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

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.

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Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….

 

In Guilford County, a DA who paid attention

J. Douglas Henderson
J. Douglas Henderson

Nov. 27, 2015

“We cannot bring criminal prosecutions based upon what we think the facts might be, out of our love for animals or in response to public pressure. Down that road lies the wreckage of the Duke lacrosse case, the Little Rascals Day Care case and other prosecutorial misadventures…..”

– District Attorney J. Douglas Henderson, explaining his dismissal of animal cruelty charges against the former director of the Guilford County (N.C.) Animal Shelter

An animal shelter isn’t a day care center, euthanasia isn’t “satanic ritual abuse” and Henderson’s decision hasn’t met with unanimous community support, but how encouraging to see a DA who seems to have learned appropriate lessons from two of the state’s most notorious “prosecutorial misadventures.”

How were defendants so skillful at dressing kids?

Nov. 30, 2011

111130Gardner“You have to start with the matter of probability. What every one of these (day care sex abuse) cases has in common is that no adult observer has actually seen a molestation in progress.

“Supposedly, these abuses are going on continually over a period of months. Almost always, they supposedly involve a number of adults and many children, with outsiders constantly walking in and out of these centers. Yet we have no corroborating eyewitnesses. None….

“Throughout it all, these children somehow always come home in the right shoes and socks and underpants. Do you have kids? Do you realize how hard it is to dress two kids in a hurry without some kind of mix-up, let alone 10 or 12 or 20 kids?”

– Dr. Richard A. Gardner, clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, quoted in Playboy magazine (June 1992)

Journal editors find excuses to avoid retraction

Dec. 10, 2012

I’ve been surprised – naively, I suppose – by the refusal of professional journals such as Nursing Research, Child Abuse & Neglect and Relational Child & Youth Care Practice to retract articles that supported the moral panic of ritual abuse in day cares.

The editors’ common justification is that they published no “specific errors,” such as citing the Little Rascals case by name. This seems to me a narrow and disingenuous view. These articles are wrong to the bone, as wrong as if they had been based on cold fusion or the Protocols of Zion.

Here’s what the Charlotte Observer, my former employer, had to say in 2006 about how it had contributed to the infamous Wilmington coup d’etat of 1898:

“An apology is inadequate to atone for the Observer’s role in promoting the white supremacist campaign. But an apology is due….

“We apologize to the black citizens and their descendants whose rights and interests we disregarded, and to all North Carolinians, whose trust we betrayed by our failure to fairly report the news and to stand firmly against injustice.”

Newspapers, as “the first rough draft of history,” enjoy and deserve some leeway in reaching their standards of accuracy. But the editors at the Observer (and other participating North Carolina dailies) didn’t quibble over “specific errors.” They addressed the root defect in their coverage. Is it too much to expect the same from the editors of professional journals?