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….
Edenton’s history was no defense against panic
Jan. 28, 2013
Manhattan Beach, California; Malden, Massachusetts; Christchurch, New Zealand; Maplewood, New Jersey; Sao Paulo, Brazil…. For more than a decade, unfounded allegations of day-care ritual abuse were breaking out all over the planet.
But for sheer cultural anomaly it’s hard to match the emergence of such a case in historic and pristine Edenton, North Carolina, not unreasonably billed as “the South’s Prettiest Small Town.”
Edenton had made lots of headlines before Little Rascals, but almost none since the 1700s.
Among the town’s prominent residents: Joseph Hewes, signer of the Declaration of Independence; Hugh Williamson, signer of the Constitution; James Iredell, George Washington’s youngest appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Penelope Barker hosted the Edenton Tea Party to protest British taxes (that’s her waterfront house in the opening scene of “Innocence Lost”).
Harriet Jacobs, author of “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” was a native.
You won’t find a Walmart in Edenton (population 5,000 and slowly shrinking), but its trove of civic treasures includes a 1925 moviehouse, a 1939 baseball park and a 1767 courthouse (above right), the state’s oldest.
So why Edenton of all places? How did this charming, 300-year-old hamlet happen to offer all the essential ingredients for a world-class ritual-abuse panic? I wish I knew (and I wish Edenton did too).
Were tales any taller in Salem than in Edenton?
Dec, 4, 2016
“The testimony [in the Salem witch trials] is full of tall tales, unless you happen to believe – as one woman confessed, having vowed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – that she flew on a stick with her church deacon and two others to a satanic baptism, and that she had, the previous Monday, carried her minister’s specter through the air along with her, having earlier conferred in her orchard with a satanic cat….”
– From “The Witches: Salem, 1692” by Stacy Schiff (2015)
In 1993, predicting a historic marker – and more
June 18, 2015
Given my thoroughly unsuccessful attempt to persuade the State of North Carolina to erect a historic marker recalling the Little Rascals Day Care case, I had to laugh at discovering this 1993 letter to the Elizabeth City Daily Advance:
“Dear Editor:
“The year is 2022. The town of Edenton, last stop on the witch-hunt trail beginning in Salem, Mass., with an intermediate stop at Joe McCarthy’s office in Washington, D.C., has finally decided to build a historic marker. (It will be) directly across the street from the town’s $4 million tour center, where people gather from across the nation (indeed, from around the world) to see and feel and learn about the Edenton witch hunts of 1990-1993….
“It is here where the walking tours start, where the T-shirts are sold and where the buses disgorge their curious cargo….”
Letter writer David W. Tucker of San Francisco – who in all likelihood had recently watched “Innocence Lost: The Verdict” – expressed confidence that the marker would eventually be approved, even if not by 2022:
“The only question is whether the marker will speak of the community’s collective shame
or, instead, of the individuals and groups of good will and courage who brought lasting honor to Edenton by rescuing Bob Kelly, Dawn Wilson, the Twiddy family and the others from the nightmare that fear, hate and ignorance visited upon them….”
Betsy Kelly barred from reunion (but still got T-shirt!)
June 28, 2015
“Today in Edenton members of John A. Holmes High School’s Class of ’73 will walk across a stage in caps and gowns, receive diplomas and turn tassels on their mortar boards – 20 years late.
“Their graduation ceremony was cancelled abruptly in 1973. A decision not to renew the contract of a black band leader had caused racial unrest, and school officials feared a disruption…. Diplomas were mailed to the 142 graduates….
“One member who doesn’t plan to attend is Elizabeth Twiddy Kelly…. A condition of her ($400,000) bond prohibits her from going to her hometown.
“ ‘There are a lot of them I would love to just touch base with, but that will have to happen another year,’ Mrs. Kelly said.
“The class committee plans to send her a class T-shirt and a letter.”
– From “Class of ’73” by the Associated Press (June 12, 1993)
Seven months later Betsy Kelly pleaded no contest to charges of child sex abuse, while maintaining her innocence, and accepted a sentence of seven years in prison. She was paroled in November 1994.