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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Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….

 

Why the panic ‘needs to be remembered’

130422JenkinsApril 22, 2013

“Lecturing recently, I mentioned the American witch-hunts of the 1980s and 1990s. When the audience looked puzzled, I explained that I was referring to the Satanic Panic of those years, the wave of false charges concerning ritual child abuse and devil cults that made regular headlines in the decade after 1984. The explanation helped little.

“Even people who had lived through those years, who had been following the media closely, had precisely no recollection. Lost in memory it may be, but the Satanic Panic needs to be remembered, if only to prevent a renewed outbreak of this horrible farrago. And when better than in the 30th anniversary of the affair’s beginning?

“It all started in southern California, in Manhattan Beach, in the Fall of 1983….”

– From “Remember the Satanic Panic” (Jan. 9, 2013) by Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, on Real Clear Religion

I share Dr. Jenkins’ concern about public memory, of course.

Which are more worrisome – those who have no recollection at all of cases such as McMartin and Little Rascals, or those who have forgotten they all were hoaxes?

‘Moral panics: they may begin with a legitimate societal concern….’

Jan. 4, 2018

“Sexual harassment or assault, by contrast [with the Communism scare in Hollywood], obviously warrants discipline at the very least and criminal prosecution wherever appropriate. But then and now, what’s lacking is any shared obligation to respect constitutional rights, ensure due process or maintain a sense of proportion…. And that’s the thing about moral panics: they may begin with a legitimate societal concern – drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, child abuse, human trafficking – but they can devolve into Prohibition, movie and broadcast censorship, banning comic books and rock ‘n’ roll, and general crusades against anything in popular culture challenging the official conformist line. And if you’re not careful, you’ll soon find yourself succumbing to irrational fears of ‘satanic ritual abuse,’ ‘backward masking’ in rock lyrics and secret pedophilia rings run out of suburban pizzerias….

“It’s not witches, but the witch-hunters, that we should really fear, for they lead us to abdicate our responsibilities to be fair, thoughtful, measured, and rational….”

– From “Season of the witch” by Joel Bellman at LA Observed (Dec. 10)

LRDCC20

Fake news and ‘satanic ritual abuse’: Best friends forever!

vox.com

Covers from the Weekly World News.

Dec. 15, 2016

You probably haven’t been asking Google to provide you with daily news alerts about “satanic ritual abuse,” but if you had , the popularity of fake news would come as no surprise.

Decades of debunking may have squelched the wrongful prosecutions of day-care providers, but beneath the surface… well, these headlines sprang from just one day’s news feed:

  • Ritual Abuse is Real: Cover-up of Child Sexual and Ritual Abuse

  • Cover-up of the Century: Satanic Ritual Abuse and World Conspiracy

  • Ritual Abuse: What It Is, Why It Happens, And How To Help

  • Breaking the Circle of Satanic Ritual Abuse

  • Child Trafficking/Illuminati-Freemason Ritual Abuse

LRDCC20

‘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.

I’ve found no better example of the era’s overreaching ignorance than the chart at right.

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.”

Eating Problems
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

Problems Associated with Confinement
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