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….
Day-care cases rooted in ‘sense of powerlessness’?
Jan. 17, 2015
Q: Do you have a better understanding of why people act the way they do in certain situations?
A: ….Whenever the safety of children is perceived to be in question, we run the risk of responding with emotion rather than reason. Certainly in Salem (where three of her ancestors were accused witches) that was the case. And look at the so-called “satanic ritual abuse” pre-school phenomenon in the early 1980s, which is now seen to have been a tremendous miscarriage of justice. Calls for moderation are dismissed with the assertion that the children have to come first — which, of course, they should.
“But it’s also tempting to read these experiences as expressive of a deeper anxiety about childrearing in an uncertain world, with no guarantees of a good outcome. I feel that it comes from a sense of powerlessness that can’t be expressed elsewhere….”
– From an interview with Katherine Howe, author of “Conversion,” a novel based on a mysterious 2012 outbreak of tics and seizures among teenage girls in upstate New York, in the Daily News of Batavia, New York (Aug. 23, 2014)
This time, will NC Bar tell DAs to play fair?
April 20, 2016
“‘If prosecutors have an ethical duty to avoid wrongful convictions, then they should have some sort of ethical duty to remedy wrongful convictions,’ said attorney Brad Bannon of the North Carolina Bar’s ethics committee.
“He wants North Carolina to adopt a rule recommended by the American Bar Association, requiring prosecutors to come forward if they find ‘new, credible and material evidence’ that an innocent person is serving time. Thirteen states have adopted the post-conviction rule. North Carolina isn’t among them.
“The State Bar rejected the rule several years ago but recently appointed a committee to reconsider….”
– From “Rule targets prosecutors who don’t reveal innocence evidence” by Martha Waggoner of the Associated Press (April 16)
Given prosecutors’ disproportionate influence on the state bar, to even “reconsider” the disclosure rule suggests the recent stream of unbecoming publicity hasn’t gone unnoticed.
Skeptics not welcome where ‘awareness’ rules
Dec. 19, 2012
“Down with skepticism, up with awareness.”
– Button worn at a conference on “multiple personality disorder” (hat tip, religioustolerance.org)
Six words that say it all, from MPD to satanic ritual abuse to recovered memory therapy.
There’s plenty to be said for “awareness,” of course – just not as a euphemism for “gullibility.”
What happens to kids programmed with lies?
March 2, 2012
In 1995 John Money, professor emeritus of medical psychology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, asked:
“What happens to these kids who have been programmed to believe a delusion?…. What on earth are we doing to this generation of children who are carrying the lies for us?”
For those alleged child-victims who testified in day care abuse cases, the urge to forget and to stay silent must be strong indeed. Who wants to believe he was so misused by his own parents, not to mention by therapists and prosecutors? Who wants to summon the courage to look back at the ugly truth and to take it public?
One exception was Kyle Zirpolo, who came forward in 2005 to apologize for his role in the McMartin Pre-school case.