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….
‘Fear of closets’? Get that child to a therapist!
Oct. 22, 2012
In the Dark Ages of social science – the 1980s, give or take a few years — unfounded concepts were treated as received truth: satanic ritual abuse (later recast as sadistic ritual abuse), multiple personality disorder (later, dissociative identity disorder), repressed memory syndrome.
On what possible grounds did California clinical psychologist Catherine Gould determine that satanic ritual abuse was indicated by a child’s “Refusal to eat red or brown food” or “Fear of closets and small spaces” or “Preoccupation with cleanliness”? Did this crazy quilt of symptoms come to her in a hallucination.
Regardless, Gould’s list, widely photocopied, contributed to parental panics at day cares across the country. After all, she was “a licensed psychologist specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of adult and child victims of ritual abuse”!
So just how reliable an authority was Catherine Gould? Well, it was she who first claimed the Los Angeles County Ritual Abuse Task Force was being poisoned with diazinon.
Later, according to the Associated Press, “She said her blurred vision and failed memory weren’t psychosomatic, but she admitted she never visited a doctor to be tested for the pesticide.”
Refusal to eat red or brown food
Fear that food is poisoned
Bingeing, gorging, vomiting, anorexia
Problems Associated with Doctors
Fear of doctors
Fear of injections, blood tests
Fear of removing clothes
Toiletting/Bathroom Problems
Bathroom avoidance, toileting accidents
Preoccupation with cleanliness
Preoccupation with urine and feces
Ingestion of urine and feces
Family Problems
Fear of death of parents, siblings, pets
Separation anxiety
Avoidance of physical contact
Threatens or attacks parents, siblings
Sexual Problems
Age-inappropriate sexual knowledge
Fear of touch
Excessive masturbation
Sexually provocative behavior
Vaginal or anal pain
Relaxed anal sphincter,enlarged vaginal opening
Venereal disease
Emotional Problems
Rapid mood swings
Resistance to authority
Hyperactivity, poor attention span
Anxiety
Poor self-esteem
Withdrawal
Regression and babyish speech
Flat affect
Nightmares, night terrors
Learning disorders
Fear of closets and small spaces
Fear of being tied up, ties up others
Problems Associated with Colors
Fear of colors red and black
Preoccupation with color black
Problems Associated with Death
Fear of dying, preoccupation with death
Play and Peer Problems
Destroys toys
Death, mutilation, confinement themes in play
Inability to engage in fantasy play
Problems Associated with Supernatural
Fear of ghosts, monsters, witches, devils
Preoccupation with wands, spirits, magic potions, curses, crucifixes
Odd songs and chants
Preoccupation with occult symbols
Fear of attending church
Other Fears and Strange Beliefs
Imaginary friends
Fear of police, strangers, bad people
Fear of violent films
Fear of aggressive animals
Fear of cemeteries, mortuaries, churches
Fear of something foreign inside body, e.g. bomb, devil’s heart
Downloaded Oct. 22, 2012 from http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~kquach6/common.html
An encore for ritual abuse panic? ‘You can bet on it’
May 18, 2012
“Discredited child-sex rings like McMartin actually may not be a bogeyman of the past. Some parents, therapists and child-protection professionals continue to believe ritual sex abuse took place at McMartin preschool.
“ ‘In 10 to 15 years, there will be an attempt to rehabilitate the ritual abuse scare,’ says (James Wood, psychologist at the University of Texas El Paso). ‘You can bet on it.’ ”
– From “Who Was Abused?” by Maggie Jones in the New York Times (Sept. 19, 2004)
Excuses for denying exoneration (Salem version)
July 21, 2015
“When Massachusetts exonerated the Salem victims in 1710 it overlooked six women. They remained missing through the 1940s and 1950s as the commonwealth considered pardons but could not seem to make up its legislative mind.
“One lawyer appearing before a Senate committee objected to ‘fooling with history.’ Some legislators feared expensive suits for damages. Others hinted that a pardon might knock Salem’s witches from their tourist-bewitching brooms. As the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had not existed in 1692, it surely had no jurisdiction over a verdict of Massachusetts Bay.
“On Halloween 2001 – weeks after we began to wonder anew about unseen evils – Massachusetts pardoned the last of the Salem witches….”
– From “The Witches: Salem, 1692” by Stacy Schiff (due Oct. 27)
Tracey Cline, Mike Nifong and H.P. Williams
March 21, 2012
“In July 1993, (Tracey Cline) headed to the state’s northeast corner to work as a prosecutor in a cluster of counties near Elizabeth City. Her stint there was short-lived, just six months, and unremarkable, according to supervisors….
“ ‘I hated to see her leave….’ (former District Attorney H. P.) Williams said. ‘I would have given her a good recommendation.’ ’’
– From the News & Observer of Raleigh, February 19, 2012
Williams may have nothing to say on behalf of the innocent Little Rascals defendants, but he seems ever eager to speak well of Cline and Durham’s other epically unethical DA.