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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" 'I decided to go to small towns and look for something interesting,' Bikel said. In Edenton, a town in North Carolina, she heard about seven people charged with child abuse at a preschool. "She then proceeded to reveal [in her documentary trilogy on "Frontline"] what turned out to be a small-town witch hunt....
"Bikel interviewed defendants, parents, defense lawyers, prosecutors and later jurors. The 'Innocence Lost' trilogy got the defendants acquitted and freed from jail.
" 'The fact that we fought for them, and were right, and managed to get seven people out of jail was astonishing, intoxicating,' she said. 'That's when I realized what power I had in television.' "
-- ๐…๐ซ๐จ๐ฆ "๐ˆ๐ฌ๐ซ๐š๐ž๐ฅ๐ข-๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ง ๐ƒ๐ข๐ซ๐ž๐œ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ ๐Ž๐Ÿ๐ซ๐š ๐๐ข๐ค๐ž๐ฅ, ๐–๐ก๐จ๐ฌ๐ž ๐–๐จ๐ซ๐ค ๐…๐ซ๐ž๐ž๐ ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ‘ ๐–๐ซ๐จ๐ง๐ ๐Ÿ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐‚๐จ๐ง๐ฏ๐ข๐œ๐ญ๐ž๐ ๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ง๐ฌ, ๐ƒ๐ข๐ž๐ฌ ๐š๐ญ ๐Ÿ—๐Ÿ“" ๐ข๐ง ๐‡๐š๐š๐ซ๐ž๐ญ๐ณ [๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐ค ๐›๐ž๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ]
๐‡๐š๐ ๐Ž๐Ÿ๐ซ๐š ๐๐ข๐ค๐ž๐ฅ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐๐ข๐ฌ๐œ๐จ๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ๐ž๐ "๐ฌ๐จ๐ฆ๐ž๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐  ๐ข๐ง๐ญ๐ž๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐ " ๐ข๐ง ๐„๐๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐จ๐ง, ๐ฐ๐ก๐จ ๐ฐ๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐'๐ฏ๐ž ๐ฌ๐จ ๐ฌ๐ฉ๐ž๐œ๐ญ๐š๐œ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐š๐ซ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐๐ž๐ซ๐š๐ข๐ฅ๐ž๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ซ๐ฎ๐ง๐š๐ฐ๐š๐ฒ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ๐ฌ๐ž๐œ๐ฎ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐ฌ๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ง ๐ข๐ง๐ง๐จ๐œ๐ž๐ง๐ญ ๐๐ž๐Ÿ๐ž๐ง๐๐š๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ?
๐‘๐ˆ๐, ๐Ž๐Ÿ๐ซ๐š. ๐˜๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐ฆ๐จ๐ง๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐š๐ฅ ๐š๐œ๐ก๐ข๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ฆ๐ž๐ง๐ญ ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ฏ๐ข๐ฏ๐ž๐ฌ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ.
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3 months ago

1 CommentComment on Facebook

I was living in Virginia when all of this happened . I was in sick to hear that the most promenade people in my small town were in such a scandal.

"Thanks to the Chowan Herald's Vernon Fueston for his detailed look back at the Little Rascals Day Care case and his interview with Betsy Hester and Robin Couto, authors of 'Twenty-One Boxes: Robin's Story and the Tragedy of the Edenton Seven.'

"This book is a long-needed reexamination of what was undeniably the most significant event in 20th century Edenton โ€” however much some in the community want it forever forgotten. Not surprisingly, when Fueston reached out to some of those responsible for this nationally notorious wrongful prosecution, 'None wished to comment.'

"The true victims in Little Rascals were not the children, who were relentlessly nagged and manipulated by the prosecution's unqualified therapists, but Couto and her six fellow defendants. Perhaps 'Twenty-One Boxes' will move Edenton to acknowledge at long last this shameful episode in its history."

-- From my letter to the editor published July 29 [link below]
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4 months ago

Pathology professor Ed Friedlander weighs in [๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐ค ๐ข๐ง ๐œ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ] on the prosecution of Junior Chandler:
"The children at first all agreed that nothing had happened, but they were grilled for days until they told the zealots what they wanted to hear. Mr. Chandler was accused of taking the children to a place under a bridge, molesting them in a boat that no one could find, with Pinocchio as his accomplice, and then getting them back to school on time. This is beneath ridiculous, but he was tried in a circus, with 'experts in Satanic abuse' from New York and people waving signs, 'Believe the children!' "
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5 months ago
 

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Todayโ€™s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….


 

Edenton’s history was no defense against panic

130128CourthouseJan. 28, 2013

Manhattan Beach, California; Malden, Massachusetts; Christchurch, New Zealand; Maplewood, New Jersey; Sao Paulo, Brazil…. For more than a decade, unfounded allegations of day-care ritual abuse were breaking out all over the planet.

But for sheer cultural anomaly itโ€™s hard to match the emergence of such a case in historic and pristine Edenton, North Carolina, not unreasonably billed as โ€œthe Southโ€™s Prettiest Small Town.โ€

Edenton had made lots of headlines before Little Rascals, but almost none since the 1700s.

Among the townโ€™s prominent residents: Joseph Hewes, signer of the Declaration of Independence; Hugh Williamson, signer of the Constitution; James Iredell, George Washingtonโ€™s youngest appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Penelope Barker hosted the Edenton Tea Party to protest British taxes (thatโ€™s her waterfront house in the opening scene of โ€œInnocence Lostโ€).

Harriet Jacobs, author of โ€œIncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,โ€ was a native.

You wonโ€™t find a Walmart in Edenton (population 5,000 and slowly shrinking), but its trove of civic treasures includes aย 1925 moviehouse, aย 1939 baseball parkย and aย 1767 courthouseย (above right), the state’s oldest.

So why Edenton of all places? How did this charming, 300-year-old hamlet happen to offer all the essential ingredients for a world-class ritual-abuse panic? I wish I knew (and I wish Edenton did too).

Still waiting for that ‘huge mea culpa’

Sept. 6, 2013

โ€œThe day-care trials couldnโ€™t have happened without the active participation of social workers and therapists.ย  Police authorities relied on the therapists to interpret what the child witnesses were saying, to interview the children and to counsel them about their alleged experiences. One might suppose that the realization that:

  • People have been sent to prison for years for crimes that never happened;
  • Children had been abused, not by the accused, but by misguided therapists who implanted false memories;

would have created a huge mea culpa among the professionals involved.ย  This hasnโ€™t happened.

โ€œSome have defended their actions, if not the results, on the basis that their hearts were in the right place.ย  Some have excused themselves on the basis that nobody knew any better โ€“ that, by golly, nobody could have guessed that rewarding children for making accusations, and questioning them until they did make accusations, might just lead to false accusations.

โ€œAnd they speak, in self-pitying tones, about the โ€˜backlashโ€™ โ€“ the (presumably) undeserved and irrational criticism that is flung their way.โ€

โ€“ Fromย  โ€œThe โ€˜Ritual Abuseโ€™ Panicโ€ atย Imaginary Crimes

Mumโ€™s still the word from theย prosecution therapistsย in the Little Rascals case, except for Judy Abbottโ€™sย resentful responseย to the โ€œbacklash.โ€

Ritual-abuse theorist played ‘concentration camp’ card

July 12, 2013

โ€œSome professionals take the charges (of satanic ritual abuse) seriously. โ€˜It’s hard to believe, but so were the reports about Nazi atrocities,โ€™ says Bennett Braun, director of the Dissociative Disorder Program at Chicago’s Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center. โ€˜Then we found the concentration camps.โ€™

โ€œSkeptics are still waiting for the equivalent to a concentration camp to be found. No investigation has ever turned up so much as a bloodstain that could be traced with certainty to these bizarre activities.

โ€œWhat’s indisputable is the existence of a busy network of therapists specializing in SRA. โ€˜These allegations are produced by the unrelenting pressure of the therapist,โ€™ says Richard Ofshe, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies cults and thought control. โ€˜You will eventually come up with bizarre stuff because you run out of all the ordinary stuff.โ€™ โ€

โ€“ From โ€œRush to Judgmentโ€ in Newsweek (April 19, 1993)

As Newsweekโ€™s secondary headline noted, โ€œAmerica is now at war against child abuse. But some recent cases suggest we may be pushing too hard, too fast.โ€ Among the prosecutions criticized was Little Rascals, but by this time both Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson had been convicted and imprisoned.

Unlike so many others who fomented the ritual abuse/repressed memory/multiple personality mania, psychiatrist Braun actually suffered consequences: He lost his medical license for two years and was among the defendants in a malpractice suit ultimately settled for $7.5 million. He now practices in Butte, Montana.

Oh, those consequences of imaginations run amok

Dec. 21, 2012

โ€œIn the accusatorial post-McMartin climate, day care providers… took measures to protect themselves from false allegations. They installed video cameras to record all of their activities, opened up private spaces to public view by taking down doors to bathrooms and closets and, fearing the act now could be misinterpreted, stopped hugging and holding their young charges.

โ€œState legislatures… hurriedly mandated the fingerprinting and criminal records check of all current and prospective day care providers; state licensing agencies tightened regulations and by legislative fiat were given more teeth to enforce them. Yet insurance liability premiums soared, forcing many small day care centers out of business and many more, unlicensed and uninsured, to go underground.

โ€œHeralded at the start of the (1980s) as playgrounds for children, day care centers were feared at its end as playthings of the devil.โ€

โ€“ From โ€œThe Devil Goes to Day Care: McMartin and the Making of a Moral Panicโ€ย by Mary De Young in the Journal of American Culture (April 1, 1997)

Second to none was North Carolinaโ€™s overreaction, highlighted by the creation of โ€œinteragency task forces.โ€