June 24, 2013

“(I) followed the Little Rascals case closely in the Norfolk and other papers…. Moved by (its) strangeness and patent senselessness, as well as by reports nationwide at the time of what came to be tagged ‘false memory syndrome,’ I wrote and later published a short story inspired by the spectacular miscarriage of justice…. The thrust of my story was popular hysteria and jaundiced, ambitious therapists together with a grievous breakdown of the judicial system….

“I believe that behind the recovered memory and child abuse therapeutic notions of that time, so destructive of the lives of the Edenton Seven and many others, lies Freud’s almost immeasurable popular impact on our now so heavily sexualized culture – though the easy lure of the witch hunt seems to have been all too contagious in Edenton’s fearful, credulous and manipulable parents as well.”

– Historian and writer John L. Romjue of Yorktown, Va., responding to “Remembering the shame of the Little Rascals Day Care case” at North Carolina Miscellany (Oct. 24, 2011)

Although “Witches of Devon,” the title story in Mr. Romjue’s 2002 collection, veers dramatically from the course of the Little Rascals case, it does indeed capture the essence: “It had started as a rumor – and not about molestation, not at first. There had been an ‘assault’ incident at Happy Children (day care). Joanne Jamison had spanked a little girl’s bottom and not suitably apologized to the mother….”

April 24, 2015

“As was made clear repeatedly upon testimony by experts, the very first reports of the children were the ones that would be most critical in determining whether sexual abuse had indeed occurred. Yet in the first interviews, the children said almost nothing of any interest with regard to sexual abuse, and the police officer who conducted these hearings destroyed all of her notes and all of her tapes of what happened before the case went to court. She was approached by several of the mothers initially because she had taken a short course in investigating cases of child abuse.

“Officer (Brenda) Toppin was crucial to the whole process because she was the one who escalated the case from a minor complaint by one parent into a case of massive sexual abuse of dozens of children by scores of day-care workers.”

– From “Understanding The Crucible: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents” by Claudia Durst Johnson and Vernon Johnson (1998)

Aug. 9, 2015

“Suppressing evidence, coddling informants, even outright lying are some of the instances of prosecutorial misconduct that sent away nearly half the 1,621 people convicted for crimes they didn’t commit since 1989, according to the University of Michigan Law School’s National Registry of Exonerations. These are only the cases we know about, surely only a small fraction of the wrongly convicted….

“In a 2011 report on 707 such cases, only six prosecutors (none in “satanic ritual abuse” day-care cases) were disciplined. Almost all still have their licenses, and are still practicing law….

“Prosecutors are granted immunity for most kinds of misconduct. It’s easy to see the reasons for this policy: otherwise, every well-heeled convict would sue, clogging the system and making it impossible for prosecutors to do their jobs. At the same time, that immunity is so absolute that prosecutors simply get off scot-free, even when misconduct is established. Even worse, most states lack any meaningful oversight of prosecutors: no commissions, no review boards, nothing.

“America is the only country in which many prosecutors are elected…. The disciplinary commission that sanctioned Mike Nifong – prosecutor of the Duke lacrosse team on false rape charges – noted his upcoming primary election as a motivating factor for his misconduct. The pressure to produce wins has led to a ‘win-at-all-costs’ mentality in some offices, especially when voters reward such behavior.”

– From “It’s Not Just Bad Cops: Prosecutors Run Wild” by Jay Michaelson at the Daily Beast (Aug. 8)

For whatever reason, voters in the First Judicial District declined to “reward such behavior” by Little Rascals prosecutors H. P. Williams Jr. and Nancy Lamb. District Attorney Williams failed to win re-election in 1994, and Lamb lost her bid for DA in 2014.

Aug. 31, 2012

“Children don’t just come running out of their houses screaming, ‘I’ve been molested!’”

– Assistant attorney general Bill Hart, justifying to the Associated Press (Dec. 31, 1989) why the prosecution’s serial allegations were taking so many months to come to light.

In a case typified by overstatement, Hart’s excuse for delay proved to be a most revealing understatement. Those children resisted mightily and at length before being manipulated into “screaming, ‘I’ve been molested!’”