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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Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
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Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
If only reality had offered such vivid details….
Jan. 9, 2013
“One question that arises from studies on children’s suggestibility is whether they document false memories or merely false reports. Do children really believe that the fictional events happened? Or do they merely say so to please the interviewers?
“Consistent with the false memory interpretation, approximately one-third of the children in these studies continued to insist that particular events had really happened to them even after they were told those events were not real….
“Lacking any obvious motivation to lie, these children appeared to have developed false memories, perhaps confusing the products of their repeated attempts to visualize the events with the products of direct experience….
“Professionals were no better than chance at discriminating false from true reports. The credibility of a child’s account was related to the amount of perceptual detail mentioned in the child’s narrative. The more details, the more professional tended to believe the narrative, regardless of whether it was true.”
– From “Remembering Trauma” by Richard J. McNally (2003)
To better understand how the Little Rascals therapists went so wildly astray, give that last paragraph a second reading. “Professionals were no better than chance at discriminating false from true reports” – and they were mesmerized by the “perceptual detail” in those tales of sharks and spaceships.
‘If somebody killed a rabbit at my day care…’
April 12, 2013
In January 1993, supporters of the Edenton Seven held a press conference in Hertford to demand that North Carolina authorities bring to an end – in the words of Raymond Lawrence – “this continuing social catastrophe.”
Also speaking out were Doug Wiik of Langhorne, Pa., a day care owner who survived a close call with the mania, and Susan Corbett, director of a day care in Richmond, Va.
Ms. Corbett’s contribution also included weekly letters to Dawn Wilson while she was imprisoned and gifts for her baby at Easter.
Now retired, Ms. Corbett says she recognized immediately that the Little Rascals charges were preposterous: “There was no question in my mind. If somebody killed a rabbit at my day care, everybody in town would know it in 24 hours.”
So why did so many others succumb?
“I think people uncomfortable with sexuality bought into it more easily. The Bible Belt, the right wing and a perverted, anti-sexual stage of feminism all came together…. And the world of social work was being sold a bill of goods at that time – all that crap with (anatomically correct) dolls.”
‘Most people thought I had lost my damn mind’
April 5, 2016
At a time when the Little Rascals claims were exposing widespread gullibility, a gritty band of doubters – e.g., Raymond Lawrence, Glenn Lancaster, Jane Duffield, Doug Wiik, Susan Corbett and Dee Swain – was desperately working to keep the defendants from being crushed by public opinion and prosecutorial coercion.
As treasurer for the Committee to Support the Edenton Seven, Swain distributed donations to defendants, facilitated the lowering of Scott Privott’s exorbitant bond and wrote an epic four-page (single-spaced!) letter educating the attorney general’s office on the errors of its ways.
How was it that a propane dealer in Washington, N.C., could see through the fog that engulfed so many professionals?
“It was obvious to me right away that it was hysteria,” he says. “I didn’t get involved until after (Bob Kelly’s) conviction – I had thought surely the jury would see through it….
“I’ve always been a skeptical person, someone who stands outside the box…. Most people thought I had lost my damn mind, defending ‘child molesters’…. I got anonymous phone calls….”
Swain is surprisingly generous to those who bought into the “satanic ritual abuse” stories elicited by prosecution therapists: “There aren’t any villains. They all acted in good faith. They were on a mission. They were going to be heroes….. You could see it all in ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’ (by Charles Mackay, 1841).”
And why does he think none have stepped forward a quarter century later to recant? “What they did was too terrible to admit to themselves.”
Junior Chandler faces 30th year in prison
April 4, 2016
Junior Chandler may be the last still-imprisoned victim of the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care panic.
Chandler was a driver for a Madison County, N.C., day care. The prosecutor alleged that Chandler, in the words of appellate attorney Mark Montgomery, “would drive off his route to a park by a river, strip the children of their clothes, troop them down to the river, put them in a rowboat, commit various sexual acts, put them back on the bus and take them home.”
Based almost exclusively on hearsay and no-longer-permissible expert “vouching,” Chandler was convicted in 1987 and sentenced to two life sentences. This month he will begin his 30th year behind bars for a crime that never happened.
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