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….
A funny story about the Little Rascals case (really!)
June 1, 2012
An incident recalled by a former Edenton resident:
“A friend had a son in Little Rascals but wouldn’t let him participate in the ‘hunt.’ She shielded him, as best she could, and didn’t interrogate him.
“Years later, when Bob Kelly was released, she thought it best to tell the son herself. He exploded in anger. Alarmed and filled with trepidation, she asked just what Mr. Bob had done to cause such a reaction.
“The child’s answer: Bob hadn’t let him put ketchup on his peanut butter sandwich.”
Richard Kluft, ‘advocate of moderation’?
Feb. 28, 2014
As noted by Gary Greenberg, Richard Noll’s disappeared history of psychiatry and satanic ritual abuse “singles out two psychiatrists – Bennett Braun and Richard Kluft – who were instrumental in giving legitimacy to the SRA accounts. They helped change the DSM to make Multiple Personality Disorder (thought to be caused by the abuse) seem more common, they started the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, and they founded a journal called Dissociation….”
If the SRA era was psychiatry’s Wild West, then Braun and Kluft were… who? Butch and Sundance? Or Frank and Jesse?
In “Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory” (1995) philosopher Ian Hacking pointed out an editorial in Dissociation in which Kluft “pleaded for moderation, but… acknowledged that powerful emotions were at work. He also raised the stakes by printing a comparison that I find rather odious. He noted that one party refers to Nazis and the Holocaust, asking, ‘Should he or she be silent, emulating the “good Germans” who did not speak out about the atrocities in their midst, and by his or her silence become a facilitator?’”
Despite such overheated comparisons, and his ludicrous estimates of an epidemic of “multiples,” Kluft at least claimed “moderation” – not so Braun, whose excesses in patient treatment led to suspension of his Illinois medical license, closure of his hospital MPD unit and at least four out-of-court settlements, one for $10.6 million.
Today he practices in obscurity, while Kluft concentrates on stifling publication of incriminating journal articles.
‘How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?’
Sept. 12, 2012
“Connie Tindall wanted to be pardoned before he died. But like Jerry Jacobs, Joe Wright and Ann Shepard before him, Tindall was buried Friday without knowing if the state of North Carolina will ever pardon members of the Wilmington 10.”
– From the Wilmington Star-News (Aug. 10, 2012)
Tindall died at age 62 – younger than Bob Kelly and Scott Privott. Will the Edenton Seven live long enough to see themselves exonerated?
Good sense proved no match for gossip
Nov. 18, 2011
“Gossip serves to fill up the vacuum of many people’s lives. It adds spice and excitement ….
“ ʻI would never have imagined it,ʼ say the neighborhood people. ʻIt looked like such a nice, friendly, reputable school, and all the while we didn’t know what terrible things were going on in there. They sure were clever. They really kept it quiet for a long time.
“ ʻWhen those kids came out, I never thought that they had just eaten feces, drunk urine and were beaten with whips.ʼ ”
– From “Sex Abuse Hysteria: Salem Witch Trials Revisited” by Richard A. Gardner (1991)