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….
Board couldn’t see Betsy Kelly ‘minus her publicity’
Sept. 13, 2013
“I am urging you to treat Elizabeth Kelly as you would treat anyone else with the same case file. I am asking you to demonstrate that we are all ‘equal under the law.’ Any other inmate with the same sentence and clean record would have been eligible for parole the minute she walked through the gates of the prison…. I am appealing to you not to withhold that which she would otherwise likely receive — minus her publicity, minus the rhetoric of politicians. I am imploring you not to deal more strictly with her than with others simply because she is Elizabeth Kelly.”
– From a letter to the North Carolina Parole Commission by Jane W. Duffield of Raleigh (April 5, 1994)
The Parole Commission proved unable or unwilling to consider Betsy Kelly’s case “minus her publicity, minus the rhetoric of politicians.” Bill Hart, vengeful over her unwavering insistence that she was innocent, reneged on a plea agreement not to contest her release, and the Parole Commission obediently sent her back for seven more months of wrongful imprisonment.
How much like Penn State were day-care cases?
Jan. 11, 2012
“It’s worth remembering, in the 1980s we had a whole spate of false accusations of… sexual abuse of children. The McMartin Preschool, all those supposed satanic cults in day care centers, turned out to be false…. It’s worth it to remind people of that.”
– Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, interviewed on CNN (Nov. 15) about the Penn State case
In fact, deep distinctions separate Penn State and the “multi-victim, multi-offender” – MVMO, in the sex-crime argot – accusations typified by McMartin and Little Rascals.
Since 1995, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has investigated 40 alleged MVMOs at 24 locations around the world. Number of substantiated instances of ritual abuse: zero.
According to its research, “Any criminal acts were non-ritual abuse by a single perpetrator… Almost all the crimes with which people were charged never happened.”
Regardless, Toobin’s reminder is a welcome counterpoint to the Judge Nancy Grace school of instant verdicts.
Lamb ‘continues to hold herself out as an expert’
April 23, 2012
In 2007, W. Joseph Wyatt, writing in the professional journal The Behavior Analyst Today, looked back at the Little Rascals case:
“Prosecutors appeared to have little appreciation for the possibility, or likelihood, that they were pursuing innocent people. Prosecutorial fervor for the case evidently persisted long after it had become clear that the case had taken a series of wrong turns.
“Despite the disastrous results, one of the prosecutors continues to hold herself out as an expert. As recently as November, 2006, Nancy Lamb, still working as an assistant district attorney, was co-presenter of a training program for professionals titled ‘The Necessary Components of a Legally Defensible Child Sex Abuse Investigation.’ ”
If for no other reason, the Little Rascals case demands continued public attention as long as Nancy Lamb remains at large, presenting her cruelty and deviousness as a model for future prosecutions.
Update: At a 2010 workshop for the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, “Nancy Lamb… presented on how to defend the forensic interview in the courtroom.”
What? No Little Rascals on Edenton’s Wiki page?
Sept. 12, 2014
Edenton has been the scene of many historic events – the Edenton Tea Party, the escape of Harriet Jacobs, etc. – but surely nothing happened there in the entire 20th Century more significant than the Little Rascals Day Care case.
So why is the case not even mentioned on Edenton’s Wikipedia page?
On Sept. 28, 2013, a rogue editor abruptly removed a passage similar to this one:
“Edenton achieved international notoriety for the Little Rascals Day Care sexual abuse trial, the subject of journalist Ofra Bikel’s award-winning trilogy of documentaries….”
Wikipedia entries are intentionally easy to edit, but the process leaves fingerprints.
The person whose name is attached to the Little Rascals deletion turns out to be an innkeeper in Edenton. He ended our exchange with “I did not remove anything or post anything on that site…. must have been my competitor from across the street.”
I have restored the deleted passage – let’s hope it proves innkeeper-proof.