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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Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
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Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
Esteemed psychiatrist analyzes Trump – and Junior Chandler
Sept. 18, 2017
Allen Frances, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University, has been generating lots of attention with his provocative and important new book, “Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump.”
What better time to look back at Dr. Frances’s 2014 call to correct the “egregious injustice” committed by the State of North Carolina against Junior Chandler.
The last trial of Darryl Hunt
March 17, 2016
The award-winning documentary “The Trials of Darryl Hunt” was released in 2006, but of course Hunt’s world-famous exoneration only freed him to face new trials on the outside – most recently divorce and cancer.
Winston-Salem police Wednesday attributed his death to suicide by gunshot.
Amazingly, Darryl Hunt overcame the unspeakable damage done by 19 years of wrongful imprisonment to build a life of righteous achievement. I’m choosing to remember his journey, not its end.
Betsy Kelly wouldn’t succumb to state’s torture
July 16, 2012
“Elizabeth Kelly was denied parole Friday, three months after pleading no contest to charges of sexually abusing children at her Edenton day care.
“Mrs. Kelly, sentenced to seven years, was eligible for parole upon entering prison because she had already served more than two years while awaiting trial.
“Prosecutor Bill Hart said opposition to Mrs. Kelly’s release was heightened by her statements of innocence after entering her plea.
“‘From my work dealing with sex offenders there is no way you can treat a sex offender and restore them to the community until that person admits the wrongness of her actions and takes responsibility….’”
– From the Associated Press, April 16, 1994
From the beginning, the prosecution never missed a chance to tighten the thumbscrews on Betsy Kelly: Plead guilty, implicate your husband or suffer grave consequences. Although she eventually took a plea bargain, she never accommodated Bill Hart’s pious insistence that she admit “the wrongness of her actions.”
In October 1989, about six weeks after her arrest, a hearing had been held in Raleigh on whether Kelly should be forced to move from a mental health unit into Dorm C at women’s prison.
Recalls Faye Sultan, a Charlotte forensic psychologist who testified on her behalf: “She had been found guilty of nothing at that point, but she was being housed in the most isolated, restrictive facility in the prison, where Death Row and disciplinary inmates were housed. Seems a bit unfair, no?”
Sultan testified that Kelly’s “psychological condition is rapidly deteriorating, and in fact she is on the edge of becoming psychotic.”
Why would the state insist on moving a pretrial “safekeeping” defendant to such a hostile environment? “The reason was to pressure Betsy,” says Joe Cheshire, her lawyer. “They didn’t know her very well, did they?”
When ‘backlash spewed,’ Judy Abbott blamed ‘falsehoods’
Oct. 19, 2012
“The backlash spewed from the guilty verdicts in the Little Rascals Day Care case have (sic) been painful and difficult to hear and live with. Those of us who advocate for the rights of children often feel that the gains made on their behalf over the past few years are eroding under falsehoods propagated by individuals who’s (sic) motives are undetermined.”
– From “Little Rascals Day Care Center Case: The Bitter Lesson, a Healthy Reminder” by Judith Steltzner Abbott (1994)
If the editors of the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse set aside six pages in hopes therapist Judy Abbott might respond thoughtfully to the Little Rascals “backlash,” they were surely disappointed. Instead, she dodged reality with platitudes and self-congratulation.
Of course, even to acknowledge the concerns of her falsehood-propagating critics (the ones with “motives undetermined”) might have put at risk her nomination for the Distinguished Women of North Carolina Award.
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