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….
Does ‘convicting innocent people count as crime’?
Jan. 6, 2012
“Innocence Lost” aired too late to save the Edenton Seven, but its influence in deflating the nation’s ritual-abuse bubble is hard to exaggerate. Shock and outrage – and considerable ridicule of North Carolina justice – followed each of the three episodes.
Walter Goodman’s 1993 New York Times review pointed to “the likelihood that no crime was committed, unless convicting innocent people counts as a crime.”
“To say this tragic farce has resembled a hysterical witch hunt,” Phil Kloer wrote in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution in 1997, “is to demean witch hunts.”
Lessons of ‘ritual abuse’ era still relevant today
Nov. 19, 2014
“While (‘The Witch-Hunt Narrative’ author Ross) Cheit… admits that there was some ‘overreaction’ and injustice to innocent people – including ‘five, possibly six, of the seven defendants’ in the McMartin case – he argues that the ‘Satanic panic’ hysteria is a myth rooted in exaggeration and distortion….
“Whether the book succeeds in making a dent in the witch-hunt narrative depends, to put it bluntly, on whether we can trust Cheit to give a fair and accurate account of this material. A close look reveals enough evasions, highly tendentious interpretations, and verifiable inaccuracies to conclude that we cannot….
“It is ironic, or perhaps symbolic, that this book has arrived in the midst of a new wave of sex-crime hysteria. Just recently, in the impassioned debate over the sexual molestation charges against Woody Allen, such feminists as Jessica Valenti and Roxanne Gay revived the call to ‘believe the survivor.’ The same mind-set also appears in the current campus climate of pressure to accept virtually all allegations of sexual assault regardless of evidence. Despite Cheit’s attempted debunking, the lesson of the witch-hunts still stands: Emotion-driven, faith-based crusades against repellent crimes are a grave danger to justice.”
– From “The Return of Moral Panic: A scholar tries – and fails – to rehabilitate the sex-abuse hysteria of the ’80s” by Cathy Young at reason.com (Oct. 25)
Young contributes a welcome follow-up to Debbie Nathan’s Cheit-busting response from the National Center for Reason and Justice. She is especially effective in pointing out Cheit’s fact-fudging and cherry-picking in the McMartin and Kelly Michaels cases.
Prosecution waited futilely for defendant to roll
July 4, 2012
“The state has done me wrong and imprisoned me for over six years,” Bob Kelly said in 1995 after his conviction was overturned and prosecutors were deciding whether to try him again.
“They want me to take a plea so they can save face. It will never happen.”
Oh, how the prosecution dreamed of at least one of the Edenton Seven rolling over, pointing a finger at a fellow defendant.
Never happened, despite their being held under vague charges for endless months – and later offered every inducement short of a trip to Disney World.
Even when Betsy Kelly and Scott Privott took pleas to reduce their prison time, they continued to insist on their innocence.
There’s painfully little to admire in the story of the Little Rascals case, but the defendants’ strength under pressure was extraordinary.
HB2 isn’t legislature’s first hysterical reaction
April 29, 2016
The damage was minimal compared with that caused by HB2, but the N.C. General Assembly in 1992 produced its own ludicrous overresponse to a nonexistent problem. It fell hard for the “satanic ritual abuse” allegations in the Little Rascals Day Care case.
Requiring SBI notification within 24 hours of any report of sexual abuse in a day-care setting was reasonable enough. But that was only the beginning.
According to the Associated Press:
“Law enforcement officials are teaming up with social services experts to investigate and more effectively prosecute child sexual abuse in North Carolina day-care facilities….
“State Bureau of Investigation Director Charles Dunn said… the goal is to train up to 300 individuals in the state’s largest cities.
“Under the protocol, agencies in counties would establish guidelines for interagency task forces. Each task force would include an investigative unit and a resource unit.
“The typical investigative unit would include a child protective services social worker, law enforcement officer, consultant from the state day-care licensing agency and an SBI agent.
“The resource unit might include medical personnel, SBI lab experts, mental health workers and representatives of the attorney general’s and local district attorney’s offices….”
Maybe this sprawling bureaucratic troop movement, frustrated in its original mission, could be reactivated to enforce HB2 in the state’s bathrooms…..
— My response to a post on HB2 at the North Carolina Criminal law blog (April 29)
