April 20, 2012

David Finkelhor’s “Nursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care” (1988) helped lay the foundation for the moral panic that would soon engulf Edenton and so many other ill-starred towns.

Finkelhor, a respected and widely published sociologist at the University of New Hampshire, built a Potemkin village of statistical tables – “Victim Characteristics by Type of Perpetrator,” etc. – that concealed the utter worthlessness of his data. He was wrong from the first chapter, accepting unsubstantiated claims of ritual abuse as reality, to the last, recommending that “parents, licensing and law-enforcement officials be educated to view females as potential sex-abusers.”

This is from a recent exchange Finkelhor and I had via email:

Q: In “Nursery Crimes” you accept that ritual sexual abuse did in fact occur at Little Rascals, McMartin, Wee Care, etc., and give little credence to the “backlash” against such prosecutions. Has your position changed?

A: This was a while ago and I have not revisited the case. Our research did not conduct any independent review of the evidence, but simply coded the conclusion of the investigator we interviewed. So I was neither an authority about the validity of claims at the time or at the present.

Q: Yes, I understand that your research and analysis relied entirely on “local investigating agencies (that) had decided that abuse had occurred” (p. 13).

But I’m not finding in “Nursery Crimes” any skepticism about these prosecutorial allegations. In fact, the book seems only to reinforce the belief that satanic ritual abuse was a frequent occurrence in the nation’s day cares. Am I misjudging it?

Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck are but two of the researchers who have detailed the contaminated interview techniques that supported each of these cases. And of course almost all the defendants eventually went free, either when charges were dropped or their guilty verdicts overturned.

Would you consider returning to this subject and, if you so chose, changing your public position? I know the defendants – innocent citizens who saw their lives crushed by unfounded charges – would appreciate it.

—

No response yet to my second question. If I receive one, I’ll post it.

Nov. 16, 2011

“The Little Rascals defendants never wavered in their contention that the allegations were untrue. Not one testified against the other, even though prosecutors commonly offer leniency to accused people in exchange for damning testimony.

“If the defendants were so depraved that they in fact sexually abused small children wholesale, how is it that none was tempted to ‘tell all’ to save his or her hide?”

– From an editorial in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (June 2, 1997)

July 13, 2015

Throughout the long unfolding of the Little Rascals Day Care prosecution, outsiders often sought to determine the “mood of Edenton.” This was a challenging task even in the early days of the case, and it became just about impossible after the first “Innocence Lost” episode cast the town in a starkly unflattering light.

The default response to anyone with a notepad: Go away.

In 1996, however, a defense attorney weighing Edenton as a site for Bob Kelly’s possible retrial had better luck. His case notes include this candid and chilling evaluation from a longtime Edentonian:

“(The resident) didn’t believe that any of the defendants, but especially Bob, had a chance of getting a fair trial in Edenton. Although the constant talk of Little Rascals has died down, he said people still wouldn’t dare mention the idea of innocence. He believes that probably half of (Chowan County) either doesn’t believe Bob did it or at least not to the extent alleged. He believes the largest group of ‘nonbelievers’ to be those of lesser means, and especially minorities.

“He said that anyone of means or in any type of business in town would be committing financial and social suicide if they voiced any belief in Bob’s innocence.

“He said that even if he knew Bob to be innocent, or less guilty than charged, he would have a hard time voting so as a juror in light of the lifelong social repercussions. If there was even one or two jurors who believed Bob was guilty, they would be able to pressure everyone else into voting with them….”

June 11, 2012

After discovering the National Registry of Exonerations, I was happy to see that it lists Little Rascals defendants Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson, whose convictions were overturned on appeal.

But what about Betsy Kelly and Scott Privott, who both finally accepted plea deals while maintaining their innocence, and Robin Byrum, Darlene Harris and Shelley Stone, all of whom waited years for prosecutors to drop charges?

The registry, a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, speaks unequivocally about “a wave of child sex abuse hysteria that swept the country….

“Starting in the early 1980s, some prosecutors, therapists and child welfare workers became
convinced that child sex abuse on a massive scale was rampant in their communities. They
believed that most of the victims were too afraid or embarrassed to discuss the abuse, so they
worked to overcome this fear and reluctance by using highly suggestive, persistent and
unrelenting questioning techniques when interviewing the young children.

“It worked. Some of the children complied and accused parents, day-care workers and adult acquaintances of numerous horrifying and bizarre acts. This led to a series of extraordinary prosecutions, many involving allegations of satanic rituals.”

Unfortunately, this acknowledgment of the moral panic doesn’t earn the remaining “Edenton 5” a listing in the registry. Here’s why, according to research assistant Ted Koehler:

“For a case to count as an exoneration for our purposes, a person convicted of a crime must be declared factually innocent by a government official or organization with authority to make such a declaration.

“If this has not happened, a person can still be exonerated if the person was relieved of all consequences of the criminal conviction by a government official with proper authority, through pardon, acquittal of the charges for which the person was originally convicted, or dismissal of those same charges. In such a case, the pardon, acquittal, dismissal or posthumous exoneration must have been the result, at least in part, of evidence of innocence that either (i) was not presented at the trial at which the person was convicted; or (ii) if the person pled guilty, was not known to the defendant or to the defense attorney and the court at the time the plea was entered.

“The Edenton case was a terrible witch hunt. Regretfully, though, because they do not meet the criteria above, Kelly’s and Privott’s guilty pleas and the dropped charges against Byrum, Stone, and Harris do not fit our definition of an exoneration, and are not listed on the registry for that reason.”

I understand the registry’s need to set the bar so high. But what a curious twist that the defendants’ only hope for exoneration lies with the same state that so unjustly prosecuted them.