April 13, 2016

This week our recently installed Facebook page received a response from the father of one of Junior Chandler’s bus riders. He believes Junior was appropriately convicted and explains why.

Here is our exchange:

I believe Andrew Chandler Junior is guilty of all charges and should not be grouped along with those that you are requesting exoneration.

I was a resident of Madison County, NC in the 1970s and 80s. Not only did Junior transport young children from the day care he also transported handicapped clients from the Mountains of Madison Workshops Mars Hill, NC. My son William B Morris Jr.  (Billy) was one of these clients. Billy is a victim of Cerebral Palsy. We noticed a short time after Junior started transporting Billy, he started rubbing his penis when setting on the couch in our living room. His sister Kelly reported this to us. We also noticed he was not coming home at the usual time he had been when other drivers were bringing him home. Sometimes he was an hour or more late. On one occasion three hours late. The workshop was only 20 to 30 minutes away. After we complained to the transportation manager Junior said he was not going to transport Billy any longer because it was too far out of his way.

One day a neighbor was coming home from Mars Hill after shopping and found Billy crawling along Gabriel’s Creek Road about a mile from our home. I complained to the managers again and the only action taken was to change drivers. This was almost a year before Junior was accused of his crimes. I told the transportation management and notified Erwin Adams the county commissioner that I thought something was wrong about Junior.

Later after Junior was convicted I took Billy to Redmond’s Dam on the French Broad River below Marshall, NC where the crimes were committed, he freaked out and tried to get out of the car. He was terrified. I don’t know what he witnessed or what was done to him there because he couldn’t tell me but it had to have been bad.

William B Morris

Mr. Morris, thank you very much for your thoughtful response.

I can think of lots of reasons for a bus driver’s tardiness other than his pausing to commit “satanic ritual abuse” on his passengers…. All those times Junior Chandler was late, and no passenger or parents reported a larger problem?

After visiting the supposed crime site in Madison County, I found it even more inconceivable that Junior – as described in appellate attorney Mark Montgomery’s amended petition for writ of certiorari – “would drive off his route to a parking area next to the French Broad River, strip the clothes off the toddlers, troop the naked children down to the river, put them on a rowboat, proceed to insert various objects into their anuses and vaginas, bring them back to the bus, put their clothes back on and deliver them home.”

Although I see unexplained incidents and conflicting details, I don’t see anything approaching justification for a felony conviction – much less consecutive life sentences!…..

I’m reminded of a comment by a UNC Chapel Hill psychologist who testified against Bob Kelly in the Little Rascals Day Care trial…. He said about the fantastical, nonsensical testimony of the child-witnesses that “There’s so much smoke there, it’s hard to imagine there’s no fire”…. In that case, it has become inarguably clear that there was indeed no fire…. But the conclusions the psychologist drew from the smoke helped to send Bob Kelly to prison for six years….

If there is fire in the case against Junior Chandler, I’m just not able to recognize it…..

Even though we disagree about Junior’s innocence, I appreciate and share your interest in seeing that justice is done.

Jan. 9, 2012

Perhaps the most inexplicable of the prosecution’s targets was 40-year-old Scott Privott, owner of an Edenton video store and shoe repair shop.

Son of a district court judge, he served as president of the local country club. No evidence ever surfaced to support the rumor that Privott’s video store was a hub for child pornography or to counter his claim never to have even set foot on the Little Rascals premises. According to the prosecution, children at the day care identified him as a perpetrator.

In April 1993 his bail was reduced from $1 million to $50,000, and he was released on bond from Chowan County Jail. Fourteen months later, Privott accepted the state’s offer of a plea of no contest, still insisting on his innocence, and received a sentence of time served with an additional five years probation.

He says he has been happily married for 14 years and doesn’t want to reveal where he now lives. I asked him to share some recollections about the case:

“Bob and I were more acquaintances than close friends. I played golf with him when he was the pro. Bob rented movies from my store, and he and many others would come by and have coffee and just talk. In fact, many of the accusing parents rented movies from me. (Bob Kelly suspects Privott may have been drawn into the case when Kelly’s truck was seen parked in front of the video store.)….

“In jail I spent the time reading and watching TV. We weren’t allowed newspapers, so I wasn’t sure what was being written about the case…. At times it was hard to keep my spirits up. I had gallbladder surgery and recuped at Central Prison in Raleigh and at McCain (Correctional Hospital in Raeford, closed in 2010)….

“Jail had just a walled-in area for outside activity, but at McCain I enjoyed being able to walk around the yard with others awaiting trial…I was in “safekeeping” and actually met some intelligent, thoughtful people. I never had any problems, as the majority knew the entire LRDC case was a farce….

“My wife came on Sundays, but as the years rolled on the visits were less and less, and then I noted a change I had been kind of expecting. She brought my mother with her, and in the later years she stood back and kind of let the visits be between mother and son. It turned out she had met someone new in her life. She didn’t have the nerve to tell me, but I figured it out….”

Dec. 31, 2012

Anticipating Attorney General Roy Cooper’s 2007 statement dismissing charges against the lacrosse defendants, Duke law professor Paul Haagen said,

“The critical thing could be the wording. It could simply say the state can no longer prove its case, which would be a very harmful outcome for the community, (or it) could provide a full accounting of why the case should never have been brought.”

As it turned out, Cooper – elbowed along by the Duke students’ phalanx of top-shelf lawyers – chose the road less traveled by prosecutorial bitter-enders such as H. P. Williams, Nancy Lamb and Bill Hart:

“In the rush to condemn, a community and a state lost the ability to see clearly…. I think a lot of people owe a lot of apologies to a lot of people.”

Cooper’s words were appropriate to end the case of the lacrosse defendants – and they would be just as appropriate to end the case of the Edenton Seven.

Jan. 23, 2013

“Ritual sex abuse is back. Recently (in 2003) I heard that a conference on the topic was being held for psychotherapists.

“It was planned not to critique a nasty period in the annals of American hysteria but rather so that attendees could learn to ask patients if they’ve ever been raped in day care by secret devil worshipers.

“This stuff was debunked in the 1990s as a type of urban myth. Yet it keeps cropping up, complete with pseudo-scientific theories about the psychology of so-called victims – theories that likewise refuse to die.

“One such theory is that children who are molested often grow up to deny that the crime ever happened. Many do so, the theory holds, because people commonly repress or dissociate from memories of horrific trauma – particularly sex abuse.

“This idea has been repeatedly discredited by research psychologists. But… in pop culture and among many child-protection workers, it’s still de rigueur to think that a child who was fondled or raped is at risk of burying the memory.”

– From “The Exorcists” by Debbie Nathan in the Washington Post (May 4, 2003)