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….
Constitution prohibits ‘punishment in limbo’
Feb. 22, 2012
“(Even as) prosecutors quietly dropped all charges against the remaining three defendants, (Nancy Lamb) had the temerity to hint that there was sufficient evidence to convict if the state were disposed to go to trial.
“This kind of talk betrays the same imperious mentality that has left (Robin Byrum, Shelley
Stone and Darlene Harris) turning in the wind for eight years.
“A person charged with a crime is entitled under our Constitution to a timely resolution… a chance either to pay his debt to society or get on with his life. There is no excuse for punishment in limbo.”
– Editorial in the Greensboro News & Record, Dec. 21, 1996
There was good reason children weren’t eager to accuse
Aug. 31, 2012
“Children don’t just come running out of their houses screaming, ‘I’ve been molested!’”
– Assistant attorney general Bill Hart, justifying to the Associated Press (Dec. 31, 1989) why the prosecution’s serial allegations were taking so many months to come to light.
In a case typified by overstatement, Hart’s excuse for delay proved to be a most revealing understatement. Those children resisted mightily and at length before being manipulated into “screaming, ‘I’ve been molested!’”
Panics fade, ‘leaving in their wake bewilderment’
April 8, 2013
“The panic over satanic ritual abuse in the United States… subsided rather abruptly, as panics usually do, whether they are individual or social. They are like an acute anxiety attack – absolutely absorbing while in course and then suddenly gone, leaving in their wake bewilderment, fear of confronting the causes of the panic, and bafflement about what just happened….
“But traces of its presence can be found without much difficulty in the child abuse and neglect (CAN) literature. The panic, and the way CAN personnel had contributed to it, made the field more self-reflective and self-questioning. CAN practitioners had been shocked by the spectacle of their colleagues battling one another in courtrooms… unable to distinguish between real events of abuse and mass hysteria over alleged satanic abuse.”
– From “Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children” by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (2012)
“More self-reflecting and self-questioning” may describe the current generation of child abuse professionals, but those who did such unspeakable damage in the 1980s and ’90s remain wedded to their junk science.
City sidewalks, busy sidewalks: An upbeat dispatch from the DNC
Sept. 7, 2012
Having met with less than overwhelming interest earlier in the week in front of the bustling Charlotte Convention Center, I narrowed my focus.
Thursday I situated my “Exonerate” placard at the entrance to the peripheral and unhurried Crowne Plaza hotel, convention headquarters for the North Carolina Democratic Party, and our message was well received (except for an overly territorial security guard).
Not only did several delegates express support for the Edenton Seven, but also a dozen or so more took cards with the site address. And I was able to bend the ears of reporters from Greensboro, Rocky Mount and the Outer Banks, as well.
Yes, the delegates are mostly ordinary folks, not influential officials – I didn’t see Gov. Perdue – but I’m grateful they will take home a greater awareness of this shameful injustice, still unaddressed, in their own state.