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….
‘We cannot give him back those years….’
May 29, 2016
“ ‘On behalf of the State of North Carolina, I apologize to Mr. (Edward Charles) McInnis for the 27 years he had to spend behind bars for crimes he did not commit,’ McCrory said in a statement announcing the pardon. ‘While we cannot give him back those years of his life, I wish him well as he resumes his life as a free man.’ ”
– From “NC Gov. McCrory pardons Scotland County man” by Anne Blythe in the News & Observer (May 19) (text cache)
Another DNA exoneration – thanks yet again, North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission – and this time both District Attorney Kristy Newton and Gov. McCrory acted expeditiously and humanely.
I look forward to seeing the governor extend such sentiments toward Junior Chandler, who has now spent more than 29 years behind bars.
Were tales any taller in Salem than in Edenton?
Dec, 4, 2016
“The testimony [in the Salem witch trials] is full of tall tales, unless you happen to believe – as one woman confessed, having vowed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – that she flew on a stick with her church deacon and two others to a satanic baptism, and that she had, the previous Monday, carried her minister’s specter through the air along with her, having earlier conferred in her orchard with a satanic cat….”
– From “The Witches: Salem, 1692” by Stacy Schiff (2015)
‘They constantly asked him the same thing over and over again….’
Jan. 12, 2018
“[Bob Kelly’s] defense contended that the children’s allegations were just the responses of suggestible youngsters eager to please the interrogators who were urging them to disclose abuse. [Interviewed in “Innocence Lost: The Verdict”,] one mother whose child did not disclose abuse is seen heaping scorn on the police and social services interrogation of her child:
” ‘They constantly asked him the same thing over and over again, and they would rephrase it…. They talked to him, it had to be an hour and a half or so before we interrupted and they wanted to continue talking to him. I would guess the same questions were asked five or six times.’
“This mother’s recollection is one of the few clues to the police methods in this case. Police and prosecutors declined to cooperate with ‘Frontline.’ All of the investigative notes and tapes were destroyed, and the only source material available at trial was after-the-fact summaries….”
– From “Justice Abuse? ‘Frontline’ Documentary Takes Hard Look At A Small-town Scandal” by Bart Mills in the Chicago Tribune (July 20, 1993)
Courts reluctantly turn to Little Rascals DA
May 27, 2014
“The state court system says it hired a local defense attorney to prosecute three murder suspects because the current district attorney had conflicts of interest in all three cases and no other prosecutors were available.
“The N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts hired H. P. Williams Jr. as a special prosecutor on March 27 after attempts to find a prosecutor from either the state Attorney General’s Office or another district attorney’s office failed….”
– From “Williams to prosecute 2 more murder cases” by William F. West in The (paywalled) Daily Advance (May 24)
Yes, that’s the same H.P. Williams Jr. who as district attorney prosecuted the Edenton Seven, who as an ostensible expert appeared at conferences on “satanic ritual abuse” alongside “cult cop” Robert J. Simandl and Civia Tamarkin of Believe the Children, who as a candidate for reelection received only 41 percent of the vote and who after returning to private practice emphatically declined to discuss the Little Rascals case.
Yes, that H.P. Williams Jr….