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….

Could N&O have thwarted ‘prosecutor gone wild’?

130318Sitton March 18, 2013

“When I look back, I think my greatest mistake (was) my failure as editor of the News & Observer to make sure we had a top-notch investigative reporter on the Little Rascals case in Edenton.

“Our regional person was adequate as a regional correspondent, a full-time staffer, but he was not the person to see what was wrong with this case and to do the necessary digging to root it out.

“That prosecutor had gone wild, eaten up by ambition, I suppose, to hang these people, these people who operated the Little Rascals Day Care Center, no matter how.

“…All the kids talked about being borne through the air this way and that way and flying all over, and it was crazy stuff.

130318Stith “As it turned out, (the Edenton Seven were eventually released), but it wrecked their lives forever. And I still feel sorry about that, still feel sorry about it.

“I think had we sent someone like Pat Stith down there, that would have been it.

“But see, at that time, Edenton already was a pretty far reach for the News & Observer…. (Our) pulling out of eastern North Carolina (to cut expenses) might have affected my thinking (about) whether we were really responsible for doing something about that miscarriage of justice.”

– From an interview with Claude Sitton, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer from 1968 to 1990 (Southern Oral History Program, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill, July 12, 2007)

50 students now know the facts

131028Caldwell-Harris Oct. 28, 2013

“What was surprising was that in a class of 50 students, none had heard of the day care allegations of the 1980s.”

– From a note from Catherine Caldwell-Harris, associate professor of psychology, Boston University

Well, that’s a bracing dose of reality, isn’t it? But thanks to Dr. Caldwell-Harris, those students in her developmental psychology class now have an understanding of the moral panic. Here’s her lesson plan, which she doesn’t mind being borrowed, along with her comments on how students responded.

Maybe the current generation of academics sees clearly what many of their predecessors so horribly misjudged?

Ever so slowly, progress made toward DAs’ accountability

ncbar.gov

July 1, 2016

“Prosecutors should have to disclose evidence of innocence obtained after a person is convicted, a North Carolina State Bar panel agreed Wednesday.

“The ethics subcommittee voted 3-2 at a meeting in Greensboro to support the general principle that a prosecutor’s duty to disclose innocence evidence continues after a defendant is sentenced, although the members didn’t settle on specific language. A federal prosecutor and a former district attorney opposed the motion, while three attorneys in private practice supported it….

“The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys had said in a letter to the State Bar that prosecutors say that the rule is unnecessary….

“The panel is just the first step in a lengthy process that – if the rule is approved at each step – involves the full ethics committee, public comment, the full State Bar Council and finally, the state Supreme Court.”

– From “NC panel: Innocence evidence right continues after sentence” by Martha Waggoner of the Associated Press (June 29)

New York Times remembers McMartin case

140312Haberman March 12, 2014

“Really now, teachers chopped up animals, clubbed a horse to death with a baseball bat, sacrificed a baby in a church and made children drink the blood, dressed up as witches and flew in the air – and all this had been going on unnoticed for a good long while until a disturbed mother spoke up?”

– From “The Trial That Unleashed Hysteria Over Child Abuse” by Clyde Haberman in the New York Times (March 9, 2014)

Big thanks to Retro Report for its eye-reopening essay and 13-minute video recalling the seminal McMartin Preschool case. Also mentioned are Little Rascals and other “criminal cases of dubious provenance” from the moral panic.

Although the road to public exoneration for the Edenton Seven remains long and uncertain, this attention from the Times is welcome indeed.