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….
Edenton’s history was no defense against panic
Jan. 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 itโs hard to match the emergence of such a case in historic and pristine Edenton, North Carolina, not unreasonably billed as โthe Southโs Prettiest Small Town.โ
Edenton had made lots of headlines before Little Rascals, but almost none since the 1700s.
Among the townโs prominent residents: Joseph Hewes, signer of the Declaration of Independence; Hugh Williamson, signer of the Constitution; James Iredell, George Washingtonโs youngest appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Penelope Barker hosted the Edenton Tea Party to protest British taxes (thatโs her waterfront house in the opening scene of โInnocence Lostโ).
Harriet Jacobs, author of โIncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,โ was a native.
You wonโt 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
โThe day-care trials couldnโt 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 hasnโt happened.
โSome 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.
โAnd they speak, in self-pitying tones, about the โbacklashโ โ the (presumably) undeserved and irrational criticism that is flung their way.โ
โ Fromย โThe โRitual Abuseโ Panicโ atย Imaginary Crimes
Mumโs still the word from theย prosecution therapistsย in the Little Rascals case, except for Judy Abbottโsย resentful responseย to the โbacklash.โ
Ritual-abuse theorist played ‘concentration camp’ card
July 12, 2013
โSome professionals take the charges (of satanic ritual abuse) seriously. โIt’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. โThen we found the concentration camps.โ
โSkeptics 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.
โWhat’s indisputable is the existence of a busy network of therapists specializing in SRA. โThese 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. โYou will eventually come up with bizarre stuff because you run out of all the ordinary stuff.โ โ
โ From โRush to Judgmentโ in Newsweek (April 19, 1993)
As Newsweekโs secondary headline noted, โAmerica 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
โIn 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.
โState 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.
โHeralded 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 โThe Devil Goes to Day Care: McMartin and the Making of a Moral Panicโย by Mary De Young in the Journal of American Culture (April 1, 1997)
Second to none was North Carolinaโs overreaction, highlighted by the creation of โinteragency task forces.โ
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.