{"id":796,"date":"2013-01-28T16:52:41","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T16:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=796"},"modified":"2016-01-01T16:56:08","modified_gmt":"2016-01-01T16:56:08","slug":"edentons-history-was-no-defense-against-panic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=796","title":{"rendered":"Edenton’s history was no defense against panic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"130128Courthouse\"Jan. 28, 2013<\/p>\n

Manhattan Beach, California; Malden, Massachusetts; Christchurch, New Zealand; Maplewood, New Jersey; Sao Paulo, Brazil…. For more than a decade, unfounded allegations of day-care ritual abuse were breaking out all over the planet.<\/p>\n

But for sheer cultural anomaly it\u2019s hard to match the emergence of such a case in historic and pristine Edenton, North Carolina, not unreasonably billed as \u201cthe South\u2019s Prettiest Small Town<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edenton had made lots of headlines before Little Rascals, but almost none since the 1700s.<\/p>\n

Among the town\u2019s prominent residents: Joseph Hewes, signer of the Declaration of Independence; Hugh Williamson, signer of the Constitution; James Iredell, George Washington\u2019s youngest appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Penelope Barker hosted the Edenton Tea Party to protest British taxes (that\u2019s her waterfront house in the opening scene of \u201cInnocence Lost\u201d).<\/p>\n

Harriet Jacobs, author of \u201cIncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,\u201d was a native.<\/p>\n

You won\u2019t find a Walmart in Edenton (population 5,000 and slowly shrinking<\/a>), but its trove of civic treasures includes a\u00a01925 moviehouse<\/a>, a\u00a01939 baseball park<\/a>\u00a0and a\u00a01767 courthouse<\/a>\u00a0(above right), the state’s oldest.<\/p>\n

So why Edenton of all places? How did this charming, 300-year-old hamlet happen to offer all the essential ingredients for a world-class ritual-abuse panic? I wish I knew (and I wish Edenton did too).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jan. 28, 2013 Manhattan Beach, California; Malden, Massachusetts; Christchurch, New Zealand; Maplewood, New Jersey; Sao Paulo, Brazil…. For more than a decade, unfounded allegations of day-care ritual abuse were breaking out all over the planet. But for sheer cultural anomaly it\u2019s hard to match the emergence of such a case in historic and pristine Edenton, […]<\/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-796","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\/796","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=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":798,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}