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….
‘I walked into FREEDOM….’
Sept. 22, 2020
A burst of sunshine in these grim times. A note arrived today from Little Rascals Day Care case exoneree Bob Kelly: “Today, 25 years ago, because of Mark Montgomery’s wonderfully written and argued brief, I walked into FREEDOM…. Thanks to him and people like you who have believed in us!”
An expertise ‘contrary to science and common sense’
March 7, 2013
Anthony Oberschall’s “Why False Beliefs Prevail: the Little Rascals Child Sex Abuse Prosecutions” appeared in “Essays in Honor of Raymond Boudon” (2000).
Most saliently, the UNC sociologist argues that “hysteria” and “moral panic” are inadequate to describe what happened in Edenton. Rather, he sees the town – and the Little Rascals defendants – as victims of the purveyors of “pseudoscience”:
“When child sexual abuse became a national issue, the medical profession, academic psychology and social science were just starting to study it scientifically…. The legal profession lacked experience with trial testimony of pre-schoolers and admission of hearsay testimony by parents and therapists….Meanwhile thousands of child sex abuse allegations had to be dealt with.
“In the absence of proven knowledge, a child sex abuse industry of self-appointed ‘experts’ based on pseudo-science filled the demand for training and informing child protection service workers, social workers, police investigators, prosecutors, therapists and others…. They were convinced they were saving America’s children, even though their methods and knowledge were contrary to science and to common sense. In Edenton, the prosecution and the investigators relentlessly labored to supplant common sense with false beliefs based on pseudo-science, (and) they succeeded….”
Working with UNC journalism student David Loomis on his master’s thesis detailing news coverage of the case, Oberschall “tried to survey Edenton households by mail (picked names at random from a phone book), but got less than a 10 percent return rate. It was obvious people there didn’t want anything to do with an outsider, a scholar.”
Rebuffed, Oberschall drove to Edenton himself and conducted perhaps a dozen interviews, which he made use of both in “Why False Beliefs Prevail” and in this more detailed draft working paper from 2010.
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.
That’s our case, and we’re sticking to it (cont.)
Feb. 1, 2012
The HBO documentary “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory” surely deserves its Oscar nomination, although the only edge it holds over Ofra Bikel’s “Innocence Lost” trilogy of the ’90s is its happy-tears finale: the three defendants walking out of prison.
After much lawyering, the West Memphis Three in August accepted an Alford plea that allowed them to go free, while protecting the state of Arkansas from a wrongful-imprisonment suit and the national embarrassment of a retrial.
I had to laugh at this exchange from the ensuing press conference:
Reporter: “Will the state continue to investigate this case if additional information is brought forth, or is the case closed?”
Prosecutor Scott Ellington: “I have no reason to believe there was anyone else involved in the homicides of these three children but the three defendants who pled guilty today.”
Defense attorney Dennis Riordon: “Does anyone believe that if the state had even the slightest continuing conviction they were guilty that it would have let these men go free today?”
If H.P. Williams Jr., Nancy Lamb and Bill Hart were watching – unlikely, given the spotlight shone on unjust prosecution – no doubt they would have admired Ellington’s resolve in the face of reality.