Aug. 24, 2012

My EDENTON7 license plate recently caught the eye of a former Little Rascals Day Care parent who left Edenton.

Although Maria – a pseudonym, as she still has family back home – withdrew her daughter from Little Rascals in 1989 after less than two months, it was because of outside circumstances, not because of any dissatisfaction with the care received. “It was a normal day care, clean and quiet,” she says.

The torrent of ritual-abuse rumors started soon after.

She was unsure what to make of it all until a former classmate, Dawn Wilson, was caught up in the dragnet. “Dawn had sat in front of me in high school,” she recalls. “She was quiet and shy, but she opened up to me about wanting to have a baby. She was a loving person. When I heard her name mentioned, I knew right then it couldn’t be true.”

Maria worked at Hardee’s, where she found it “painful to watch” Betsy Kelly’s parents, Warren and Alice Twiddy,  being ostracized by their Wednesday-morning coffee klatch. “They were respected people…. She was the clerk of court. It was like she couldnt believe the town was doing this to her.”

Maria’s most surprising observation: “I think PBS (“Frontline”) changed the minds of a lot of people in Edenton. They saw how the gossip and innuendo had worked.”

Nov. 4, 2015

“(Psychiatrist Roland) Summit praised the hysteria-induced news media hype and community gossip (about the McMartin Preschool case) as a public service: Without that type and extent of press coverage, the researchers and other professionals would not be able to gather this information and would be trapped by old myths about child sexual abuse.

“Summit complained that investigators were limiting the ability of parents to cope by discouraging them from meeting and discussing the case. The community’s priority, he explained, should be to support the children. Hundreds of children had escaped sexual assault, he claimed, because of the publicity about the McMartin case.”

– From “Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Reference Handbook” by Karen L. Kinnear (2007)

The “satanic ritual abuse” day-care myth had no more enthusiastic – and effective – pitchman than Roland Summit, who conjured up the Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, who spread the gospel as far as New Zealand and who never ever gave up on the existence of the McMartin tunnels.

Although Summit himself never made it to Edenton, his ill-conceived cosmology arrived full-blown.

June 29, 2014

“(The Little Rascals Day Care center) is red brick, with plate glass windows on the front. The two-story structure is located on East Eden Street, amid mostly modest one-family homes, oaks, azaleas and crape myrtles, just a few blocks from the beautiful bay and downtown.

“The neighborhood is quiet now, but as the case unfolded during the last two years, journalists from time to time set upon the area, seeking eyewitnesses to the alleged incidents. Several residents recently told a visitor they had seen none of the alleged acts.

“For some, hindsight is powerful in the wake of the allegations. Lenora Smith, who lives next door to the center, voiced ‘surprise’ at the charges but does remember that ‘a few things I saw were kind of unusual.’

“What?

“Well, Robert Kelly owned a plumbing business, but ‘at times he stayed over there (at the day-care center) a lot,’ she said….

“Some people here admit to being a bit jumpy since the allegations surfaced.

“Debbie Jones said, ‘I get paranoid.’ Extending her hand, palm down, she made it tremble, saying: ‘I’m like this if I’m with my kids in a public place.’

“In a building on the town’s main thoroughfare, South Broad Street, a young boy who looked about 5 years old, bolstered her point. As he walked out of an office into a hall, apparently heading for the bathroom, he looked over his shoulder and said stoically to a woman: ‘If I don’t come back, call the police.’”

– From “Child Abuse Charges at Day-Care Center Divide Formerly Close-Knit Community” by Lee May in the Los Angeles Times (June 8, 1991)

May 9, 2012

“A Question of Innocence: A True Story of False Accusation” by Lawrence D. Spiegel was published in 1986, but this passage – lamenting plea-bargains by those falsely accused of assaulting children – applies exactly to Little Rascals:

“The innocent often fall prey to the waiting hands of the prosecutor and plead guilty to a lesser charge, just to put an end to the ordeal and to the separation from a child.

“Prosecutors, as a result of over-zealousness to protect the child, blind ambition to further a career or a number of other reasons, will do ‘strange’ things for a conviction. It is always to the prosecutor’s benefit to get a guilty plea, even to a lesser charge. Sometimes the prosecutor will wait until the accused is emotionally and financially drained, then the plea bargain offer is made….

“Some falsely accused are so battered and beaten, they accept the humiliation and anger and take the deal. Often this occurs with the consent of the victim’s attorney…. The stigma of the bargain will remain forever.”