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….
For Junior Chandler, yet another long shot
Jan. 14, 2013
Junior Chandler’s prospects for at last walking out of Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution a free man remain bleak. After more than 25 years, he is probably the last still-imprisoned victim of the multiple-victim, multiple-offender ritual-abuse day-care panic.
When the North Carolina Supreme Court arbitrarily and tortuously rejected Junior’s appeal, it wrote finis to his options within the system.
Now, however, appellate lawyer Mark Montgomery has referred the case to North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm that represents inmates whose convictions exhibit significant flaws – a category that clearly includes Junior’s.
Mary Pollard, NCPLS executive director, has only begun to examine the file. “The problem with Mr. Chandler’s case,” she says, “is that he has already had a post-conviction review, which could severely constrain what we can do.”
After Junior submits a formal request for consideration, she expects to make a decision within 90 days on whether to pursue the case.
Charles Manson set stage for fear of hippies, then of witches
Dec. 5, 2017
“The Manson Family’s ritualistic murders in 1969 triggered the ini4al stages of na4onal cult hysteria….
“Manson made hippies scary for awhile, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that ’70s horror movies featuring hooded devil covens, witches and the occult emerged shortly after he was convicted. Manson and his apostles triggered a frenzy pertaining to cults that would reach ridiculous new heights in the ‘80s with the ‘satanic ritual abuse’ allegations, which inspired their own exploitation movies as well….”
— From “How Exploitation Movies Exploited Charles Manson and Hippie Hysteria”
by Kieran Fisher at “Film School Rejects” (Nov. 25)
Embarrassed prosecutors, where are you?
April 16, 2016
“To many in the criminal justice system, it is now a source of embarrassment that there was ever a time when police and prosecutors were convinced that bands of Satanists had infiltrated the nation’s day care centers in order to abuse young children. Yet in the (Fran and Dan Keller case), which I investigated for the Austin Chronicle back in 2009, I was startled to hear both a veteran cop and a prosecutor say they still believed in even the most absurd of the children’s allegations….
– From “Convicted of a Crime That Never Happened: Why Won’t Texas Exonerate Fran and Dan Keller?” by Jordan Smith at the Intercept (April 8)
The reign of fantasy as therapy, recalled in a single chart
May 3, 2014
As I’ve noted before, the Google Ngram Viewer mines a database of more than 5 million books to track word and phrase frequencies over time.
Too bad it abruptly ends at 2008, but the graph above still plots clearly the rise and fall of not only “(satanic) ritual abuse” but also two other examples of the 20th century’s most misguided ideas.
Let’s hope their decline continues uninterrupted.