prosecutors that a refusal to apologize – indeed, to even question if they may have been wrong – is the hallmark of the sociopath.
“Something tells me not.”