Jan. 18, 2013

““I am the grandmother of a Little Rascals Day Care victim, and I am greatly disturbed by many responses to ‘Innocence Lost: The Verdict.’

“Wake up out there! Do you think everything you see on television is true? The bizarre stories told by some of the children are unbelievable to the unknowing adult – being cooked in microwave ovens, going on spaceships – but by some Kelly magic, the children were brainwashed to believe them. I repeat! Wake up America.”

 – From a letter to the editor of the Chowan Herald by Frances P. Wilkins of Edenton (Aug. 26, 1993)

Feb. 3, 2012

Glenn Lancaster, a Raleigh pay-phone executive, played a key part in facilitating life-after-incarceration for both Bob Kelly and Scott Privott.

I asked Glenn to recall how he became involved in the Little Rascals case:

“I had lived in Windsor, about 20 miles west of Edenton. I knew some of the Little Rascals parents but none of the Edenton Seven.

“I hadn’t paid that much attention to the case, but the truth seemed pretty clear, especially when the prosecution couldn’t persuade even one of the seven to turn state’s evidence.

“After I moved to Cary, I saw a story about Scott in the News & Observer (in 1993). He had been in (the Chowan County) jail for more than three years with no trial in sight and a $1 million bond.

“I wrote Scott offering to send him magazines and to cover some gas money for his wife to visit, as she had moved to the Outer Banks. He put me in touch with a lady in Edenton, who told me about other supporters.

“I called Scott’s attorney and asked why he hadn’t tried to lower the bail. I told him we could cover $50,000 and I would give Scott a job and a place to live.

“When the attorney asked the judge to reduce the bond to $50,000, he agreed on the spot! Over the next few days, several people came to the Clerk of Courts office in Edenton and posted land and cash. One man from Washington, N.C., brought a $25,000 check. When it was all counted, they were still a few hundred dollars short. I was told the Clerk of Court reached into his own pocket and posted the difference.

“Everyone in the jail knew Scott was innocent, and as he left jail the staff shook his hand. Scott’s wife showed up to tell him she was now living with a UPS driver and he could not come to her home. A supporter loaded up a cardboard box of Scott’s jail property – 6 or 8 paperback books, a radio and the stack of clothes his wife had brought him – and delivered him to a hotel in Cary around 5 p.m. There I met and spoke to Scott for the first time.

“When we returned to the hotel two hours later to take him to dinner, he told me he had spent most of that time standing in the shower. It was the first time in over three  years he could set his own temperature and shower as long as he chose.”

Sept. 6, 2013

“The day-care trials couldn’t have happened without the active participation of social workers and therapists.  Police authorities relied on the therapists to interpret what the child witnesses were saying, to interview the children and to counsel them about their alleged experiences. One might suppose that the realization that:

• People have been sent to prison for years for crimes that never happened;
• Children had been abused, not by the accused, but by misguided therapists who implanted false memories;

would have created a huge mea culpa among the professionals involved.  This hasn’t happened.

“Some have defended their actions, if not the results, on the basis that their hearts were in the right place.  Some have excused themselves on the basis that nobody knew any better – that, by golly, nobody could have guessed that rewarding children for making accusations, and questioning them until they did make accusations, might just lead to false accusations.

“And they speak, in self-pitying tones, about the ‘backlash’ – the (presumably) undeserved and irrational criticism that is flung their way.”

– From  “The ‘Ritual Abuse’ Panic” at Imaginary Crimes

Mum’s still the word from the prosecution therapists in the Little Rascals case, except for Judy Abbott’s resentful response to the “backlash.”

July 2, 2015

“The notion of satanic ritual abuse was dismissed as ‘utter nonsense’ by Mrs. Justice Pauffley in care proceedings in the family court at (London’s) Royal Courts of Justice in March. Two children were coerced by their mother and her boyfriend into alleging horrendous sexual abuse and murder of babies by their father and others in a secret satanic cult…. ‘There was no satanic or other cult at which babies were murdered and children sexually abused,’ the judge said. The claims were ‘fabricated’ and ‘baseless.’

“But the total lack of physical evidence does not deter the compensation chasers. At a child abuse training day in London last week run by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, delegates were told that satanic abuse was a reality. Barrister Lee Moore – a self-proclaimed satanic abuse survivor – and solicitor Peter Garsden, who are respectively the past and current president of the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers, ‘kept going on about satanic ritual abuse,’ according to a barrister who was present.

“She went on: ‘Peter Garsden told the assembled band of lawyers that SRA was prevalent and would be accepted as such, “given time.” The point is that at a conference of ‘cutting-edge’ personal injury lawyers specialising in child abuse, only one delegate was prepared to challenge these SRA proponents.’ ”

– From “Satanic Panic Ritual Defence” by Rosie Waterhouse in Private Eye (June 26) – hat tip, British False Memory Society

One difference on our side of the pond: The “compensation chasers” in American ritual abuse cases were much less likely to be lawyers than therapists.