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….
Oh, to see ourselves as other see us – ouch!
Jan. 11, 2013
“Chris Bean (Bob Kelly’s lawyer until becoming involved as a child-witness parent) told me that when the townspeople first saw the documentary, they thought it was OK and that nobody thought my film had personally misrepresented them.
“But then, he told me, the firestorm of national attention began and people were writing to the mayor, to the townspeople, to many of the families I interviewed, and it was like a house of cards, you know. It all came tumbling down on them.”
– Ofra Bikel, quoted in the Newark Star-Ledger (July 18, 1993)
“The only woman who never complained after the first film,” Bikel said, was Jane Mabry – Patient Zero in the rumor contagion.
Better not to be wrongfully convicted in the first place
May 18, 2016
Even where (wrongful imprisonment) compensation laws exist, they can be badly flawed. Most states, like Louisiana, place the burden on people who were wrongly convicted to prove their innocence before any payment is made. Several states offer embarrassingly small payouts…. Others have laws riddled with unreasonable restrictions…. Some refuse to pay anyone who pleaded guilty or who confessed to a crime he or she did not commit, despite evidence that many innocent people do both….”
– From “Paying for Years Lost Behind Bars,” editorial in the New York Times (May 18)
And some states – well, actually, just one – have governors who withhold compensation for nine months while gratuitously reinvestigating a DNA exoneration.
Nancy Lamb rejected reason in favor of fantasy
July 3, 2013
“(Nancy Lamb) is aware of the naysayers, those who say she ran a witch hunt, gleaning hundreds of charges against (Bob) Kelly and his staff from the children’s accounts, which included trips aboard spaceships.
“ ‘You have to look at the big picture,’ she said. ‘You have to know that there are fantastic elements in children’s accounts of abuse, while they also say things that are quite believable.’ ”
“And believe she did….”
– From “How hard it is to say, ‘Enough’ ” by columnist Nicole Brodeur in the News & Observer (May 28, 1997)
What self-serving speciousness. Could there be a better example of failing “to look at the big picture” than Lamb’s focusing on only those fragments of the children’s manipulated testimony that supported her case?
‘If he made such a statement, it was not a threat’ (!)
Aug. 3, 2012
“Betty Ann Phillips, who had worked at the day care center, said (in the first episode of “Innocence Lost’) that she had complained to (District Attorney H.P.) Williams when she found out that indictments had been filed in her child’s name.
“She said Williams had advised her ‘not to go out on the street and say you’re unhappy with what we have done.’
“‘And then in the next sentence he said, “Because you know that all of the children are saying that you were the lookout while this was going on.”’
“In a telephone interview, Williams did not dispute that he had told Mrs. Phillips he had evidence from other children that she had acted as a lookout, but… if he made such a statement to her it was not meant as a threat.”
– The Associated Press, May 9, 1991