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….

Did replay of Salem prove human progress is ‘myth’?

140405JohnGray April 5, 2014

“Outside of science, progress is simply a myth.… In science the growth of knowledge is cumulative. But human life as a whole is not a cumulative activity; what is gained in one generation may be lost in the next.”

– From “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals” (2002) by John Gray, British political philosopher

An arguable proposition, certainly – but how else to explain the widespread acceptance of day-care ritual-abuse claims 300 years after the Salem Witch Trials? As noted by sociologist David G. Bromley, this chronic failure to learn-and-remember makes inevitable yet more moral panics – whatever their specifics.

And how else to explain this just-published revisionist history?

McMartin case brought emulation, not illumination

Nov. 2, 2012

“The (McMartin) episode and its conclusion were ravaged by the mass media and produced a tremendous repercussion throughout the nation – but not the one of caution, as one might have expected…. (Time magazine reported that) ‘Nationally, the attention generated by the case set off an explosion of reports claiming sexual abuse of children, increasing such reports from 6,000 in in 1976 to an estimated 350,000 in 1988.’”

– From “Witch-Children: From Salem Witch-Hunts to Modern Courtrooms” by Hans Sebald (1995)

Three centuries later, witch trials remain uncomfortably relevant

150721Bishop Oct. 31, 2016

“Historical truths emerge only with time, after which they are ours, particularly on Halloween, to mangle.

“Early on, the Salem witch trials disappeared from the record; a hush descended over 1692 for generations. ‘The People of Salem Do Not Like to Be Questioned in Regard to the Witchery Affair’ reads a Philadelphia Inquirer headline – from 1895. It fell to others to resurrect the ‘witchcraft,’ as the South did during the debate over slavery. Then came Arthur Miller, who made off with the story, or at least a version of it.

“A lush mythology grew up around the trials, one that reassured us that these events took place in a remote land in no way resembling our own. In truth, they are deeply woven into the American fabric. They are more relevant than the lore suggests – our earliest instance of conspiratorial fantasy and reckless demonizing, of the brand of national distemper that grips us in anxious times.”

– From “Five Myths about the Salem witch trials” by Stacy Schiff in the Washington Post (Oct. 30)

Fifteen years ago today: Massachusetts officially exonerates five women hanged as witches in Salem.

Sex-abuse journalism raises ‘strange question’

120625Rabinowitz Nov. 9, 2012

“Did I recognize that child sex abuse existed and was a serious problem? reporters would ask. A strange question, that. The discussion of no other crime would require such a disclaimer. Journalists who have written about false murder charges are seldom asked to provide reassurance that they know murder is a bad thing, and it really happens.”

– From “No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusations, False Witness and Other Terrors of Our Times” by Dorothy Rabinowitz (2003)