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….
Child sex trafficking: 21st century’s moral panic?
Aug. 21, 2013
“Some advocates have suggested secure facilities for America’s child sex trafficking victims…. Such facilities force troubled children into a system of care that may be just as exploitive as with a pimp/trafficker.
“Countless women continue to seek restitution for the sexual abuse by employees assigned to supervise them while in detention in the ’60s and ’70s – some of these women have children fathered by detention employees….
“So then why do we talk about secure facilities for child victims of sex trafficking? Because ‘sex is at issue’ in their victimization….
“Child sex trafficking is not the first social issue to create moral panic around physical and sexual abuse. In the ’80s, Satanic Ritual Abuse garnered self-proclaimed experts, national media attention, law enforcement mobilizations, federal funding, excitement and hysteria. By the ’90s official investigations produced no evidence of widespread conspiracies and only a small number of crimes were verified….”
– From “Residential Programs for America’s Child Sex Trafficking Victims: Secure or Non-Secure Facilities?” by Dr. Lois Lee, founder and president, Children of the Night, at Huffington Post (July 9, 2013)
What white people believed that black people doubted
Oct. 14, 2014
“(Bob) Kelly’s father-in-law, Warren Twiddy, says that blacks are the only people in Edenton who still treat him like a human being.
“One black woman, calling the whole episode a Salem witch hunt, told me she was so ashamed she had removed the Edenton license plates from her car.”
– From “Nursery witch hunt” by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Sunday Telegraph of London (Aug. 3, 1993)
Donald Trump has Harvey. Nancy Lamb had Floyd.
Aug. 27, 2017
In 1999, when the last charges against Bob Kelly were dismissed, here’s how Joseph Neff of the News & Observer described the scene:
“The prosecutors in the longest, most expensive criminal case in North Carolina history picked a day when all attention was focused elsewhere to quietly throw in the towel.
“It was Sept. 15, as Hurricane Floyd churned northward toward landfall the next day, that Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lamb filed a two-page document with the Clerk of Superior Court in Edenton, dismissing eight counts of sexual abuse against Robert Kelly.”
All molesters, please gather now on E. Eden Street
June 15, 2012
“How did such a large group of child molesters assemble? This is not New York, this is Edenton, North Carolina.”
– Edward B. Simmons, making his closing argument on behalf of Dawn Wilson (Jan. 14, 1993)