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….
By time to testify, children knew their lines
Jan. 30, 2013
“They have been through more dress rehearsals than the cast of ‘Cats.’”
– Joe Cheshire, lawyer for Betsy Kelly, protesting the latitude given the prosecution in preparing Little Rascals children to testify (New York Times, Aug. 19, 1991)
Throw symptoms against the wall, see if any stick….
Dec. 4, 2015
“Hertford, N.C. – Three children who attended Little Rascals Day Care Center behaved strangely in kindergarten, a teacher testified Wednesday in the sex abuse trial of Dawn Wilson.
“Lisa Leary said one girl who attended the day care in Edenton refused to take a nap the year after Little Rascals closed. She also cried and wet her pants when she saw Elizabeth Kelly in a hall, she said.
“Another girl had to be separated from a boy after she mimicked a sex act with him during class, Leary said.
“A third child ‘did not want anyone to touch him’ and was concerned about fire, she said….”
– From “Kindergarten teacher testifies in Rascals trial” from the Associated Press (Dec. 3, 1992)
Although Dawn Wilson’s prosecutors never let up in their pursuit of the mythical “coherent package” of behaviors attributable to child sexual abuse, the questioning of this witness wandered even further into the weeds than usual. As the AP added dryly:
“On cross-examination by defense attorney Edward Simmons, the teacher said the children did not mention Wilson.”
Will Edenton, too, ever be ‘honest about what took place’?
Jan. 14, 2016
“Researchers announced this week they have confirmed the plot (in Salem, Mass.) where 19 people accused of witchcraft were hanged in a wave of hysteria that swept this seaside city in 1692.
“Salem plans to mark the ignominious spot, Mayor Kimberley Driscoll said: ‘This is part of our history, and this is an opportunity for us to be honest about what took place.’
“Neither of two previous plans for a memorial there (in 1892 and 1936) went anywhere. Emerson ‘Tad’ Baker, a Salem State University professor who helped pinpoint the location, said the desire by some to forget the witch trials was probably to blame.
– From “Researchers pinpoint site of Salem witch hangings” by Laura Crimaldi in the Boston Globe (Jan. 13)
In Edenton, the “desire by some to forget” still dominates, but should it ever weaken…..
‘Subculture’ of therapists blamed ritual abuse
Jan. 16, 2013
“Therapists diagnosing Satanic Ritual Abuse as the cause of their patients’ troubles… often belonged to a subculture within the therapeutic community, where focus on dissociation and multiple personalities were more important than among other clinicians.
“This small minority were involved in the vast majority of ritual abuse allegations with a therapy background. Nevertheless, many elements of the ideas, and some of the practices that seem to have been important in creating SRA-narratives were common among therapists of all kinds: belief in the concept of repression, a view of memory as analogous to a video-tape or computer and (confidence) that hypnosis could be an important tool in unearthing forgotten abuse. This view of memory and memory recovery has been largely dismissed among the community of cognitive psychologists.”
– From “Psychology and the Satanic Ritual Abuse Controversy. A Brief Research Review” by Asbjørn Dyrendal in Skepsis (March 2, 2007)