May 30, 2015

Ofra Bikel’s eight hours of “Innocence Lost” were surely powerful, but the narrowness of PBS’s audience limited their impact. What if the Little Rascals Day Care case had also inspired a major theatrical release? What if several million moviegoers had watched the dramatic nobody-dunnit even as the real-life Edenton Seven were languishing in jail or standing  trial?

For a brief moment, that seemed possible.

Kurt Luedtke, screenwriter for the ’80s hits “Out of Africa” and “Absence of Malice,” was outraged after seeing the initial “Innocence Lost” in 1991. “You can’t hold people that long without presenting the evidence,” he told the Charlotte Observer.
Now retired and living in Michigan, Luedtke recalls his “indignation mounting and (thinking) I had to do something about the preposterousness of what was going on….”

Alas, his idea apparently made it no further than a preliminary meeting in New York with Bikel and “Frontline” founder David Fanning: “I can’t remember why we didn’t go forward; maybe I had another job.”

March 14, 2012

“Prosecutor Nancy Lamb practiced a little ‘voodoo’ psychology by telling the jury that when Dawn Wilson held and played with her child during breaks in the trial, it wasn’t because she loved the child – it was all a show for the benefit of the jury.

“No psychologist could have accurately reported on the state of mind or the motives of Wilson when she played with her child. However, had a psychologist known that Wilson had been offered a plea bargain which included no jail time if she pointed the finger at the others, and had told prosecutors to ‘Find yourselves another patsy,’ that psychologist might have known something about Nancy Lamb’s state of mind when she made those statements.”

– From “Due Process Is Good Psychology,” article in
Michigan Lawyer Weekly by Michael G. Brock

Defending this smear, one of many, Lamb said Wilson was presenting herself as a good mother, and “We had to remove that mask.”

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.

Oct. 29, 2012

“For at least eight years American law enforcement has been aggressively investigating the allegations of victims of ritualistic abuse. There is little or no evidence for the portion of their allegations that deals with large-scale baby breeding, human sacrifice and organized satanic conspiracies.”

– Kenneth V. Lanning, supervisory special agent at the behavioral science unit, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, FBI Academy, Quantico, Va. (Aug. 19, 1991)

Two decades later, what’s most striking about agent Lanning’s statement isn’t the content – what could’ve been more predictable? – but the context: The moral panic held such sway that the FBI was forced to devote no less than eight years to discrediting it.

Lanning’s 1992 analysis (i.e., debunking) of all aspects of satanic ritual abuse has been called “perhaps the most important and influential document ever written on the topic.”

Here’s what Lanning said about day care allegations:

“Children currently or formerly attending a day care center gradually describe their victimization at the center and at other locations to which they were taken by the day care staff. The cases include multiple victims and offenders, fear, and bizarre or ritualistic activity, with a particularly high number of female offenders. Descriptions of strange games, insertion of foreign objects, killing of animals, photographing of activities, and wearing of costumes are common. The accounts of the young children, however, do not seem to be quite as ‘bizarre‘ as those of the adult survivors, with fewer accounts of human sacrifice….”

Angered by the report, some therapists accused Lanning of being a satanist who had infiltrated the FBI to advance the cause.

Dec. 24, 2012

“Why prosecutors sometimes fight post-conviction evidence so adamantly depends on each case. Some legitimately believe the new evidence is not exonerating.

“But legal scholars looking at the issue suggest that prosecutors’ concerns about their political future and a culture that values winning over justice also come into play. ‘They are attached to their convictions,’ (says Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia), ‘and they don’t want to see their work called into question.’ ”

– From “The Prosecution’s Case Against DNA” in the New York Times Sunday Magazine (Nov. 25, 2011)

“Attached to their convictions,” indeed. Nancy Lamb was so attached that in 1996, after Bob Kelly’s 99-count conviction was overturned, she rummaged around the office and turned up yet another molestation claim – this one from two years before the Little Rascals arrests.

Gerald Beaver, Kelly’s attorney, pointed out that the law requires any report of sexual abuse to be investigated immediately and called police investigator Brenda Toppin, who testified that she had told Lamb about the claim in 1992. Lamb denied any recollection of Toppin’s comment.

“All of this ‘We care about the children’ kind of went down the drain after the conviction,” Beaver said. “It was only when (Kelly) successfully appealed and was no longer pulling 12 consecutive life sentences that the state felt compelled to go out and find this witness.”

As usual, however, time proved no object for prosecutors dedicated to making life miserable for Little Rascals defendants. It would be 1999 before they dropped the final charge against Bob Kelly.