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….
‘Overzealous intervenors’ muddy waters in abuse cases
April 13, 2012
“A decade-long investigation by the FBI has found no evidence linking child abuse with organized satanic cults.
“In a recent report by the agency, Special Agent Kenneth Lanning warns about the influence of ‘overzealous intervenors,’ such as therapists and parents, ‘who may be affected by their zeal to uncover child sexual abuse, satanic activity, conspiracies.’ Their influence can contaminate a case so much that no one will ever determine what, if anything, really happened….”
– From the San Diego Union-Tribune (December 27, 1992)
‘We’ve learned a lot….’ (Too bad it took so long)
March 30, 2012
Kee MacFarlane is the notorious therapist who led the ritual abuse scare of the late 1980s (and pioneered the misuse of anatomically correct dolls in interviewing children). In just four months MacFarlane diagnosed more than 360 children at the McMartin Pre-School as abused.
In 2005 she declined to be interviewed by CNN but sent a statement:
“We’ve learned a lot in 20 years about how to interview children for forensic purposes and how to manage complex cases such as this one. It would be a sad commentary if we didn’t learn from such painful experience.”
Not much of a mea culpa – but still more than anyone connected with the Little Rascals prosecution has managed.
Who do that voodoo? Why, prosecution’s ‘experts’
Nov. 14, 2012
“Prosecutors building these high-profile cases well understood the problems posed by the strange charges and the fantasy-riddled narratives of the child plaintiffs. How could they make credible to jurors the extraordinary prowess of defendants who could assault whole classes of preschoolers daily, dressing and undressing 20 or more, all accomplished in a half hour’s time, in a busy school, with no one noticing, no child ever sent home with mismatched socks?…
“Jurors had to be given a reason that 4-year-olds could be raped with butcher knives that left them uninjured, could be tied naked to trees and raped in broad daylight….
“The state’s solution lay with their experts – witnesses who could explain and render such mysteries comprehensible.”
– From “No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness and other Terrors of Our Times” by Dorothy Rabinowitz (2003)
Ah, those invaluable mystery-solving experts – such as Eileen Treacy of the Kelly Michaels trial, Kee MacFarlane of McMartin and of course Mark “Where there’s smoke….” Everson of Little Rascals.
What would prosecutors have done without them? (Probably, a helluva lot less harm.)
‘Is it not plain that people had frightened their children?’
Dec. 21, 2011
“Is it not plain that the people had frightened their children with so many tales that they could not sleep without dreaming of the devil, and then made the poor women of the town confess what the children said of them?”
– From Francis Hutchinson’s “Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft” (1718) describing the 1669 “seduction” of 300 children in Mora, Sweden, which resulted in the burning of 85 “witnesses” (cited in “Victims of Memory” by Mark Pendergrast)