Rascals case in brief
In the beginning, in 1989, more than 90 children at the Little Rascals Day Care Center in Edenton, North Carolina, accused a total of 20 adults with 429 instances of sexual abuse over a three-year period. It may have all begun with one parent’s complaint about punishment given her child.
Among the alleged perpetrators: the sheriff and mayor. But prosecutors would charge only Robin Byrum, Darlene Harris, Elizabeth “Betsy” Kelly, Robert “Bob” Kelly, Willard Scott Privott, Shelley Stone and Dawn Wilson – the Edenton 7.
Along with sodomy and beatings, allegations included a baby killed with a handgun, a child being hung upside down from a tree and being set on fire and countless other fantastic incidents involving spaceships, hot air balloons, pirate ships and trained sharks.
By the time prosecutors dropped the last charges in 1997, Little Rascals had become North Carolina’s longest and most costly criminal trial. Prosecutors kept defendants jailed in hopes at least one would turn against their supposed co-conspirators. Remarkably, none did. Another shameful record: Five defendants had to wait longer to face their accusers in court than anyone else in North Carolina history.
Between 1991 and 1997, Ofra Bikel produced three extraordinary episodes on the Little Rascals case for the PBS series “Frontline.” Although “Innocence Lost” did not deter prosecutors, it exposed their tactics and fostered nationwide skepticism and dismay.
With each passing year, the absurdity of the Little Rascals charges has become more obvious. But no admission of error has ever come from prosecutors, police, interviewers or parents. This site is devoted to the issues raised by this case.
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Little Rascals Day Care Case
This Facebook page is an offshoot of littlerascalsdaycarecase.org, which addresses the wrongful prosecution of the Edenton Seven and other such victims.
Meanwhile in Edenton....
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Allies for our cause!
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The courts have a long history of capriciously pulling the rug out from under Junior's appeals, but maybe this time....
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Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….
‘A hard core of evil in the soul of humankind?’
Oct. 20, 2015
“(Richard Beck’s “We Believe the Children”) addresses only the question of why those events unfolded in the particular way that they did, at one particular moment – not why this hydralike form of communal social hysteria can be stamped out in one place only to rear another ugly head elsewhere.
“Perhaps there is no answer to that question – or, at least, no answer we want to hear. Politics, social mores, human psychology, a rye-eating fungus: all these submit calmly to our investigations. But a hard core of evil in the soul of humankind? That might be the real witchcraft, one we dare not examine too closely.”
– From “Trial and Error: Three centuries of American witch hunts” by Ruth Franklin in Harper’s Magazine (Oct. 17)
New York Times remembers McMartin case
March 12, 2014
“Really now, teachers chopped up animals, clubbed a horse to death with a baseball bat, sacrificed a baby in a church and made children drink the blood, dressed up as witches and flew in the air – and all this had been going on unnoticed for a good long while until a disturbed mother spoke up?”
– From “The Trial That Unleashed Hysteria Over Child Abuse” by Clyde Haberman in the New York Times (March 9, 2014)
Big thanks to Retro Report for its eye-reopening essay and 13-minute video recalling the seminal McMartin Preschool case. Also mentioned are Little Rascals and other “criminal cases of dubious provenance” from the moral panic.
Although the road to public exoneration for the Edenton Seven remains long and uncertain, this attention from the Times is welcome indeed.
Could we resolve to better next year?
Dec. 28, 2013
End-of-year grab bag from the wide world of justice delayed:
● Thanks to Professor P. S. Ruckman Jr. at Pardon Power for posting my comments on Andrew Junior Chandler.
● Two glimmers of light on misrepresented “genital scarring” and other examples of junk science – from Texas of all places!
● In New York a remorseful former judge testifies against his own verdict.
● Recently uploaded onto Vimeo by the Alfred I. duPont Awards: a three-minute, full-screen excerpt from “Innocence Lost”. (The complete series can be viewed from the “Innocence Lost” page of this website in small-screen format.)
● Gov. McCrory proves himself able to dispense clemency to LaMonte Armstrong – can he find it in his heart to be similarly just to the no less innocent Junior Chandler?
APSAC to victims of its ‘misguided ideas’: Drop dead
Oct. 26, 2016
Janet Rosenzweig, executive director of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, wasted no time kissing off my request that APSAC take responsibility for the damage done by its advocacy of the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care myth:
“On behalf of the Board of Directors of APSAC, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. APSAC does not have a position on this issue, and has no plans to take one at this time.”
In reality, APSAC has taken a position on the issue ever since its founding.
As noted in “Advances in Social and Organizational Psychology” by Donald A. Hantula (2006):
“APSAC was founded in 1985 as a professional group of therapists concerned that some people were skeptical regarding claims in the McMartin day care satanic abuse case. At the same meeting at which APSAC was formed for professionals, ‘Believe the Children’ was formed for parents of McMartin children…. Thus, from the start, APSAC has been an advocate of the reality of satanic and sexual abuse in day care….”
As stingingly acknowledged by prosecutor Paul J. Stern, the shared history of APSAC and the day-care panic is indisputable. Only one question remains: What now? Does APSAC really want its professionalism forever compromised by clinging to its perverse origin story?
Are its members in 2016 still wedded to the discredited concepts first promoted 30 years ago by Jon Conte, Kathleen Coulborn Faller, Kee MacFarlane, Ann Wolbert Burgess, Susan J. Kelley, Roland Summit, Mark Everson and Little Rascals prosecutor Nancy Lamb? Would Dr. Rosenzweig dare to ask the membership at large if it shares the board’s resistance to making amends?
