Jan. 2, 2012

Next to “Why are you doing this?” the question I’m most often asked about Little Rascals is, “Since the trial, what has happened with the kids?”

For those alleged child-victims who testified in day-care abuse cases, the need to forget, to deny and to stay silent must be strong indeed. Who wants to believe they were so misused by their parents, not to mention by therapists and prosecutors? Who can look unblinkingly at the grotesque truth and take it public? For many, given the well-documented power of suggestibility, it may simply be impossible.

One exception was Kyle Zirpolo, who came forward in 2005 to apologize for his role in the McMartin pre-school case.

Last week, on the chance that an Edenton child might be ready to break ranks, I took out classified ads in the daily Elizabeth City Advance and the weekly Chowan Herald with this message:

“If you were a child or parent involved in the Little Rascals Day Care case of the early 1990s, I’d like to hear from you….”

Thursday night I received a call from a woman who credibly identified herself as one of those children. She wouldn’t give her name. She is 26 now, no longer living in Edenton, and she was not happy to see the ad. I felt obliged to tell her at the outset that I considered the defendants wrongly accused. Here’s an edited version of her response:

“It’s sad that you and others believe that. Here it is almost 2012, and I’m still opening up the paper and seeing crap like this (ad). It’s either that, or another bullshit book about our ‘witch hunt.’ And I know they study us and McMartin and Fells Acres in different colleges.

“I’m haunted every single day, and I always will be, so long as those bastards are out there, getting to go about their business. I have a lot of emotions – hypervigilance, anger that I had to go through all that badgering (by the defense). My husband put away my files on the case because it bothered me so much.

“I remember vividly what happened, and I’ve told therapists. You believe a dozen little kids just got together and made up lies? There was physical evidence, things they couldn’t put on TV.  The whole situation was just crap.”

Before we hung up, she said she would consider sending me case materials that I would find persuasive. I appreciate her call and hope to hear from her again.

Jan. 31, 2015

“ ‘You need to try to rectify whatever error you made,’ says Santa Clara County, California, Special Assistant District Attorney David Angel. ‘But it needs to really shift from this kind of highly moralistic, punitive view. Maybe it’s a cause for embarrassment, but it’s not a cause for shame.’

“He believes prosecutors have drawn the short straw in language, noting that defense attorneys who err are called ‘ineffective’ and judges are ‘reversed,’ while prosecutorial error alone is labeled ‘misconduct,’ with all the attendant negative connotations.

“Angel believes that most prosecutors are willing to admit to mistakes but that ‘people are very hesitant to admit to something that’s called “misconduct,” because it makes you feel like you did something morally wrong.’ ”

– From “Why can’t law enforcement admit their mistakes?” by Sue Russell at Pacific Standard (via Salon, Oct. 21, 2012)

The concept becomes trickier, however, the longer prosecutors cling to their fallacious and costly narratives. At some point – oh, let’s say 25 years later – might “mistakes” have toxified into “misconduct”?

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?

Nov. 16, 2013

An update from Mark Montgomery, Junior Chandler’s appellate attorney: “[The N.C. Center on Actual Innocence] reviewed Junior’s case but could not find anything that would help him.  The ‘kids’ were too young at the time to have anything helpful to say now.  Of the two retarded adults who rode Junior’s bus (and testified against him), one is dead and the other incompetent.”

On a somewhat more encouraging note, Mark reports that the governor’s office has notified him that Junior’s clemency application is being considered.
Want to put in a word on Junior’s behalf? Here’s where to write:

Executive Clemency Office
4294 Mail Service Center
Raleigh NC 27699-4294