Nov. 9, 2011

“Fear recaptured the 9-year-old, much as it had six years ago when last he left Bob Kelly’s day care. Lingering fears gripped many of Kelly’s victims when the appellate court overturned his 99 guilty verdicts…. A week later, the little boy is still too frightened to ride his bike around the block….

“We forget the victims – unless we live with them. Our wounds from media distortions heal. Our memories of Kelly’s manipulation of ‘the system’ fade. But the genuine fears of our sons and daughters persist.

“What would you do if you knew your little ones had been sexually abused? Would you seek justice? Would… you be able to endure the years of trauma and persecution? We implore our fellow North Carolinians to ponder those questions…. Join us in requesting that the North Carolina Supreme Court uphold these verdicts.

“If the court denies the opinions of two separate juries that found both (Kelly and Dawn Wilson) guilty, the innocent victims will be under attack again. Do helpless child victims forget the brutality of rape, sodomy and crimes against nature? A more significant question is: Do we in North Carolina want to pry those agonizing details from them once more?

“True, many are old enough to realize that Bob Kelly can’t work his threatened evil to kill their families. But others still draw pictures of their visions of safety: pictures of heaven and guardian angels because they say, ‘I know Mr. Bob won’t be in Heaven.’

“We must take a stand against re-victimization of the innocent. Don’t interrupt the healing that is emerging in these courageous young ones. Refuse to allow the media to create a ‘circus’ in our noble state. Child sexual abuse can no longer be allowed or excused in North Carolina.”

– From a letter to the editor of the (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot, signed by 17 parents of children involved in the Little Rascals case (May 14, 1995)

Buried in the Edenton parents’ heartfelt plea to the N.C. Supreme Court (which would soon agree with the Court of Appeals’ overturning the convictions of Kelly and Wilson) is this profoundly revealing question: “Do we in North Carolina want to pry those agonizing details from them once more?”

If only those details had not been pried from the children in the first place….

Nov. 2, 2011

Post on hidden mysteries.org (1995):

“Aside from the children and their parents, others are deeply disappointed by the N.C. Supreme Court’s decision not to (overturn) the reversals by the Court of Appeals.

“Superior Court Judge Marsh McLelland, who heard the Little Rascals case the first time, wrote in a letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: ‘Your refusal to review the Kelly and Wilson reversals by the Court of Appeals is legally and morally reprehensible.’

“Once more, the Edenton children find themselves as much on trial as their alleged perpetrators, if not more so.”

ANN EARLE

Letter to the editor of the News & Observer of Raleigh (May 16, 1996):

“As a psychotherapist who treats many child victims and adult survivors of sexual and ritual abuse… I am incredulous that so many people support Robert F. Kelly….

“There is ample historical and anthropological evidence that ritual abuse has existed for centuries…. Unfortunately, day care centers are optimal settings for such perpetrators.

“If there is indeed a ‘witch hunt’ going on, it’s actually aimed at abused children and those who advocate for them.”

ANN EARLE, C.C.S.W., B.C.D.

Chapel Hill

Letter to the editor of the News & Observer of Raleigh (June 4, 1997):

“Investigators should not ask leading questions, of course, but even if they did it is difficult to imagine how a young child could come up with graphic details of sexual activity if nothing happened. Child sexual abusers and pornographers routinely incorporate fantasy to entice children to cooperate and render them less believable if the child ever tells.

“Why are journalists so quick to believe alleged abusers and discount sexual abuse allegations by children?”

ANN S. EARLE

Chapel Hill

Letter to the editor of the News & Observer of Raleigh (January 15, 1999):

“In reality, false allegations of sexual abuse by preschool children are rare.

“I have spent three years researching and editing a book on ritual abuse allegations. Ample evidence supports the existence of such abuse in day care centers, in spite of how bizarre it may sound.

“Robert Kelly was found guilty by a jury of his peers in a lengthy trial. This verdict was overturned only on a technicality.

“Finally, there is obviously significant evidence to charge Kelly in a case unrelated to Little Rascals (charges dropped eight months later). We should consider these facts before concluding that the alleged abuses at Little Rascals were due to a ‘hysteria’ fueled by a ‘rumor mill.’ ”

ANN EARLE, C.C.S.W., B.C.D.

Chapel Hill

As these comments suggest, certainty in the pervasiveness of ritual abuse extended well beyond those therapists directly involved in the Little Rascals case.

Did Ann Earle, a board member of the International Council on Cultism and Ritual Trauma, ever change her mind? If so, she seems not to have shared the news.

May 22, 2013

“One of the biggest strengths for the prosecution was that these children would go home every night to a parent or parents fully aligned with the prosecution theory. The story line would be reinforced at dinner, bathtime, playtime, bedtime….

“The children were, of course, separated from further contact with the accused day care workers, and by the time of trial their young memories of the actual person had been replaced by the fictional person, if they could remember who the perpetrators were supposed to be at all.

“At one point, a Little Rascals child pointed to a picture of the sheriff as one of the defendants; this identification, of course, was selectively ignored.”

– From “The Metanarrative of Suspicion in Late Twentieth-Century America” by Sandra Baringer (2004)

Edenton’s mayor was also among the initially accused, who numbered either 20, 24 or “dozens,” depending on the source. The inevitable question: How did prosecutors come to choose the Edenton Seven? Who lucked out – and why?

March 6, 2013

Anthony “Tony” Oberschall, professor (now emeritus) of sociology at UNC Chapel Hill, wrote extensively – if not prominently – about the insanity of the Little Rascals case. How was Oberschall able to resist the storyline that seduced so many others?

“Before retiring from UNC in 2005,” he recalls, “I taught in universities for 40 years. One of my fields of writing and research concerned collective behavior – collective myths, false beliefs, rumors, how they originate and why they are believed.

“As the Little Rascals prosecution unfolded right before my eyes (actually, as reported in the News & Observer), it became obvious to me that this was but one more instance of moral panic, false beliefs and miscarriage of justice….”

Oberschall likens the prosecution narrative to “the widely believed Iraqi WMD story disseminated by the Bush administration in 2002. Unthinking acceptance of what the authorities are asserting, alas, happens all too often.”

In early 1993, Oberschall sent the N&O both an op-ed column and a response to a Dennis Rogers column, but neither appeared nor drew a response from the paper. (They have now been posted on the Bookshelf of Case Materials on this site.)

“At that point,” he says, “having been stonewalled, I decided to research Little Rascals in depth and wrote several times about it in scholarly publications in subsequent years.”

More about Oberschall’s research in Thursday’s post.