{"id":2848,"date":"2017-04-29T16:12:54","date_gmt":"2017-04-29T16:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=2848"},"modified":"2017-04-29T16:15:25","modified_gmt":"2017-04-29T16:15:25","slug":"robin-byrum-youngest-of-edenton-seven-recalls-brutality-at-hands-of-prosecution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=2848","title":{"rendered":"Robin Byrum, youngest of Edenton Seven, recalls brutality at hands of prosecution"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Robin Byrum in 1997<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

April 29, 2017<\/p>\n

Robin Byrum<\/a>,\u00a0not long out of high school and pregnant with her first child, went to work at Little Rascals Day Care Center in September 1988. A year later she was in prison under $500,000 bond, charged with 23 counts of child sex abuse. Prosecutors had no credible evidence against her, but they were betting the youngest defendant would implicate Bob Kelly and the others accused.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the wrong place at the wrong time,\u201d she recalls today in her first interview since charges finally were dropped against her in 1996. \u201cThey thought I would tell on the others. That was the only reason I was swept up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now 15 years into her second marriage, she lives in Eastern North Carolina. For her privacy I\u2019m not mentioning her town or married name. \u201cI\u2019ve gone on with my life. It\u2019s turned out well, in spite of all that….\u201d<\/p>\n

——-<\/p>\n

After months of sporadic questioning she was arrested in January 1990.\u00a0 \u201cThree men from the SBI came to my mother\u2019s house. It was so frightening. They intimidated me. One of them put his foot up on the table and I could see the gun in his ankle holster. He said, \u2018I\u2019d hate to see you taken away from that child.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we went to the police station in Edenton. [SBI agent] Kevin McGinnis said he would give me one more chance to talk. I could hear my baby crying in the next room. When I told him again I didn\u2019t know anything, he was so angry he kicked the desk across the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with Betsy Kelly and Dawn Wilson, she was put in a cell in women\u2019s prison in Raleigh. \u201cI was three hours from my only family in North Carolina. Strip-searched before and after every visit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey put another prisoner in there with us, a snitch, thinking she could get us to talk. But we had nothing to tell….. One day they even tossed our cell, looking for \u2018satanic\u2019 passages marked in our Bibles.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the months passed, prosecutors offered Byrum ever more tempting plea deals. In a particularly poignant moment in “Innocence Lost: The Plea” (1997) she explains to Ofra Bikel why she had even turned down a deal offering no active time, but an admission of guilt: \u201c\u2018That would mean knowing I would not ever have to be separated from my child again. But then I’d have to live with the rest of my life that I [said I] did something when I didn’t do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1990, bond was reduced<\/a>\u00a0to a still absurd $200,000<\/a>\u00a0and her grandparents and two aunts in Kentucky managed to pay in time to get her home for Christmas.<\/p>\n

Today Byrum, 46, works in health information management. \u201cMy office manager knew about the case, but the doctors hadn\u2019t put two and two together until they went to your site. One of them shook his head and said, \u2018How did seven people go to prison on something completely unfounded?\u2019 Well, I\u2019m still baffled too….<\/p>\n

\u201cHow could anyone believe all these things happened? We were a block from downtown, in a building with huge windows and no curtains. Parents walked their 2- and 3-year-olds there, and they dropped by all the time….<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t a light bulb ever once come on that made somebody use their common sense?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LRDCC20\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 29, 2017 Robin Byrum,\u00a0not long out of high school and pregnant with her first child, went to work at Little Rascals Day Care Center in September 1988. A year later she was in prison under $500,000 bond, charged with 23 counts of child sex abuse. Prosecutors had no credible evidence against her, but they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2851,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2848\/revisions\/2851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}