June 14, 2015

Long after Bob Kelly reclaimed his freedom, he continued to fear that prosecutor Nancy Lamb was searching for yet another excuse to send him back to prison.

His apprehension was entirely reasonable.

In 1996, less than a year after the North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned Kelly’s conviction in the Little Rascals case, Lamb had had him indicted on a new round of sex charges, supposedly unrelated and transparently dubious.

According to correspondence I recently happened onto, a lawyer who attended a scheduling conference for Kelly’s upcoming trial was startled by Lamb’s unprofessional demeanor:

 “It was very obvious… that Nancy is on a personal mission to have Bob put behind bars for something. Her voice and her hands were noticeably shaking throughout the meeting and at times she wiped moisture from her eyes.

“I just don’t see how she can go through an entire trial without exposing to the jury this ‘witch hunt’ mentality that has consumed her….”

For whatever reason – she claimed, as usual, to be looking out for the ‘victim’ – Lamb’s decade-long pursuit of Bob Kelly ended anticlimactically. She dropped the last charges in 1999.

Sept. 22, 2020

A burst of sunshine in these grim times. A note arrived today from Little Rascals Day Care case exoneree Bob Kelly: “Today, 25 years ago, because of Mark Montgomery’s wonderfully written and argued brief, I walked into FREEDOM…. Thanks to him and people like you who have believed in us!”

June 16, 2016

“We thought “satanic ritual abuse” was a wholly debunked artifact of the 1980s, but apparently there are still a few ‘therapists’ out there dedicated to ‘helping survivors’….

“According to the Satanic Temple (who aren’t really “Satanists” so much as anti-theocracy advocates), the ‘therapists’ seem to be the ones who are desperately in need of help. And perhaps having their licensure revoked….

“The Satanic Temple’s ‘Grey Faction’ – ‘dedicated to combating pseudoscience and witch-hunting conspiracism with rational inquiry’ — has posted a petition at Change.org asking the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation to investigate counselor Neil Brick….

“Brick, head of something called ‘Survivorship,’ runs conferences where some seriously weird advice is given. For instance, you shouldn’t trust your spouse, since they may actually be an agent of the mind-control conspiracy. The petition asks Massachusetts authorities to investigate a number of ‘potentially dangerous’ and ‘radically paranoid, unsubstantiated, delusional beliefs’  pushed by Brick:

Neil Brick claims to believe that he was brainwashed to be an assassin for the Illuminati/Freemasons.

Neil Brick claims that, as part of his brainwashing by the Illuminati/Masonic conspiracy, he was programmed to rape and kill “without feeling.”

Neil Brick claims that he once murdered a man in an unreported incident in Europe.

Neil Brick holds regular conferences wherein his delusional beliefs are propagated to mental health consumers by him and his co-conspiracists.

At a very recent conference (May 2016), Neil Brick expressed concern that attendees could “trigger” mind-control programming by touching their faces. Neil Brick imposed a prohibition against face-touching and asked that people sit on their hands. (Keep in mind, this is a man who claims that his own mind-control programming impels him to rape and kill. The implication is clear.)

Neil Brick continues to propagate debunked and disregarded narratives of concealed occult crimes from the height of the “Satanic Panic.”

Neil Brick demonstrates a complete lack of understanding regarding cognitive/behavioral development, claiming to believe that Masons and/or Satanic cults torture fetuses so as to begin mind-controlling them at the earliest possible stage.

– From “Mental Health Professional Thinks Someone Programmed Him To Murder. Could It Be … Satan?” at Wonkette (June 14)

It took several requests, but in 2012 the Charleston-based nonprofit Darkness to Light withdrew its approval of Brick’s Survivorship site.

Nov. 8, 2014

“In the summer of 1989, I accepted my first job at a daily paper when The Daily Advance hired me to cover a two-county beat – Chowan and Perquimans. When I arrived, Bob Kelly had just been arrested and charged in about a dozen cases. My editor told me about it, almost in passing, and said, ‘You might want to keep an eye on it.’ I did, and for the next two years it consumed my life.

“I was 24 years old with a wife of two years and no children. I had no experience reporting on police and courts and was very naive as to how the system worked. As the case expanded I became convinced of the defendants’ guilt. Their lawyers wouldn’t let them talk and they were hard to reach in jail. Prosecutors were also tight-lipped, but some of the parents couldn’t stay that way.

“For two years all I had to go on were the stories of parents and what I believed to be a mountain of evidence in the hands of prosecutors. Shortly before Bob’s trial began, three important things happened. I finally got to interview two of the defendants (Robin Byrum and Scott Privott). Their stories were very convincing and I was no longer certain of their guilt. I was also promoted to an editing position and was no longer actively reporting on the case. I was in charge of the reporters who would. Also at this time the ‘Frontline’ show came out, pretty much blowing the lid off the prosecution’s case.

“As Bob Kelly’s trial unfolded, I found that the prosecution had little to no evidence. My faith in the case was weakened and I was surprised when Bob was convicted. Then another defendant (Dawn Wilson) fell and Bob’s wife Betsy Kelly pleaded no contest. That upset me because I was convinced she was innocent and I wanted her to fight and prove it.

“At this point in my life, I had become a parent and soon my first marriage would end. I returned home to Colorado but continued to follow the case from afar. I was happy when the convictions were overthrown and the other charges dropped. As a parent I could now see and understand that what was normal childhood behavior was being grossly misinterpreted as signs of child sex abuse.

“In hindsight, I feel bad for everyone involved in the case. Both sides went through hell. Most of all, though, I feel for the children. Their lives were altered and family and community dynamics changed by forces beyond their control and beyond reason.”

– Joe Southern, recalling his experience covering the Little Rascals case for the Elizabeth City Daily Advance

This 1991 piece, reprinted in a Del Rio, Texas, paper, seems to be reporter Southern’s lone Little Rascals story to survive online. He is now managing editor of The Sealy News in Sealy, Texas.

More recently, the Daily Advance has shown far less interest in the case – well, none, actually – or in Nancy Lamb’s responsibility for pursuing and prolonging it.