anonymous caller<\/a> who responded to my ad in the Elizabeth City Advance addressing children involved in the Little Rascals case.<\/p>\nThe caller reiterated her certainty that she had been sexually abused by Bob Kelly, but \u2013 to my shock \u2013 she expressed doubts about the degree of involvement of other defendants, especially the young women who worked at the day care.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t hold any grudges against them,\u201d she said. \u201cI think he made them do whatever they did \u2013 it wasn\u2019t on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why then would these women choose to stay imprisoned, when testifying against Bob Kelly would\u2019ve won them instant freedom?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were scared of him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Does that seem probable? Or even conceivable?<\/p>\n
Robin Byrum, 19 when she was arrested, spent almost a year in jail before her bond was reduced from $500,000 to $200,000. Meanwhile, her husband took care of their 7-month-old son.<\/p>\n
In \u201cInnocence Lost: The Plea\u201d (1997), Byrum explained why she had been tempted by but repeatedly refused the prosecutors\u2019 deal: \u201c…. I would not ever have to be separated from my child again. But then I\u2019d have to live with the rest of my life that I (said I) did something when I didn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jan. 25, 2012 I\u2019ve heard again from the anonymous caller who responded to my ad in the Elizabeth City Advance addressing children involved in the Little Rascals case. The caller reiterated her certainty that she had been sexually abused by Bob Kelly, but \u2013 to my shock \u2013 she expressed doubts about the degree of […]<\/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-354","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\/354","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=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}