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….
Ritual-abuse mania contaminated legitimate prosecutions
June 27, 2012
“When well-intentioned but misguided individuals use questioning techniques known to increase the risk of false allegations of sexual abuse, a cascade of unfortunate events can follow.
“Consequences of corruptive interview techniques include the risk of innocent individuals being falsely accused as well as abused children not being believed.”
– From “Forensic Issues in Child Sexual Abuse Allegations” by Charles L. Scott, M.D., in Psychiatric Times (December 1, 2008)
Scott points out a seldom-mentioned but potentially tragic after-effect of the day-care ritual-abuse mania: A loss of credibility for children who actually have been sexually abused. The clouds labeled “McMartin” and “Little Rascals” now hang over every such prosecution.
Retraction won’t kill you, journal editors
June 7, 2013
“One hundred and fifty-five years after it snubbed Dr. John Snow in his obituary, The Lancet is taking it back.
“The British medical journal noted that its original obituary – published June 26, 1858 – failed to mention his “remarkable achievements” in epidemiology, especially his research on the way cholera is spread….
“It’s not the first time a publication has issued a correction for work published decades ago. The New York Times corrected a 26-year-old error about horse-drawn carriages in Central Park in 2011, and once retracted a 1920 editorial that claimed space travel was impossible.”
– From “The Lancet Corrects Obituary For John Snow Published 155 Years Ago” in the Huffington Post (April 12)
If The Lancet and The New York Times can reach back in their archives to right the record, why can’t Journal of Child and Youth Care, Child Abuse & Neglect and Nursing Research?
Mondale Act set up bonanza for therapists
Aug. 1, 2012
“Congress’s well-intentioned but misguided Mondale Act (the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, CAPTA), signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1974, provided impetus to prosecute alleged crimes against children.
“First, it provided immunity to reporters of abuse, thereby unleashing an unlimited supply of unsubstantiated charges.
“Second, it provided funds to permit so-called victims to receive state-financed therapy immediately, even prior to any adjudication.
“Thus, the victims in Edenton received extensive counseling, at government expense, for ‘abuse’ that never occurred. Four ‘sex therapists’ got all that business and received many thousands of dollars in reimbursement. They had no motivation to suppose those charges might be bogus.”
– From “Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom” by Raymond J. Lawrence (2007)
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.