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 โ 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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Todayโs random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
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Todayโs random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
British child abuse investigators too quick on trigger
June 5, 2016
โOne in five of all children born in a single year in England was referred to social services before they reached age 5…. Up to 150,000 pre-school children were reported over fears of abuse or neglect, most unnecessarily….
โResearchers (at the University of Central Lancashire) said while public and professional vigilance was welcome, the number of alerts received by social services meant staff were wasting their time on innocent families, and making it harder to find the children who are at risk.
โAfter a series of high profile cases where serious abuse was missed, social workers are under intense pressure… and end up checking up more of the warnings they receive than is necessary, the research suggests.
Lead researcher Professor Andy Bilson said, โWe have this mantra that says it’s everybody’s job to safeguard children, but what we are doing doesn’t actually safeguard children.โ
โ ย Fromย โOne in five children referred over suspected abuseโย at BBC News (May 25)
Not mentioned in the Central Lancashire report is the subcategory of โsatanic ritual abuseโ โ about which the British are similarly prone to false alarm.
NC GOPโs one weird trick for justice reform
Feb. 11, 2016
โSignificant criminal justice reforms (are needed) to minimize the chances of wrongful prosecution in the future.
โSome might dismiss such goals as a liberal utopian ideal, but criminal justice reform is being embraced nationwide by tea party conservatives. Why? Because few things exemplify the overreach of an all-too-powerful government (better) than one that yanks away an individualโs freedom without legal justification….
โConservatives in the heavily Republican Texas legislature have embraced some of the most far-reaching criminal justice reforms in the country….โ
โ From โShame and joy behind 149 exonerationsโย in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Feb. 7 editorial)
And how is North Carolinaโs own heavily Republican legislature taking up the cause of criminal justice reform? With the piously labeledย Restoring Proper Justice Act,ย (text cache), which both conceals information on the drugs used for capital punishment and repeals a law requiring a physician be present.ย Sponsoring Rep. Leo Daughtryย railed against โroadblocks in front of the death penalty (that) have stopped us from using the punishmentโ for the past decade.
Had Daughtry had his way, death row inmates Henry McCollum and Leon Brownย would long since have been executed โ instead of exonerated and then pardoned by the same governor who blithely signed the Restoring Proper Justice Act into law.
Why evangelicals fall prey to ritual abuse tales
Dec. 22, 2014
โโWe evangelical Christians by definition live by our own narrative of creation, fall, and redemption. We believe in good and evil. That is why, as a group, we might be vulnerable to other meta-narratives โ after all, if you believe in one, itโs easier to accept a second and a third.
โOne example: in the 1980s and 1990s too many of us accepted the story of widespread Satanic Ritual Abuse, despite the fact that the evidence could not be found, nor could anyone name the thousands of missing children who supposedly had been sacrificed to the devil.โ
โ From โ โThe Paranoid Style in American Politicsโ has its 50th Anniversaryโย by Gary Shogren at Open Our Eyes, Lord!
Although โThe Paranoid Style in American Politicsโ by Richard Hofstadter was first published in response to Barry Goldwaterโs presidential campaign, it continues to offer insights into the attraction of a wide range of conspiracy theories.
Prosecutor believed he had closed the deal early on
March 22, 2013
โ’There are some people who said we could have stopped after the first child testified.โ
โ District Attorney H.P. Williams Jr., expressing confidence that the juryย was being persuaded by the stateโs stream of child-witnesses against Bob Kelly,ย The Associated Press, Dec. 9, 1991
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