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 showed courage not to ‘remember’ abuse
Oct. 19, 2011
Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2003, social psychologist Carol Tavris noted that:
“One mother (in the Little Rascals case) told reporters that it took 10 months before her child was able to ‘reveal’ the molestation.
“No one at the time considered the idea that the child might have been remarkably courageous to persist in telling the truth for so long.”
Why would prosecutors let ‘monster’ walk?
Jan. 18, 2012
“One way or another, justice has failed miserably in the agonizing case of the Little Rascals Day Care…. Last week, eight years after launching an investigation into possible sex abuse at the center, prosecutors announced they were dropping all charges against those who worked at the center.
“That means one of two things:
“(1) Either the defendants originally charged with hundreds of allegations of sex abuse in the 1980s are going to go virtually unpunished for their unspeakable deeds; or
“(2) Those same defendants have been badly treated by an overzealous prosecution team that broke all the rules of fairness in winning flawed guilty verdicts….”
– Editorial in The Charlotte Observer, May 29, 1997
So was that “overzealous prosecution team” simply blindered true believers, or did they realize early on their case was rotten to the core?
Defendant Scott Privott, who pled no contest and was released on probation after spending more than three years in prison, cuts through to the truth when he asks:
“Why did they offer me a plea? You know, if I’m supposed to be the monster that they said I was, if I did these crimes that they said I did, why would they offer me a plea?”
Why indeed, H.P. Williams?… Nancy Lamb?… Bill Hart?
Day-care teachers ‘as helpless as a clay pigeon’
Aug. 28, 2013
“It’s not by chance that day care centers are the sites of magical molestation, and not public schools with their powerful lobbies and unions…. Those primary and secondary school teachers’ organizations provide protection and security for their members, much as the AMA protects doctors and the ABA protects lawyers.
“It’s only you – a day care teacher – who has no protection at all. If hysterical parents gang up and attack you, you are as helpless as a clay pigeon in a shooting gallery.”
– From “Magical Child Molestation Trials: Edenton’s Children Accuse” by Margaret Leong (1993)
Holocaust child-survivors needed no coaxing
June 22, 2012
“Teen-age Holocaust victims had no trouble looking their abusers straight in the face and saying, ‘You did this to me, you monster.’ None of them, when they were younger, had to have any of their memories elicited. Nor were there embellishments of clowns throwing fire around the room.
“The author of a book on Holocaust survivors, ‘New Lives,’ had this to say: ‘I interviewed hundreds of Holocaust survivors. Would that they could forget anything. At age 4, at age 5 they remembered everything on the SS officers’ uniforms.’ ”
“The author is the Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz, the first journalist to provide the same in-depth reportage about Fells Acres that ‘Frontline’ provided about Little Rascals and Abby Mann did for the McMartin trial in an HBO movie.”
– From “Abusing Justice, in the Name of Children” by Ed Siegel in the Boston Globe (September 8, 1995)