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….
For maximum notoriety, avoid Chowan County
July 10, 2013
Although some consider Little Rascals the East Coast version of the McMartin case, according to Google’s nGram Viewer it comes in a distant second in prominence.
Not even eight hours of “Innocence Lost” could make up for McMartin’s having been tried first and for its having been situated in Southern California rather than in Eastern North Carolina.
In search of justified public panics….
March 28, 2016
“I was thinking about recent public panics and started listing a few of them in my mind. This is just off the top of my head:
- Crack babies
- Super predators
- Lehmann/AIG/Countrywide etc.
- Mad cow
- Deepwater Horizon
- Daycare child molesters
- Ebola
- ISIS/Syrian refugees
“I’m not saying that none of these were justified. Big oil spills are no joke. Ebola was certainly a big deal in Africa. The financial collapse of 2008 wasn’t mere panic.
“And yet, generally speaking it seems as if public panics are either completely unjustified or else wildly overwrought. Am I missing any recent examples where there was a huge panic and it turned out to be wholly justified? HIV would have been justified in the early ’80s, but of course we famously didn’t panic over that — other than to worry about getting AIDS from toilet seats. Help me out here….”
– From “Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)” by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones (March 24)
Will Edenton, too, ever be ‘honest about what took place’?
Jan. 14, 2016
“Researchers announced this week they have confirmed the plot (in Salem, Mass.) where 19 people accused of witchcraft were hanged in a wave of hysteria that swept this seaside city in 1692.
“Salem plans to mark the ignominious spot, Mayor Kimberley Driscoll said: ‘This is part of our history, and this is an opportunity for us to be honest about what took place.’
“Neither of two previous plans for a memorial there (in 1892 and 1936) went anywhere. Emerson ‘Tad’ Baker, a Salem State University professor who helped pinpoint the location, said the desire by some to forget the witch trials was probably to blame.
– From “Researchers pinpoint site of Salem witch hangings” by Laura Crimaldi in the Boston Globe (Jan. 13)
In Edenton, the “desire by some to forget” still dominates, but should it ever weaken…..
One thing led to another…. boy, did it ever!
Nov. 16, 2012
“In North America in the 1980s, the moral panic about organized child abuse arose in a context that included the following scares:
- “a moral panic about satanic activity;
- “a scare about missing and murdered children;
- “great public anxiety about incest, redefined as child sexual abuse during the 1970s;
- “a wave of disputed custody cases in which women accused their former husbands of sexually abusing children during court-ordered visitations;
- “self-help books by women claiming to be ‘survivors’ of incest and ritual abuse;
- “therapists’ claims that many of their adult women patients suffered from multiple-personality disorder as a result of severe childhood sexual and ritual abuse.
“Of particular importance were claims that society was in denial about widespread child sexual abuse…. Thus, claims about organized child abuse by caregivers were made in a context of claims about similar issues, and the effect of claims in one panic was to reinforce claims in another.”
– From “Wrongful Conviction and the Moral Panic About Organized Child Abuse: National and International Perspectives” by Randall Grometstein (2005)