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….
Exoneration depends on catching eye of media
Oct. 3, 2012
“You can have all the evidence in the world, and that’s still only 50 percent of the fight. The other 50 percent is media.
“You have to get the media to pay attention. If not, they’ll sweep it under the rug and keep going.”
– Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three, analyzing (in the New York Times) his continuing struggle for exoneration.
If you’re in the media – reporter, editor, blogger, author, moviemaker, aerial advertising entrepreneur – and ready to pay attention to the Edenton Seven, let me hear from you.
2015: Train for justice stayed stuck at station
Dec. 30, 2015
Where things stand at year’s end in the obscure but still hopeful world of littlerascalsdaycarecase.org:
– Junior Chandler continues to wait for a decision from the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic on whether to take up his case. On April 15 he will begin serving his 30th year in prison.
– North Carolina’s most recent two governors and its current attorney general all have ignored my appeals for a “statement of innocence” for the Edenton Seven. Might the approaching election offer opportunities at least to publicly frame the question?
– Professional journals are still refusing to publish retractions for the articles they published supporting the existence of “satanic ritual abuse” in the nation’s day cares.
– The Internet remains a poisonous cornucopia of authoritatively rendered misinformation. This is from a message board exchange I happened on earlier this month:
“I have heard the rumors that there are a large number of satanists who abuse their children in satanic rituals. I have heard even more about the illuminati having orgy parties like the one in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ where they rape children on an altar and then kill them in a sacrifice to Satan and then drink their blood. But I have no idea of knowing if any of this is actually true and if it is true how common it is….”
“These stories are true, for the most part. I met a young woman through my pro-life apostolate who had had several abortions – not of her own choice. She had been a prisoner of these satanists (her parents were involved in it) who had her impregnated with the precise purpose of the ritual sacrifice of abortion…..”
The only surprise here is the qualifier “for the most part” – among SRA believers, only absolute gullibility is allowed….
– Finally, thanks to all those who have expressed support for the wrongfully prosecuted defendants in the “satanic ritual abuse” era. Let’s hope 2016 cracks the door to the exoneration they so profoundly deserve.
Was it really Dawn Wilson who ‘had no character’?
March 12, 2012
After reading thousands of pages of Little Rascals coverage, shouldn’t I have become inured to the prosecution’s gratuitous brutality?
Not yet.
On August 11, 1993, Dawn Wilson, serving a life sentence for child sexual abuse, went back to court to seek release under house arrest. In six days she would give birth to her second child.
Nancy Lamb and Bill Hart could’ve responded with any number of temperate legal arguments against her release. Instead….
“She made a quite irresponsible decision in 1992 to become pregnant early in her trial,” Lamb said. “She was thinking only of herself….”
“Dawn Wilson… simply has no character…,” added Hart. “Is she the kind of mother figure who ought to be bonding with a second out-of-wedlock child?”
Judge Marsh McLelland granted Wilson’s request, but delays in paperwork and payment of a $250,000 bond kept mother and son in women’s prison another month.
In 1995 the N.C. Court of Appeals overturned her conviction. And then of course the prosecutors rushed to apologize to Dawn Wilson for their disgraceful vilification.
‘We’ve learned a lot….’ (Too bad it took so long)
March 30, 2012
Kee MacFarlane is the notorious therapist who led the ritual abuse scare of the late 1980s (and pioneered the misuse of anatomically correct dolls in interviewing children). In just four months MacFarlane diagnosed more than 360 children at the McMartin Pre-School as abused.
In 2005 she declined to be interviewed by CNN but sent a statement:
“We’ve learned a lot in 20 years about how to interview children for forensic purposes and how to manage complex cases such as this one. It would be a sad commentary if we didn’t learn from such painful experience.”
Not much of a mea culpa – but still more than anyone connected with the Little Rascals prosecution has managed.