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….
If anyone deserves pardon, why not Edenton Seven?
May 30, 2012
Is the case for pardoning the Wilmington 10 any more compelling than that for pardoning the Edenton Seven?
As the N&O’s Bruce Siceloff points out, “Somebody firebombed Mike’s Grocery, a white-owned store in a black Wilmington neighborhood, during three days of racial violence in February 1971. When firefighters and police came to put out the blaze, somebody fired shots at them.”
In Edenton, by contrast, no crime was committed, making exoneration all the more challenging: There’s no alternative “somebody” to point to.
Death noted: Little Rascals judge Marsh McLelland
April 13, 2015
D. Marsh McLelland, judge in the trials of Little Rascals defendants Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson, died last month in Burlington. He was 94.
This laudatory obituary in the Greensboro News & Record barely mentions the most consequential case in McLelland’s career – “He was brought out of retirement by the state’s chief justice to hear the Little Rascals Day Care child sex abuse case….” – and this one in the Burlington Times-News mentions it not at all.
Had McLelland stayed retired, the prosecution of the Edenton Seven might well have been derailed early on.
The judge originally assigned to the case, L. Bradford Tillery, stepped down under pressure from Deputy Attorney General Bill Hart. Mark Montgomery, Bob Kelly’s appellate attorney, explains why:
“Hart did not like the way Tillery was handling the case. The final straw was when Tillery ordered Hart to turn over the State’s interviews of those kids who were not the subject of indictments. He did not order them given to the defense, as he should have done, but Tillery was going to look through them himself. If he had, he would have seen that most of the kids at the day care, including Hart’s adoptive daughter, had said nothing happened and the jury would have heard about that.
“To prevent that, Hart filed motions accusing Tillery of being biased against the State. Rather than punishing Hart, Tillery took himself out of the case to avoid any appearance of partiality. Enter McLelland.
“Because Tillery had already ordered the interviews turned over to the court, that was a done deal. But McLelland never looked at them. I stumbled across them in the exhibit room of the courthouse and informed the Court of Appeals in my brief. The failure of the State to turn over to the defense the interviews of kids who said nothing happened was one of the grounds for a new trial for Bob.”
Tillery clearly was stung by Hart’s ploy: “I have served as a judge of Superior Court for over 20 years, and I never found it necessary to take such a step…. Neither have I ever been made to feel before that one side or the other considered me to be not only an adversary but also fair game …. for reckless assertions.”
If only Tillery had responded not by resigning but by sanctioning Hart for withholding evidence.
Did jurors really believe ‘poop in the spaghetti’?
Jan. 25, 2015
Q: You said that Mr. Bob made spaghetti at the day care…. Now, when did Mr. Bob say that there was poop in the spaghetti?
A: After we, um, ate it.
Q: All right. Did – did you ever have to eat poop at the day care?
A: No.
Q: Okay. Did anybody try and make you eat poop at the day care?
A: Yes.
Q: Who?
A: Mr. Bob.
Q: Tell me about it.
A: I don’t remember it.
Q: You don’t remember it?
A: No.
Q: Well, how do you know Mr. Bob tried to do it?
A: What?
Q: Did somebody tell you about it?
A: No.
Q: Okay. Well, then tell me how Mr. Bob tried to make you eat poop.
A: Um, he told me, um, to eat it.
Q: Okay. Where was it?
A: I forgot.
Q: You forgot. Well, was it in Ms. Shelly’s room?
A: No.
Q: Was it in the kitchen?
A: Yes.
Q: Okay. Well, did he make other kids eat poop while you were there?
A: Yes.
Q: Okay. Well, um, what happened when they ate it?
A: I don’t know.
– From defense attorney Jeffrey Miller’s cross-examination of a child witness in the trial of Bob Kelly
This exchange represents only a tiny fraction of the 7-year-old girl’s testimony, which stretched over two days and included similarly incoherent references to Kelly and other defendants having raped her, urinated in her mouth, threatened to kill her parents, sodomized her with pencils and sewing needles, taken her on boat and truck rides, forced her to witness the killing and burial of babies and small animals…..
How funny and trivial such childish imaginings would seem, if only the jury’s gullibility hadn’t sent Kelly to prison for six years. “The children were convincing,” insisted rogue juror Dennis T. Ray.
Nancy Lamb has an explanation for everything
June 29, 2012
“One month after drawing national attention when she dismissed final charges involving the children at the day-care center, (Nancy Lamb) clings to her belief that Robert Kelly is a child molester….
“Still, she admits it’s not easy to explain why none of the defendants have turned against each other, even though they were offered deals by her office.
“ ‘You did have kind of a group dynamic going on where they did hang around together and support each other and encourage each other to hang tough,’ Lamb said.”
– From the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, July 2, 1997