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.
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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What would the Little Rascals case have looked like if social media had been around? Probably something like this....
‘No checks’ against false claims by internet warriors | Sanpete Messenger
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Since Joe and Lee Bennion moved to Spring City as newlyweds in 1977, they’ve been involved in almost every aspect of community life. Both are BYU graduates and working artists. They were among the �...0 CommentsComment on Facebook
An intriguing find from Robin Couto -- can't imagine the prosecution's fans not jumping in to have a say....
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Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
‘Though others’ perceptions have changed….’
May 14, 2012
Mary De Young’s engrossing bibliography “The Ritual Abuse Controversy” lists page after page of books and journal articles that accept wholeheartedly the existence of an epidemic of ritual abuse in day cares during the ’80s and early ’90s.
Roland Summit, Ann Burgess, Susan Kelley, David Finkelhor, etc., all used their professional credentials to support and spread the panic. But who among them has since acknowledged that it was all baloney? And that it left behind hundreds of profoundly damaged child-witnesses, families and defendants?
When I asked Dr. Finkelhor about the now-discredited foundation of “Nursery Crimes,” he replied that “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. I was neither an authority about the validity of claims at the time or at the present.”
Am I wrong to expect a higher level of professional accountability?
Mostly, by the turn of the latest century the alarmists had simply withdrawn from the arena. Like Dr. Finkelhor, they had moved on to other topics and “not revisited the case.”
One exception is Kathleen Coulborn Faller, professor of children and families in the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan.
In “Understanding and Assessing Child Sexual Maltreatment” (second edition, 2003), Dr. Faller writes, “Though others’ perceptions of the problems of sexual abuse in day care have changed, mine essentially have not.” Minimizing the work of next-generation researchers such as Ceci and Bruck, she cites approvingly such works as Kelley’s “Parental Stress Response to Sexual Abuse and Ritualistic Abuse in Day-Care Centers.”
Might Dr. Faller have changed her mind over the past decade?
Last week I asked her. So far she hasn’t replied.
This time, will NC Bar tell DAs to play fair?
cheshireparker.com
Brad Bannon
April 20, 2016
“‘If prosecutors have an ethical duty to avoid wrongful convictions, then they should have some sort of ethical duty to remedy wrongful convictions,’ said attorney Brad Bannon of the North Carolina Bar’s ethics committee.
“He wants North Carolina to adopt a rule recommended by the American Bar Association, requiring prosecutors to come forward if they find ‘new, credible and material evidence’ that an innocent person is serving time. Thirteen states have adopted the post-conviction rule. North Carolina isn’t among them.
“The State Bar rejected the rule several years ago but recently appointed a committee to reconsider….”
– From “Rule targets prosecutors who don’t reveal innocence evidence” by Martha Waggoner of the Associated Press (April 16)
Given prosecutors’ disproportionate influence on the state bar, to even “reconsider” the disclosure rule suggests the recent stream of unbecoming publicity hasn’t gone unnoticed.
Was it really Dawn Wilson who ‘had no character’?
March 12, 2012
After reading thousands of pages of Little Rascals coverage, shouldn’t I have become inured to the prosecution’s gratuitous brutality?
Not yet.
On August 11, 1993, Dawn Wilson, serving a life sentence for child sexual abuse, went back to court to seek release under house arrest. In six days she would give birth to her second child.
Nancy Lamb and Bill Hart could’ve responded with any number of temperate legal arguments against her release. Instead….
“She made a quite irresponsible decision in 1992 to become pregnant early in her trial,” Lamb said. “She was thinking only of herself….”
“Dawn Wilson… simply has no character…,” added Hart. “Is she the kind of mother figure who ought to be bonding with a second out-of-wedlock child?”
Judge Marsh McLelland granted Wilson’s request, but delays in paperwork and payment of a $250,000 bond kept mother and son in women’s prison another month.
In 1995 the N.C. Court of Appeals overturned her conviction. And then of course the prosecutors rushed to apologize to Dawn Wilson for their disgraceful vilification.
Prosecutor believed he had closed the deal early on
March 22, 2013
“’There are some people who said we could have stopped after the first child testified.”
– District Attorney H.P. Williams Jr., expressing confidence that the jury was being persuaded by the state’s stream of child-witnesses against Bob Kelly, The Associated Press, Dec. 9, 1991