Oct. 16, 2014

“A 38-year-old man from Statesville has been accused of molesting children as young as 3 years old at the day care where he worked in the 1990s….

“Police said a girl came to them in 1999 and said (Joshua Maurice) Young had molested her at the day care between 1994 and 1995, when she was 3 years old. The alleged assaults happened in a part of the building away from the other children….

“The Statesville Police Department investigated then, according to Capt. David Onley… but no charges were filed….

“In June of this year, another alleged victim came forward, Onley said. This one said she was molested by Young at the day care between 1995 and 1997. The earliest incidents happened when she was 3, she said.

“ ‘We had a female tell us exactly the same story – same place, same details as (the first) one,’ Onley said. ‘It gave validity to that (first) one. And then we had to go track down that first victim.’ ”

– From “Day care worker accused of sexually assaulting 3-year-olds in 1990s” by Cleve R. Wootson Jr. in the Charlotte Observer (Oct. 15)

Is Joshua Maurice Young guilty as charged? I have no idea. But given the history of day-care sex abuse prosecutions, the case against him certainly warrants a skepticism by police not indicated in this account.

July 7, 2019

For those seeking to understand the Little Rascals Day Care case one particularly intriguing question remains: How do the former child-witnesses, now well into their 30s, look back at their central role?

Do they believe today that their testimony was accurate? Or have they come to realize that those bizarre sexual accusations – as well as the accounts of sharks, spaceships and burning babies – were products of sheer fantasy? And that they had been relentlessly manipulated by the prosecution’s therapists?

Last month I sent letters to the Little Rascals witnesses in hopes that they would be ready to talk about their experiences. Here’s what I said:

“I apologize if this letter is unwelcome. For the past eight years I have been researching the Little Rascals Day Care case. I’m writing you because as a child you were a witness for the prosecution in Bob Kelly’s trial in 1991-92. The court records include a passage describing your testimony.

“I blog at littlerascalsdaycarecase.org, and I have worked with Duke Law School to build an archive on the case. My aim is to persuade the State of North Carolina to issue the Edenton Seven a statement of innocence similar to the one given the defendants in the Duke lacrosse case.

“I don’t know how you look back at your involvement in the case, and you are certainly under no obligation to tell me. But if you might be willing to share your recollections – however they might agree or conflict with your testimony – please contact me….”

In the decades since the “satanic ritual abuse” day care prosecutions few child-witnesses have chosen to step forward. One who did so – anonymously – looked back with sadness at the McMartin case: “It is my belief, after years of treatment centers and therapy, that nothing physical happened to me…. Mentally, well, that’s a different story. How about paying attention to the kids that were scarred from this therapy? Do you think that just because there was most likely no physical abuse that we didn’t still suffer?”

After receiving no responses to my letter, I asked Lee Coleman what he would advise those still-silent Little Rascals child-witnesses. Dr. Coleman, a Berkeley, Calif., psychiatrist, has testified in some 800 child sex-abuse cases, of which perhaps 100 involved day-care or preschool allegations. In this YouTube presentation he analyzes the McMartin Preschool case.

He replied to my request with this open letter (condensed) to the Little Rascals child-witnesses:

First, it is now recognized by all parties – prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, academic students of memory and suggestibility in young children being interviewed for possible sexual abuse – that the methods used in Little Rascals had serious potential to influence memory, often creating a mental picture that to the child is indistinguishable from an actual memory of actual events.

This brings us to the very heart of my message to you, as you seriously consider whether justice may be served by your coming forth with what you remember of how you were interviewed and who you spoke to prior to the trial. Remember, it is not your memories of what did or didn’t happen at the school that is important, but your memories of how you were interviewed, and of who you spoke with during the time before the trial. This is the crucial time, and these are the crucial events, that any fair decision about the meaning of what you said during the trial can be best judged.

What I cannot stress enough is that if you testified to things that were not true, that was through no fault of yours, because such false testimony would be the fault of poor and suggestive interview methods, therefore neither lies, nor any indication of your sincerity as a child. If a child says things that he or she believes are true, because interview methods cause the child to accept ideas coming from interviewers rather than the child’s actual memory, then the fault lies with the interviewers and not the child.

To blame the child for misdeeds of poorly trained interviewers is, in my opinion, a kind of child abuse. I have testified about these issues hundreds of times, and most recently spoken about these issues as part of my continuing effort to bring understanding to our nation’s system of bringing justice to the area of sexual abuse of children. Such abuse, when it happens, calls for punishment of perpetrators and support of victims. When unprofessional conduct by prosecutors and their assistants causes children to be victims of suggestions that create false memories, this also calls for a better response from our society.

I thank you for taking the time to reconsider that time in your life and reconsider whether you might bring the best resolution to the efforts of Mr. Powell and others seeking justice in the Little Rascals Day Care case.

Sincerely,
Lee Coleman, MD

May 15, 2013

“As one of the lead prosecutors, (Elizabeth Lederer) helped lock up five young people (the Central Park Five) based on false confessions, no DNA evidence and media hysteria, for a collective 30 years….

“Lederer never apologized. Today, she still serves as an assistant district attorney and teaches at Columbia Law School, one of the most prestigious institutions in the country. While those wrongfully convicted lost years of their lives, her efforts to imprison them had no negative consequences for her…. People like Lederer whose failures cost livelihoods should be held accountable for their actions….

“Defending Lederer’s role in the case as an aggressive lead prosecutor, (New York Times columnist Jim) Dwyer dismissed that as: ‘Mistakes were made.’ That’s the standard public relations line used when trying to deflect blame. But what kinds of mistakes? What were their effects?”

– From “For Central Park Five, wrongful conviction meets false equivalence” by Raymond Santana and Frank Chi at Salon.com (May 3)

You know where I’m going with this: the Edenton Seven were locked up for some 15 years, and the “aggressive lead prosecutor” in their case remains ensconced on the state payroll, still unrepentant – and always available to share her expertise on “how to defend the forensic interview in the courtroom.”

Perhaps, however, the notoriety she achieved as Little Rascals prosecutor helps explain why she hasn’t risen to district attorney or to district court judge.

Even if so, of course, that consequence wouldn’t begin to atone for the horrors she inflicted over a nonexistent crime.

July 15, 2014

“I realize I’m a little flip when I say 80 percent of the evidence is trash, but it is.

“I thought sooner or later some editorialist was going to write, ‘That sorry judge should have done something.’ And yet if I stopped it, it would have been a problem in an appeal….”

– Judge Marsh McLelland, in an interview published April 1, 1992, in the Greensboro News & Record, shortly after the jury began deliberations in the trial of Bob Kelly

Given that McLelland had been overseeing the Kelly case for more than 17 months – and still had Dawn Wilson’s trial ahead of him – I suppose he deserved to grumble a bit about the tedium.

But what an odd comment about wanting to avoid “a problem in an appeal” – did he believe only the defense was responsible for producing “trash” evidence?