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….
‘Ritual abuse’ claims exempt from retraction?
Sept. 14, 2015
“Rising retraction rates reflect (in part) the fact that scientists, journalists and amateur watchdogs have begun scrutinizing research more closely….
“This heightened scrutiny – the very scrutiny that likely contributed to the retractions surge in the first place – could help reverse the tide, by providing a powerful disincentive to bad behavior. As more scientific misconduct is exposed and shamed, researchers who were previously tempted to play fast and loose with their data may now think twice.”
– From “A Scientific Look at Bad Science” by Bourree Lam in The Atlantic (September 2015)
“The increase in overall retractions is mostly because a higher percentage of journals have begun issuing retractions…. One reason it’s taken a while… could be that they had to develop the necessary guidelines for defining, detecting and dealing with ‘misconduct’….
“(One) study found that editors are retracting articles significantly faster now than in the past. We might be working our way towards a future in which fraudsters like (Diederik) Stapel won’t build up such massive bodies of literature before being unmasked. Their first or second will be caught, before they’ve done too much damage.”
– From “Scientific Retractions are on the Rise, and That May Be a Good Thing” by Rosie Cima at Priceonomics (June 24)
“Before they’ve done too much damage” – ah, if only that applied to the errant (and still unrepentant) authors and journal editors whose efforts lent credence to the prosecution during the “satanic ritual abuse” moral panic.
Remember when ‘ritual abuse’ was a hot topic?
Aug. 19, 2013
A brief visual aside, courtesy of the Google books Ngram Viewer:
However much frustration I feel in pursuing exoneration for the Edenton Seven – plenty! – I do take some reassurance in watching the ritual abuse moral panic slowly lose its hold on public discourse, as shown in the Ngram above or here.
Was it really Dawn Wilson who ‘had no character’?
March 12, 2012
After reading thousands of pages of Little Rascals coverage, shouldn’t I have become inured to the prosecution’s gratuitous brutality?
Not yet.
On August 11, 1993, Dawn Wilson, serving a life sentence for child sexual abuse, went back to court to seek release under house arrest. In six days she would give birth to her second child.
Nancy Lamb and Bill Hart could’ve responded with any number of temperate legal arguments against her release. Instead….
“She made a quite irresponsible decision in 1992 to become pregnant early in her trial,” Lamb said. “She was thinking only of herself….”
“Dawn Wilson… simply has no character…,” added Hart. “Is she the kind of mother figure who ought to be bonding with a second out-of-wedlock child?”
Judge Marsh McLelland granted Wilson’s request, but delays in paperwork and payment of a $250,000 bond kept mother and son in women’s prison another month.
In 1995 the N.C. Court of Appeals overturned her conviction. And then of course the prosecutors rushed to apologize to Dawn Wilson for their disgraceful vilification.
An encore for ritual abuse panic? ‘You can bet on it’
May 18, 2012
“Discredited child-sex rings like McMartin actually may not be a bogeyman of the past. Some parents, therapists and child-protection professionals continue to believe ritual sex abuse took place at McMartin preschool.
“ ‘In 10 to 15 years, there will be an attempt to rehabilitate the ritual abuse scare,’ says (James Wood, psychologist at the University of Texas El Paso). ‘You can bet on it.’ ”
– From “Who Was Abused?” by Maggie Jones in the New York Times (Sept. 19, 2004)