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….
Prosecutors followed playbook from 16th century
Nov. 4, 2011
“A mere suspicion of witchcraft justifies the immediate arrest and torture of the suspected person….
“A prisoner may be promised immunity or reduced punishment if he accuses his accomplices.”
– From “On the Demon-Mania of Witches” by Jean Bodin, French judge (1580)
For Betsy Kelly’s sister, a chillingly close call
July 26, 2013
Rereading appellate defender Mark Montgomery’s thunderously compelling brief on behalf of Bob Kelly always delivers something I had either passed over earlier or forgotten. This time it was that
“(Jimmy) and Nancy Smith also declined to have their son Judson evaluated by one of the four therapists who saw the other children. By the time of trial, both Mr. and Ms. Smith had been accused by several children as having participated in the abuse. (One of the child-witnesses) said of Nancy Smith, ‘She’s Miss Betsy’s sister, so she must be mean.’ ”
The Smiths’ close call highlights once again the terrible randomness of the Little Rascals prosecutors’ accusation process.
How challenging the prosecutors’ decision-making must have been: Which child-witness had been adequately manipulated, and which couldn’t be counted on to earnestly describe the sharks, the butcher knives and the dead babies? Which innocent adult was vulnerable, and which might strike jurors as just too unlikely a serial ritual-abuser?
Nancy Smith (Barrow) recalls today that “I had NO idea I had been accused until working with (defense attorneys) Mike Spivey and Jeff Miller for Bob’s trial. I happened to read some notes from police interviews and saw my name more than once….
“No member of my family – mother, father, Laura, Leslie, or Judson – was ever interviewed by police or prosecutors. Jimmy and I talked with Brenda Toppin one afternoon in her office. She only wanted to know about the state of Bob and Betsy’s marriage.”
How to get attention: Why, ‘It’s getting worse every year’
Nov. 21, 2012
“The child abuse field has always been one that felt like there was not enough public policy attention, so the narrative reflected that: It’s at crisis proportions; it’s getting worse every year; it’s an epidemic….”
– Mark Chaffin, professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Dr. Chaffin’s observation wasn’t specific to the ritual sex abuse era, but he sure captures its ever-more-breathless conjuring of villains and victims.
Claims were extraordinary, but evidence wasn’t
July 22, 2013
“Precisely because of human fallibility, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Now, I know that (alien-abduction theorist) Budd Hopkins responds that extraordinary claims require extraordinary investigations. And I have two kinds of responses to that.
“There is a claim that a brontosaurus is tramping through the jungles today in the Republic of Congo. Should a massive expedition be mounted with government funds to find it, or it is so implausible as not to be worth serious sustained systematic attention?
“My second point is that to the extent that extraordinary claims require extraordinary investigations, those investigations must be true to the spirit of science. And that means highly skeptical, demanding, rigorous standards of evidence. There’s not a hint of that from alien abduction enthusiasts.”
– From “Carl Sagan on Alien Abduction” on NOVA (Feb. 27, 1996)
I’m just trying to imagine the Little Rascals prosecutors and therapists conferring after a long day of bullying 3-year-olds and asking themselves whether their investigations had been “true to the spirit of science.”