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….
Another child-witness, now grown, spills the beans
Sept. 8, 2015
“Jennifer (a pseudonym) reached out to me after seeing an interview I gave about the McMartin Preschool trial…. She said she had been involved in a similar case as a child and that her experiences with the police, the judicial system, and a series of therapists mirrored those of the McMartin children. Now an adult with a career and family of her own, she agreed to speak with me about her experiences during the trial and in the decades since….
“Jennifer’s experiences illustrate the consequences of the misguided ‘belief’ in children that so many therapists, parents, and cops professed during the 1980s….”
– From “Moral Panic and the Myth of Recovered Memory” by Richard Beck at Literary Hub (Aug. 18)
Although Beck presents more as a historian than a journalist, his interview with Jennifer is a significant addition to the sparse roster of recanting (or not) child-witnesses. Not surprisingly, her account offers numerous parallels not only to McMartin but also to Little Rascals:
- “lots of phone conversations and meetings” among parents
- an interviewer with “anatomically correct dolls”
- her initial insistence that “nothing had happened”
- “a tour of the jail” arranged by the therapist to assure her that the supposed molester was safely behind bars
- her capitulation in the face of endless therapy sessions, leading her to “finally just start… making stuff up.”
- the eventual overturning of her day-care teacher’s conviction
Might Jennifer’s coming forward, however tentatively, lead the way to more recantations by child-witnesses?
Two historic sites, two wildly different outcomes
June 3, 2013
In the aftermath of the McMartin Preschool case in California, the building was razed and the site probed for secret tunnels.
In the aftermath of the Little Rascals Day Care case in Edenton, the building was turned into the East of Eden Spa and Kuttin Up Salon.
Both Nancy Smith Barrow and her daughter have been customers at the spa. “It truly was a strange experience to go back in,” she says.
What was learned from Little Rascals debacle?
July 19, 2013
“…There should be lessons here, lessons about the risks in cases so emotional that they take on a life of their own; lessons for prosecutors who need to use their considerable investigative resources to learn, and not to crusade; lessons about the price in credibility paid by a judicial system in which defendants who are not rich are up against tremendous odds….
“The Little Rascals case…. has wasted many years of many lives. The greater waste will be if nothing is learned from it.”
– From “Case dismissed” (News & Observer editorial, May 28, 1997)
Embarrassed prosecutors, where are you?
April 16, 2016
“To many in the criminal justice system, it is now a source of embarrassment that there was ever a time when police and prosecutors were convinced that bands of Satanists had infiltrated the nation’s day care centers in order to abuse young children. Yet in the (Fran and Dan Keller case), which I investigated for the Austin Chronicle back in 2009, I was startled to hear both a veteran cop and a prosecutor say they still believed in even the most absurd of the children’s allegations….
– From “Convicted of a Crime That Never Happened: Why Won’t Texas Exonerate Fran and Dan Keller?” by Jordan Smith at the Intercept (April 8)
