Oct. 14, 2013

“Whether Nancy Lamb should be promoted to district attorney is not simply a question of Democrats vs. Republicans. (Lamb is a Democrat; the decision on whether to appoint her to fill the rest of the late Frank Parrish’s term rests with Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican.)

“A quarter-century ago, Lamb played a crucial role in the wrongful prosecution of the Edenton Seven, defendants in the Little Rascals Day Care case. Little Rascals was an especially notorious example of a wave of ‘satanic ritual abuse’ day-care prosecutions during the ’80s and early ’90s — virtually all of them based on hysteria and a misguided campaign to ‘Believe the Children.’ Today no respected social scientist believes these bizarre claims were anything more than a ‘moral panic.’

“Although she ranked below District Attorney H. P. Williams and Assistant Attorney General Bill Hart, it was Nancy Lamb who served not only as the prosecution’s closer in the courtroom, but also its public face. And it was Lamb who, after Williams dropped off the case, continued to cling to the discredited ‘ritual abuse’ fantasy and who vindictively conjured up an unrelated charge against Bob Kelly after his conviction had been resoundingly overturned by the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

“Little Rascals will remain a stain on the state of North Carolina until the Edenton Seven receive a statement of innocence such as that given the Duke lacrosse defendants. Neither the prosecutors nor their ill-trained therapists have ever expressed any regrets or made any amends. To even be considered for district attorney, Nancy Lamb should be willing to address her responsibility. If she still wants to argue that the defendants were guilty, let her do so.”

– From a letter I wrote last week to the Elizabeth City Daily Advance, the only daily newspaper in the seven-county First Prosecutorial District, taking issue with its editorial support of Nancy Lamb’s appointment as district attorney. Editorial is here; page PDF; text cache.

The 900-word editorial could come up with “only one possible explanation for McCrory’s reluctance to appoint her: partisan politics.” Unmentioned was Lamb’s responsibility in the district’s most infamous case – perhaps the Advance has forgotten? Or thinks she deserves to benefit from a prosecutorial statute of limitations?

My letter has yet to appear.

Oct. 14, 2014

“(Bob) Kelly’s father-in-law, Warren Twiddy, says that blacks are the only people in Edenton who still treat him like a human being.

“One black woman, calling the whole episode a Salem witch hunt, told me she was so ashamed she had removed the Edenton license plates from her car.”

– From “Nursery witch hunt” by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Sunday Telegraph of London (Aug. 3, 1993)

April 6, 2012

“Parent-experts made a specific kind of sense of their children’s behaviors and emotions by retrospectively interpreting them as sequelae of day care ritual abuse rather than as reactions to familial stress, the vicissitudes of growing up or, for that matter, the stress of the investigation and the interrogations. ….

“Parent-experts testified that they never had reason to worry about their children’s behavior until they disclosed ritual abuse. Then, to the parent-experts, the tantrums, fears and sleep disturbances that once had looked like nothing more than normal growing pains were retrospectively interpreted….”

– From “The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic”  by Mary De Young (2004)

Judge Marsh McLelland’s allowing parents to testify as experts about their children’s behavior was one of the key defects pointed out by the N.C. Court of Appeals in overturning the convictions of Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson.

Nov. 18, 2011

“Gossip serves to fill up the vacuum of many people’s lives. It adds spice and excitement ….

“ ʻI would never have imagined it,ʼ say the neighborhood people. ʻIt looked like such a nice, friendly, reputable school, and all the while we didn’t know what terrible things were going on in there. They sure were clever. They really kept it quiet for a long time.

“ ʻWhen those kids came out, I never thought that they had just eaten feces, drunk urine and were beaten with whips.ʼ ”

– From “Sex Abuse Hysteria: Salem Witch Trials Revisited” by Richard A. Gardner (1991)