Sept. 17, 2012

I don’t doubt that prosecutors asked themselves many questions during the course of the Little Rascals case. “Think it’s gonna rain tomorrow, Nancy?” Or maybe “You want anchovies on yours, Bill?”

On more relevant issues, however, they seem to have been remarkably incurious. For instance….

■ Why did none of the defendants in the state’s biggest sex-abuse case have any history of sex crimes?

■ When sex-abusers of children are almost always men, why were five of the Edenton Seven women?

■ Why was there a complete absence of physical evidence?

■ Why did none of the frequently cited child-porn photographs ever turn up?

■ At a day care where parents came and went often and unpredictably, why did not one adult ever report anything suspicious?

■ Why was every child seen by prosecution therapists determined to have been abused, but none of those seen by out-of-town therapists?

■ When criminal conspiracies almost always collapse at the first offer of a plea deal, why did none of these defendants agree to point a finger at the others?

■ Could it really be just coincidence that these allegations surfaced so soon after a day-care ritual-abuse seminar attended by the Edenton police officer who would lead the investigation?

For prosecutors to have raised such questions, of course, would risk recognizing their career-making case as a colossal sham. Better to stay blindered and to forge ahead….

Aug. 19, 2013

A brief visual aside, courtesy of the Google books Ngram Viewer:

However much frustration I feel in pursuing exoneration for the Edenton Seven – plenty! – I do take some reassurance in watching the ritual abuse moral panic slowly lose its hold on public discourse, as shown in the Ngram above or here.

March 1, 2021

I was surprised recently to notice a Facebook message from an elementary school teacher in Greenville, N.C.

Buddy Hyatt had grown up in Edenton and wanted to talk about the Little Rascals Day Care case. “It ripped apart many families and almost destroyed the town,” he wrote. “In 1989, when the accusations started, I was in first grade. But earlier I had attended Little Rascals. My parents had me and my younger brother checked over by an unbiased child psychiatrist in Greenville. After several sessions he reported that we had no indications of physical or sexual abuse.”

Buddy had multiple other windows on the case. ‘”My grandfather, Pete Manning, was editor and publisher of the Chowan Herald, and my dad was associate pastor and minister of music at Edenton Baptist.

“The Twiddys, the Kellys and Nancy Smith were all members of our church, as was [initial accuser] Jane Mabry Williams. This split the church right down the middle. Because the pastor and staff wouldn’t take sides, quite a few people got mad as fire. A good handful left. Some (especially those against the Kellys) spoke harshly and rudely to both my dad and grandmother.

“I feel most sorry for Bob and Betsy’s daughter, Laura. We had been in the same kindergarten class when the accusations started. My mom carpooled us. We did everything we could to be kind and remain friends with Laura and her family. I cannot imagine the pain and heartbreak they experienced.

“Lew, I know that’s a lot of information. Forgive me. I am happy to talk any time about the case or Little Rascals. The accusations and trial were a travesty and left so many people hurt and broken. No matter how much exoneration is given, the damage is already done.”

A few days passed before I heard from Buddy again: “Forgive me for being slow to respond. I happened to catch Covid, so the past week has been quite a struggle. Once I get through this (hopefully I’m on the tail end of it), we can plan to talk….”

Two weeks later Buddy Hyatt was dead. We never talked. I’m grateful for his big-hearted recollections and for his resolve to say more. RIP, Buddy.

April 3, 2013

In my fruitless attempt to extract a retraction from the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, I quoted only the abstract of “Sexual Abuse of Children in Day Care Centers” by Susan J. Kelley, Renee Brant and Jill Waterman.

But because the 1993 article continues to be cited in the literature – most recently in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry – it deserves a more detailed review.

Most offensive to me is the authors’ use of ostensibly sophisticated statistics. For example: “The mean number of different types of sexual acts per child ranged from 5.3 sexual acts per child in (Kathleen Coulborn) Faller’s (1988) sample to 6.6 different types of sexual abuse per child in Kelley’s (1989) study.”

Can’t you just picture the authors’ computers straining under the weight of all their meticulous research? In reality, of course, the “mean number of different types of sexual acts per child” was… zero.

And the anecdotes! What ever were Kelley, Brant and Waterman thinking as their fingers typed such unfounded claims as these:

• “Foreign objects used to penetrate children in day care center cases have included such items and pencils, needles, knives, scissors and crucifixes.”
• “Allegations of pornographic photographs and videos being taken of children in day care center cases sometimes surface…. Unfortunately, in very few cases have law enforcement officials been able to locate the pornography.”
• “Children who have been ritualistically abused describe participation in group ceremonies, use of chants and songs, adults dressed in costumes and masks, threats with supernatural powers….the sacrifice of animals, the ingestion of blood, feces and urine, and murders.”

Despite the authors’ unbridled certitude, they can’t help complaining that “One of the first complications in the evaluation of ritualistic abuse cases is the frequent disbelief and skepticism on the part of the professionals secondary to the bizarre and extreme nature of the allegations.”

“Complications,” indeed.