March 13, 2016

“Fran and Dan Keller have been released from a Texas prison after 21 years, yet still have little freedom of movement or circumstance, or even quality of life. Their 1992 conviction on multiple counts of ‘sexual assault of a minor’ – in the now notorious Fran’s Day Care case – has effectively been overturned by a 2015 Court of Criminal Appeals ruling ‘granting relief’ to the Kellers on a single question of retracted medical testimony. But the ruling was not accompanied by actual exoneration from the allegedly heinous crimes.

“Only a single appeals court judge – Cheryl Johnson – was willing to admit no crime had in fact occurred. ‘This was a witch hunt from the beginning,’ wrote Johnson, in her opinion concurring with the opaque ruling of the full court. Johnson would have granted relief on all the Kellers’ claims, and would have acknowledged that the entire prosecution had been an egregious folly.

“The limited ruling, while welcome in itself, left the Kellers in a legal limbo – permanently accused but not cleared…. required to somehow further demonstrate their innocence – of crimes that never happened….”

– From “Learning From Our Mistakes” by Michael King in the Austin Chronicle (March 11) (cached)

So who thwarts the hapless Kellers? Yes, yet another prosecutor who sets the bar for exoneration stratospherically high. Although District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg (here’s why her name rings a bell) supported their release, she now finds herself unable to “find a path to innocence” without the deal-sealing exculpation of DNA evidence. Those darn imaginary criminals sure do clean up after themselves….

Aug. 13, 2012

I wrote Mark Davis, general counsel to Gov. Bev Perdue, to ask that she issue a “statement of innocence” on behalf of the Edenton Seven. This is Davis’s response: “Because the Attorney General’s Office handled the appeals in the cases you reference in your letter, I think that office is in the best position to evaluate this issue. I suggest you contact them regarding this matter.”

So noted. This, then, is from a letter I sent last week to Roy Cooper, attorney general of North Carolina:

When the Duke lacrosse case collapsed in 2007, you granted the defendants a “statement of innocence.” Although the statement was not a formal legal document, as I understand it, it clearly demonstrated your commitment to making amends for a wrongful prosecution by the State of North Carolina.

I am requesting that you take similar action on behalf of the defendants in the notorious Little Rascals Day Care case.

For more than a decade, beginning in the 1980s, day care centers across the United States were victimized by a wave of wholly unsubstantiated charges of “ritual sexual abuse.” The testimony of child-witnesses, corrupted by misguided therapists, resulted in dozens of convictions and incarcerations.

In all these cases, charges eventually were dropped, convictions overturned or plea agreements accepted with no admission of guilt.

Today there is no dispute among respected psychiatrists, psychologists and social scientists: The defendants were innocent victims of a “moral panic” that bore striking similarities to the Salem witch hunts 300 years earlier.

One of the most prominent of these prosecutions, of course, was the Little Rascals case in Edenton. Between 1991 and 1997 the PBS series “Frontline” devoted a total of eight hours to the plight of the Edenton Seven, leaving millions of viewers appalled at North Carolina justice.

After the longest and costliest trial in state history, Robert Kelly was convicted of 99 counts of child abuse and sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences. He served six years before the North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned his conviction.

Dawn Wilson was convicted on five counts of child sex abuse and given a life sentence. She served two years in prison or under house arrest. The Court of Appeals also overturned her conviction.

Betsy Kelly and Scott Privott both agreed to plea deals with no admission of guilt.

Charges against Robin Byrum, Darlene Harris and Shelley Stone were dropped.

After the defendants were released, however, prosecutors continued to insist they were guilty. Exoneration was willfully withheld.

The Little Rascals case not only shattered the lives of the defendants, but also left a deep and ugly stain on the reputation of the State of North Carolina.

In 2001, Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift signed a resolution proclaiming the innocence of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials.

In time, such victims of the ritual-abuse day-care panic as the Edenton Seven will surely receive similar exoneration. Why not now? Why not in North Carolina? This is an opportunity to demonstrate moral leadership on a national scale.

I blog about the case at littlerascalsdaycarecase.org, where you will find an extensive archive and updates. I would be eager to provide additional facts by e-mail or to meet with you in Raleigh at your convenience.

Mr. Cooper, I appreciate very much your attention to reviewing this case and to perhaps mitigating the profound injustice suffered by these seven innocent North Carolinians.

I’ll post his response, of course.

March 24, 2014

As described in Richard Noll’s “When Psychiatry Battled the Devil,” the 7th annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, held in Chicago in November 1990, proved to be a turning point in mainline psychiatry’s attitude toward “satanic ritual abuse” and the multiple personalities it supposedly spawned.

It was also notable for the involvement of perhaps the country’s most celebrated believer in SRA.

“A large hotel ballroom (was) filled with most of the more than 700 conference attendees,” Noll recalled. “Television crews were on hand…. So was Gloria Steinem….

“(Anthropologist Sherrill) Mulhern and I were strident in our outright rejection of the veracity of SRA claims….

“Steinem approached me after my talk and suggested materials to read which she felt would help me change my opinion of SRA accounts….”

Not only had Steinem been using Ms. magazine to promote claims of ritual abuse, MPD and repressed memory, but also – just months before the Chicago conference – she had underwritten an archeological search for the imaginary “McMartin tunnels.”

I asked Noll what else he remembered about their encounter.

“She came up to me while I was still sitting up on stage and hundreds of people were still milling around.  I didn’t recognize her at first until I stared down at her name tag, then she rolled her eyes and made a face that indicated, ‘Yeah, it’s me . . . .’

“She wrote down a couple of titles that I frankly do not remember….You know, for years I saved that piece of paper she wrote on.”

As far as I can tell, Steinem has never removed her name from the very long list of unapologetic SRA believers.  But who knows – maybe it’s a position she will want to reexamine as an octogenarian.

June 13, 2012

“Actually, making a false memory is pretty easy.

“(Psychologist Elizabeth) Loftus describes a father convincing his daughter she’d gotten lost in a mall when she was five years old. At first, the daughter denied any memory of the event, but as the father provided more fake details – ‘Don’t you remember that I told you we would meet at the Tug Boat?’ – the daughter began to ‘remember’ and even provide details of her own. Eventually when her father said, ‘I was so scared,’ she responded, ‘Not as scared as I was!’…

“You can probably imagine the implications of false memory in the courtroom or on the therapist’s couch (which famously leads to the courtroom)….”

– From “How You Remember, How You Decide: Memory Part II”
by Garth Sundem in Psychology Today (October 6, 2010)