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….
A lack of reporters ‘sufficiently passionate to get at this story’?
July 8, 2016
“As for an ‘investigative’ piece about the Kelly case that would get to the ‘truth,’ we will have to see if we have any staff members who are sufficiently passionate to get at this story….”
– From News & Observer executive editor Frank Daniels III’s reply (June 10, 1992) to a plea for coverage from Jane W. Duffield of the Committee to Support the Edenton Seven
Daniels’ predecessor, Claude Sitton, lamented later that “my greatest mistake (was) my failure as editor… to make sure we had a top-notch investigative reporter on the Little Rascals case.”
I’ve asked Daniels to share his own recollections of the paper’s coverage, but haven’t heard back.
Holocaust denial shows vulnerability of real memory
Oct. 11, 2013
“Holocaust deniers have managed to receive, in recent years, a respectful hearing on college campuses and elsewhere, despite the existence of mountains of firsthand and corroborated traumatic memories of the Holocaust provided by many thousands of survivors – memories that don’t have to be recovered because they are all too vividly, and all too persistently, remembered.
“Holocaust deniers began to achieve their victory over memory even before efforts were made to establish the new category of ‘recovered memory.’ If recovered memory remains unchallenged as a new form of memory, then one can only guess how much more vulnerable to doubt and manipulation legitimate memory will become.”
– From “The Monster In the Mists” by Walter Reich in the New York Times (May 15, 1994)
Letters claiming wrongful conviction couldn’t be true – could they?
Feb. 22, 2017
“[When Rich Rosen, Theresa Newman and Jim Coleman began planning the state’s first innocence project], not everyone agreed their work was worth doing. To many… colleagues, in North Carolina and across the country, the letters they were reading were no more than acts of desperation: There was zero chance these inmates were innocent, only that they had nothing to lose by filing paperwork. The American criminal-justice system had always trivialized its own chances at convicting anyone wrongly, feeling certain – as lawyer Christine Mumma no longer could – that protections at trial made that outcome impossible….”
– From “A Justice Startup” by Benjamin Rachlin in “Innocent: The Fight Against Wrongful Convictions,” a Time special edition
Rachlin’s piece is excerpted from “Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption,” to be published in August.
50 students now know the facts
Oct. 28, 2013
“What was surprising was that in a class of 50 students, none had heard of the day care allegations of the 1980s.”
– From a note from Catherine Caldwell-Harris, associate professor of psychology, Boston University
Well, that’s a bracing dose of reality, isn’t it? But thanks to Dr. Caldwell-Harris, those students in her developmental psychology class now have an understanding of the moral panic. Here’s her lesson plan, which she doesn’t mind being borrowed, along with her comments on how students responded.
Maybe the current generation of academics sees clearly what many of their predecessors so horribly misjudged?