Dec. 4, 2015

“Hertford, N.C. – Three children who attended Little Rascals Day Care Center behaved strangely in kindergarten, a teacher testified Wednesday in the sex abuse trial of Dawn Wilson.

“Lisa Leary said one girl who attended the day care in Edenton refused to take a nap the year after Little Rascals closed. She also cried and wet her pants when she saw Elizabeth Kelly in a hall, she said.

“Another girl had to be separated from a boy after she mimicked a sex act with him during class, Leary said.
“A third child ‘did not want anyone to touch him’ and was concerned about fire, she said….”

– From “Kindergarten teacher testifies in Rascals trial” from the Associated Press (Dec. 3, 1992)

Although Dawn Wilson’s prosecutors never let up in their pursuit of the mythical “coherent package” of behaviors attributable to child sexual abuse, the questioning of this witness wandered even further into the weeds than usual. As the AP added dryly:

“On cross-examination by defense attorney Edward Simmons, the teacher said the children did not mention Wilson.”

April 29, 2017

Robin Byrum, not long out of high school and pregnant with her first child, went to work at Little Rascals Day Care Center in September 1988. A year later she was in prison under $500,000 bond, charged with 23 counts of child sex abuse. Prosecutors had no credible evidence against her, but they were betting the youngest defendant would implicate Bob Kelly and the others accused.

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she recalls today in her first interview since charges finally were dropped against her in 1996. “They thought I would tell on the others. That was the only reason I was swept up.”

Now 15 years into her second marriage, she lives in Eastern North Carolina. For her privacy I’m not mentioning her town or married name. “I’ve gone on with my life. It’s turned out well, in spite of all that….”

——-

After months of sporadic questioning she was arrested in January 1990.  “Three men from the SBI came to my mother’s house. It was so frightening. They intimidated me. One of them put his foot up on the table and I could see the gun in his ankle holster. He said, ‘I’d hate to see you taken away from that child.’

“Then we went to the police station in Edenton. [SBI agent] Kevin McGinnis said he would give me one more chance to talk. I could hear my baby crying in the next room. When I told him again I didn’t know anything, he was so angry he kicked the desk across the room.”

Along with Betsy Kelly and Dawn Wilson, she was put in a cell in women’s prison in Raleigh. “I was three hours from my only family in North Carolina. Strip-searched before and after every visit.

“They put another prisoner in there with us, a snitch, thinking she could get us to talk. But we had nothing to tell….. One day they even tossed our cell, looking for ‘satanic’ passages marked in our Bibles.”

As the months passed, prosecutors offered Byrum ever more tempting plea deals. In a particularly poignant moment in “Innocence Lost: The Plea” (1997) she explains to Ofra Bikel why she had even turned down a deal offering no active time, but an admission of guilt: “‘That would mean knowing I would not ever have to be separated from my child again. But then I’d have to live with the rest of my life that I [said I] did something when I didn’t do it.’”

In 1990, bond was reduced to a still absurd $200,000 and her grandparents and two aunts in Kentucky managed to pay in time to get her home for Christmas.

Today Byrum, 46, works in health information management. “My office manager knew about the case, but the doctors hadn’t put two and two together until they went to your site. One of them shook his head and said, ‘How did seven people go to prison on something completely unfounded?’ Well, I’m still baffled too….

“How could anyone believe all these things happened? We were a block from downtown, in a building with huge windows and no curtains. Parents walked their 2- and 3-year-olds there, and they dropped by all the time….

“Didn’t a light bulb ever once come on that made somebody use their common sense?”

Oct. 29, 2015

“You have to be … inventive to brand yourself as a Halloween capital – extending a one-night affair into a monthlong celebration and inviting hundreds of thousands of visitors into your streets – when for centuries you were known as the community that put innocents to death for witchcraft. How did Salem, Mass., repackage a tragedy as a holiday, appointing itself ‘Witch City’ in the process?…

“About 200 years after the trials, a Salem silversmith issued a souvenir spoon, featuring a witch holding a broomstick. Other mementos followed. It was difficult to hit the right note: The Salem-based Parker Brothers company issued, then quickly discontinued, a witchcraft card game…. When Arthur Miller visited Salem in 1952, he discovered the subject was taboo….

“Meanwhile the city fell on hard times…. As if by magic, a different kind of enchantment arrived in the form of the ABC sitcom, ‘Bewitched.’ It seemed that an ancestor of Samantha, the main character, had been convicted of witchcraft during the trials….

“In Samantha’s wake, Salem recast its inglorious past, or at least some version of it…. The city transmuted its secret shame into its saving grace. In 1982 it introduced ‘Haunted Happenings,’ later extending the holiday into a four-week festival. ‘Salem owns Halloween like the North Pole owns Christmas,’ The Boston Globe declared….  Halloween is to some extent year-round in Salem, where you might well bump into a goblin in a sandwich shop in July.

“Three hundred years after the trials, Salem unveiled an elegant, understated memorial to the victims. Three hundred and thirteen years after the trials, it unveiled a gleaming statue of the ‘Bewitched’ star, Elizabeth Montgomery, on a broom. Not everyone liked the idea: A former historic district commissioner clucked that one might as well plant a likeness of Colonel Klink at Auschwitz. But the 1992 memorial was arguably not itself possible without ‘Bewitched.’ It isn’t easy to commemorate an atrocity. ABC’s domestic goddess had both laundered and folded the history….”

 – From “First, Kill the Witches. Then, Celebrate Them.” by Stacy Schiff in the New York Times (Oct. 24)

Edenton may lack the springboard of a popular sitcom, but this 1993 letter writer foresaw the tourism potential of remembering the Little Rascals case.  Proposals for a statue – or a spoon – anyone?

Feb. 2, 2018

“In August 1983 [Manhattan Beach, Calif., police chief Harry] Kuhlmeyer was presented with the McMartin Preschool case. Therapists and medical doctors had identified dozens of McMartin children as sexual abuse victims. Raymond Buckey, the sole male teacher at the preschool owned by his grandmother Virginia McMartin, was the primary suspect….

“Parents demanded Buckey’s immediate arrest, but Kuhlmeyer refused. His detectives could find no corroborating evidence.

“ ‘Why hadn’t any of the suspects copped a plea, why no mea culpas, no suicides? No one got drunk and bared his soul. If everything the kids said happened, it looked like the perfect crime. Even the Mafia has snitches,’ Kuhlmeyer said.

“The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office… drew up an arrest complaint about Buckey, but Kuhlmeyer refused to sign it. [The DA took the case to the grand jury, which routinely rubber stamps indictment requests.]

“Kuhlmeyer’s unpopular stance was vindicated seven years and $15 million in court costs later when two McMartin trials ended with no convictions.”

– From “Police chief during McMartin case refused to charge abuse suspects” by Kevin Cody in Easy Reader News (Jan. 31)

No such doubt, by either police or prosecutors, slowed the rush to put the Edenton Seven behind bars. The result, of course, was a disaster of McMartin dimensions.

Chief Kuhlmeyer died Jan. 12 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 94.