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.

 

On Facebook

Comments Box SVG iconsUsed for the like, share, comment, and reaction icons
Cover for Little Rascals Day Care Case
307
Little Rascals Day Care Case

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.

Load more
 

Click for earlier Facebook posts archived on this site

Click to go to

 

 

 

 

Today’s random selection from the Little Rascals Day Care archives….

 

Parents ill-prepared to practice psychology

Nov. 28, 2011

111128Ritual“The Little Rascals case offers a trove of testimony illustrating how immersion into the popular psychology of sexual abuse gave parent-experts the terms and concepts to retrospectively interpret their children’s behaviors and emotions, and to do so with the ring of authority….

“One mother testified that once she had learned the psychology of sexual abuse, she realized her child’s denial that anything untoward had happened at the day care center actually was a sign that he had been sexually abused.”

– From “The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic” by Mary De Young (2004)

‘I heard a so-called expert describe vast networks of these cults’

Gerritsen

Oct. 15, 2017

“Remember, [this fictional child sex abuse trial] happened during an odd time in criminal justice, when the public was convinced there were satanic cults all over the country.

“I attended a forensic psychology conference in the early ’90s, and I heard a so-called expert describe vast networks of these cults abusing children and even sacrificing babies. She claimed that a quarter of her patients were survivors of ritual abuse.

“All around the country there were criminal trials going on…. Unfortunately, many weren’t based on facts but on fear and superstition.”

–  Dr. Lawrence Zucker, a character in “I Know a Secret,” the latest Rizzoli and Isles thriller from Tess Gerritsen 

That conference sure sounds like the actual one at Kill Devil Hills that preceded Bob Kelly’s arrest by just months.

And the “so-called expert”? Well, here’s how Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker described Ann Wolbert Burgess in 2001 in “Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a  Modern American Witch Hunt”: “promoter of the use of children’s drawings to diagnose sexual abuse, developer of the idea of the sex ring, participant in developing the case that imprisoned the Amirault family and currently a researcher into the traumatic aftereffects of ritual abuse.”

LRDCC20

Nifong had sympathizer in H.P. Williams

Dec. 30, 2011

“As the May 2 (2006) Democratic primary nears, (Duke lacrosse prosecutor Mike) Nifong has gotten an earful from his two opponents….

“ ‘I feel for him; no matter what he does, he can’t win,’ said Elizabeth City lawyer H.P. Williams, a former district attorney for 16 years who in the early 1990s prosecuted the high-profile sexual abuse case against the owner of the Little Rascals Day Care…

“ ‘I felt as a prosecutor that anything I didn’t say, I didn’t have to take back. So it all goes back to my No. 1 philosophy: “You have the right to remain silent.” ’ ”

–  H.P. Williams, sharing with Mike Nifong his “No. 1 philosophy”
(The Charlotte Observer, April 17, 2006)

Whatever the shortcomings of the Little Rascals prosecutors, excessive openness wasn’t among them. In fact, their entire case depended on withholding any verbatim record of how therapists extracted accusations from the supposed child-victims.

Williams most recently called on his right to remain silent when I asked whether he might have changed his mind about the defendants’ guilt.