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….
What happens to kids programmed with lies?
March 2, 2012
In 1995 John Money, professor emeritus of medical psychology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, asked:
“What happens to these kids who have been programmed to believe a delusion?…. What on earth are we doing to this generation of children who are carrying the lies for us?”
For those alleged child-victims who testified in day care abuse cases, the urge to forget and to stay silent must be strong indeed. Who wants to believe he was so misused by his own parents, not to mention by therapists and prosecutors? Who wants to summon the courage to look back at the ugly truth and to take it public?
One exception was Kyle Zirpolo, who came forward in 2005 to apologize for his role in the McMartin Pre-school case.
Death noted: Former publisher of Edenton paper
March 9, 2019
Pete Manning, 89, died Feb. 21 at his home in Edenton. Before retiring, Manning worked more than 50 years at the Chowan Herald, most prominently as publisher.
As prosecution of Edenton Seven lurched forward, members of the local “Believe the Children” cohort grew wary of the news media. Early on, however – before seeing themselves on “Frontline” — they had actually sought the spotlight.
Jack D. Grove, managing editor of the Herald, recalled that short-lived era to journalist David Loomis:
“I was approached by several influential businessmen who clouded up and rained all over me for putting a [Little Rascals] story on the back page. I said, ‘Go tell Pete Manning, don’t tell me.’ These businessmen, almost all parents of Little Rascals children, went into a closed-door meeting with Pete. We never again had a story anywhere but on the front page after that.”
Unfortunately, the Herald’s front-page coverage was painfully passive at best.
Nifong had sympathizer in H.P. Williams
Dec. 30, 2011
“As the May 2 (2006) Democratic primary nears, (Duke lacrosse prosecutor Mike) Nifong has gotten an earful from his two opponents….
“ ‘I feel for him; no matter what he does, he can’t win,’ said Elizabeth City lawyer H.P. Williams, a former district attorney for 16 years who in the early 1990s prosecuted the high-profile sexual abuse case against the owner of the Little Rascals Day Care…
“ ‘I felt as a prosecutor that anything I didn’t say, I didn’t have to take back. So it all goes back to my No. 1 philosophy: “You have the right to remain silent.” ’ ”
– H.P. Williams, sharing with Mike Nifong his “No. 1 philosophy”
(The Charlotte Observer, April 17, 2006)
Whatever the shortcomings of the Little Rascals prosecutors, excessive openness wasn’t among them. In fact, their entire case depended on withholding any verbatim record of how therapists extracted accusations from the supposed child-victims.
Williams most recently called on his right to remain silent when I asked whether he might have changed his mind about the defendants’ guilt.
What? ‘A hotel that doesn’t take American Express?’
May 17, 2013
From Betsy Kelly’s comments at the ceremony awarding Ofra Bikel the 2007 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism:
“I stand before you tonight because of Ofra Bikel. She spent many hours with my family and with some of the most hurtful and hateful people. She turned many (viewers) around to believe in the truth. The day she walked into my life I had somebody to hold onto… and she opened the door and she led me out…..”
From Nancy Smith Barrow’s comments:
“I thought: She comes from another planet, she doesn’t speak Southern, what can she do?
“I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to climb into that hole we were in…
“Ofra took us where we were, where hell was raining down, where people who have known us since we were born would cross the street not to meet us….
“Ofra, I owe you for the most precious thing in my life (my sister), you brought her back…..”
From Ofra Bikel’s comments:
“I was this close to not doing (‘Innocence Lost’). I said (to assistant Rachel Dretzin), ‘Are you crazy? What are we going to do in a little town with a little hotel that doesn’t take American Express?’…. Anyway, we went, and the first day I realized we were staying….
“The whole country was awash in sexual abuse stories, but there was nothing less likely than for Edenton, North Carolina, to be involved in this satanic conspiracy… The town was calm on outside but seething on the inside with these rumors of terrible sexual abuse, started by one kid, then three kids, then 10 kids, then 80 and then close to a hundred… until they decided to close the list….
“(After the last Little Rascals charges were dropped) I was left with two very strong feelings: how many things can go wrong in the justice system…. and what a powerful tool we had in our hands with the television documentary….”