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….
Ex-D.A. ‘not in a position to talk about it’
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.
‘Is it not plain that people had frightened their children?’
Dec. 21, 2011
“Is it not plain that the people had frightened their children with so many tales that they could not sleep without dreaming of the devil, and then made the poor women of the town confess what the children said of them?”
– From Francis Hutchinson’s “Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft” (1718) describing the 1669 “seduction” of 300 children in Mora, Sweden, which resulted in the burning of 85 “witnesses” (cited in “Victims of Memory” by Mark Pendergrast)
The ugly truth about ‘Nancy Lamb’s state of mind’
March 14, 2012
“Prosecutor Nancy Lamb practiced a little ‘voodoo’ psychology by telling the jury that when Dawn Wilson held and played with her child during breaks in the trial, it wasn’t because she loved the child – it was all a show for the benefit of the jury.
“No psychologist could have accurately reported on the state of mind or the motives of Wilson when she played with her child. However, had a psychologist known that Wilson had been offered a plea bargain which included no jail time if she pointed the finger at the others, and had told prosecutors to ‘Find yourselves another patsy,’ that psychologist might have known something about Nancy Lamb’s state of mind when she made those statements.”
– From “Due Process Is Good Psychology,” article in
Michigan Lawyer Weekly by Michael G. Brock
Defending this smear, one of many, Lamb said Wilson was presenting herself as a good mother, and “We had to remove that mask.”
In 1995 the N.C. Court of Appeals overturned her conviction. And then of course the prosecutors rushed to apologize to Dawn Wilson for their disgraceful vilification.
Will a court pay attention?
April 13, 2021
If I had harbored even an iota of doubt about Junior Chandler’s innocence, it would’ve been vaporized by the podcast episode below.
Most dramatically, the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic’s meticulously assembled “Impossibility Exhibit” demonstrates that Junior was nowhere near the scene of his imaginary crimes….
But is the court paying attention?