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….
Little Rascals: A ‘travesty of justice’ for the ages
June 20, 2012
“The Little Rascals case still remains the greatest travesty of justice I’ve ever been associated with or seen or even heard about… since like 1960.”
– Joe Cheshire, attorney for Bob and Betsy Kelly (Triangle Business Journal, 1998)
A DA unafraid ‘to go where the truth leads….’
March 25, 2013
“I really see us as sharing the goal of making sure this conviction rests on credible and substantial evidence. I’m going to go where the truth leads in this matter.”
– Jon David, district attorney in Brunswick, Columbus and Bladen counties,
responding to a request from the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence
to review DNA evidence in the case of Joseph Sledge
Mandy Locke’s account in the News & Observer will inspire confidence in neither the competence nor the good faith of North Carolina justice. Sledge, imprisoned 34 years for a double murder, has encountered unspeakable frustrations in his pursuit of exoneration.
Like Willie Grimes, however, Sledge is at last benefiting from a district attorney unimpaired with willful blindness toward his office’s past failures.
If the Edenton Seven are ever able to achieve true exoneration from the state, it likely won’t be with the acquiescence of the prosecutors, much less their assistance.
Prosecutors must recognize vulnerability to cognitive flaws
Nov. 17, 2016
“It’s no secret that we humans grant far too much confidence to our opinions. But when powerful people do this, the dangers compound. Zealotry replaces fair-mindedness. The worst excesses happen when prosecutors forget they’re flawed humans, like anyone else, and that as a result they’re subject to cognitive flaws like tunnel vision, racial bias, and the desire to reduce cognitive dissonance through ‘cognitive consistency’ even at the expense of complicated, nuanced, self-contradictory, paradoxical truth….
“Cognitive bias and overconfidence touch us all. Only a conscious awareness that we might be wrong can counter unthinking heuristics, biases, and schemas that lead to imperfect conclusions….
“Wisdom counsels not the confident use of power, but the wise use of power. The first step of wisdom is recognizing how little we know….”
– From “ ‘Making a Murderer’ Attorney Highlights Our Troubling Rate of Wrongful Conviction — and Suggests a Solution” by Michael Shammas in the Huffington Post (July 12)
And the latest on the still-imprisoned Brendan Dassey.
‘Keep telling the defendants’ story’
Dec. 26, 2011
“When I saw ‘Innocence Lost’ on PBS, I was outraged. The defendants received a bad deal from the state of North Carolina….
“Thank you for building and maintaining this site. Someone needs to keep telling the defendants’ story. I’m glad to see Mr. Kelly stayed strong and moved on with his life.”
– From South Carolina reader Clarence Lankford
Thanks for writing, Clarence. “Stayed strong and moved on” is an apt description of Bob Kelly. When I called last week to wish him Merry Christmas, he laughed and said, “For me, it’s always Christmas.”