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….
Echoes of Little Rascals in 2014 race for DA
July 15, 2014
Here’s the big picture from the latest campaign finance reports filed with the State Board of Elections:
Individual contributions to Nancy Lamb are almost double those to incumbent Andrew Womble ($29,821.54 to $15,571.80).
More provocative, however, are the details.
It’s not surprising that Lamb’s donors include such loyal Little Rascals alumnae as parents Jane Mabry ($50) and Lynne Layton ($250) and therapist Judith Abbott ($200).
But at least one member of the prosecutorial alliance seems to have defected: Yes, that’s Lamb’s former boss, H.P. Williams Jr., pitching in $250 to her opponent’s campaign.
Toppin’s interview notes: ‘Just a lot of extra paper’
Aug. 1, 2017
“In the McMartin case, the defense used videotapes of therapists’ interviews with the children to suggest that the idea of abuse had been implanted.
“[Ofra] Bikel says, ‘The authorities in North Carolina [in the Little Rascals case], who I know met with the McMartin prosecutors, learned from them that the therapists’ notes should just be summaries. They learned that if you want to win a case, it’s a bad idea to have tapes around.’
“The prosecution interviewer [Brenda Toppin] is shown testifying that she cannot say why her original interview notes were destroyed: ‘It’s just a lot of extra paper,’ she said.”
– From “Justice Abuse? ‘Frontline’ Documentary Takes Hard Look At A Small-town Scandal” by Bart Mills in the Chicago Tribune (July 20, 1993)
‘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)
Letters claiming wrongful conviction couldn’t be true – could they?
Feb. 22, 2017
“[When Rich Rosen, Theresa Newman and Jim Coleman began planning the state’s first innocence project], not everyone agreed their work was worth doing. To many… colleagues, in North Carolina and across the country, the letters they were reading were no more than acts of desperation: There was zero chance these inmates were innocent, only that they had nothing to lose by filing paperwork. The American criminal-justice system had always trivialized its own chances at convicting anyone wrongly, feeling certain – as lawyer Christine Mumma no longer could – that protections at trial made that outcome impossible….”
– From “A Justice Startup” by Benjamin Rachlin in “Innocent: The Fight Against Wrongful Convictions,” a Time special edition
Rachlin’s piece is excerpted from “Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption,” to be published in August.