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….
Children don’t remember, but are sure abuse happened
May 25, 2012
“Maggie Bruck, co-author of ‘Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s Testimony’ and a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, says no long-term psychological studies exist that track groups of children involved in alleged sex-abuse rings, in part because of confidentiality issues.
“But Bruck has studied follow-up interviews of children involved in cases similar to the notorious McMartin preschool trial. Some kids continue to believe they were abused. Bruck suspects it’s because their families or therapists have reinforced the stories of abuse. ‘The children say they don’t remember the salient, allegedly terrifying details,’ she told me. ‘But they are sure it happened.’ ”
– From “Who Was Abused?” by Maggie Jones in the New York Times (Sept. 19, 2004)
Might the Little Rascals children be among the subjects of that follow-up research? Sorry, Dr. Bruck says predictably – “Confidential information.”
C’mon, Dr. Kluft, aren’t you proud of your role?
Feb. 24, 2014
Why would Dr. Richard Kluft “take exception to” and “(raise) the issue of legal liability” over “When Psychiatry Battled the Devil”?
It’s not as if the record of Kluft’s involvement in promoting “satanic ritual abuse” and “multiple personality disorder” could be any longer or better-documented.
And it’s certainly not as if he has ever acknowledged the error of his ways.
In this exchange from a 2009 interview on CBS “Sunday Morning” he confidently posits a nationwide epidemic of undiagnosed cases of MPD:
Tracy Smith: So do you think that there are, what, thousands of people walking around out there with MPD who don`t even know it?
Kluft: Oh, easily.
Smith: Tens of thousands?
Kluft: Easily.
Smith: Hundreds of thousands?
Kluft: Easily.
Smith: Millions?
Kluft: We might be at that level.
Passing off such fantasy as expertise would be knee-slappingly funny, of course, had it not typified the thinking that fostered scores of wrongful prosecutions and ruined thousands of lives….
I remain baffled – what exactly has Richard Kluft done to deserve such obeisance from Psychiatric Times?
A national epidemic of supposed ‘remembering’
Aug. 30, 2013
“The Edenton case is not just a horrifying aberration. Adults across the country are suddenly ‘remembering’ that they were abused as children, and filing civil lawsuits and criminal charges against aged parents…
“Claims of long-ago child abuse, ‘blocked out’ from memory until now, have become a common defense tactic. Unscrupulous ‘therapists’ and sensationalist writers feed the frenzy.
“Anything goes against accused abusers, especially the right to a fair trial.”
– From an editorial in the Arkansas Times (Aug. 5, 1993)
For maximum notoriety, avoid Chowan County
July 10, 2013
Although some consider Little Rascals the East Coast version of the McMartin case, according to Google’s nGram Viewer it comes in a distant second in prominence.
Not even eight hours of “Innocence Lost” could make up for McMartin’s having been tried first and for its having been situated in Southern California rather than in Eastern North Carolina.