Dec. 7, 2011

H. P. Williams Jr. was district attorney during the Little Rascals trial. He now practices criminal defense law in Elizabeth City.

I called to ask whether he had changed his mind about the guilt of the Edenton Seven.

“I’m not in a position to talk about it,” he said.

Why is that? I asked.

“It’s just not a question I choose to answer.”

As I made another stab at continuing the conversation, he ended it: “Have a good day. Goodbye.”

Williams was 39 when the first charges were filed. Today he is in his early 60s. I held out hope that over the years he had reexamined his role in crushing the lives of seven innocent citizens, had suffered a few dark nights of the soul, had harbored an unspoken wish to make amends, had summoned the honesty and courage to break with the prosecutors’ code of silence when faced with the error of their convictions….

I was naive.

Aug. 9, 2013

“(One) area of uncertainty is the extent to which sexual knowledge is learned by young children through exposure to either explicit or sexually suggestive materials on television, video and movies. Studies indicate that children watch from 14 to 23 hours of television a week with the highest level among preschoolers. About a third of them do so without parental involvement in what they watch.”

– From “Evidence Issues and ‘Lessons’ from State v. Kelly: Litigation of Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse” by Jeffrey L. Miller and W. Michael Spivey, presented at the 6th annual North Carolina Criminal Evidence Seminar, UNC School of Law (April 16, 1993)

Among the “suggestive materials” that aired during the early days of the Little Rascals allegations: “Do You Know the Muffin Man?”

April 15, 2013

This from Detroit reader P. Karr:

“Raised by a mom who survived the Blitz of London, I was taught that fascism often appears at the hands of lawmakers and is then carried forth by the public at large – said public believing whatever convenient lie is crammed down its throat….

“The Edenton prosecutors’ refusal to apply reason was frightening. But not near as frightening as their hubris, their moral flogging of the accused and their trotting them out in order to inflame the public. They may as well have sewn gold stars on the shirts of the Edenton Seven….

“I wonder if it ever occurs to the prosecutors that a refusal to apologize – indeed, to even question if they may have been wrong – is the hallmark of the sociopath.

“Something tells me not.”

Sept. 9, 2013

“According to court records, one of the state-recommended therapists, Judith Abbott, showed a five-year-old girl drawings of satanic symbols (a horned mask, inverted crosses and a peace symbol described on the drawing as the ‘Cross of Nero’) in an effort to uncover instances of devil worship. ‘Mr. Bob’ was wearing one of those, the child said, according to a note Abbott wrote on the drawing of the mask.

“The same child had begun her therapy complaining that Mr. Bob gave hard spankings; after biweekly sessions for six months she was ‘remembering,’ according to Abbott’s typed therapy notes, ‘oral penetration by a penis, vaginal penetration by a brown felt-tipped pen and witnessing the murder of human babies.’

“Abbott explains the delay in eliciting this material by saying that the children had been terrified into silence. ‘When you break down the child, you own their spirit.’ she says. ‘It’s like Helter Skelter, Charles Manson.’ ”

– From “The Demons of Edenton” by Lisa Scheer and Edward Cone in Elle magazine (November 1993) Download article here

A proven effective way to “break down the child”: Subject her to six months of Abbott’s biweekly “therapy” sessions.