Oct. 2, 2013

“…It’s understandable that this week’s conviction of former day-care center owner Robert Fulton Kelly Jr. in Farmville, N.C., is being hailed as a breakthrough…. The conviction  increases public awareness of child abuse, serves notice that children should be taken seriously when they show signs of abuse, and calls attention to improved methods of handling such prosecutions.

“Since another long and costly child abuse case at a California day-care center nearly a decade ago that ended less conclusively than the one in North Carolina, prosecutors have learned much. They have learned how to question children without prompting them, have developed better investigative methods, and have improved the coordination between different agencies.

“But that’s not enough. Parents need to be more alert to detecting possible child abuse and more careful about picking safe, responsible day care centers. Despite this week’s conviction… it would be wrong and unfair to conclude that many day-care workers are degenerates.”

– From “How to Guard Against Child Abuse” in the Deseret News of Salt Lake City (April 25 1992)

During the era of day-care ritual-abuse allegations, most newspaper editorials managed to maintain at least a modicum of skepticism. Not this one – unless you count the Deseret News’ acknowledging a modicum of doubt “that many day-care workers are degenerates.”

Jan. 25, 2013

“With regard to recovered memories, ritual abuse charges and multiple personalities, the tide seems to have turned. Courts are continuing to reverse decisions…The Edenton Seven have been released from prison…. Yet many of these people’s lives have been wrecked by false allegations….

“If, as some polls claim, millions of Americans believe in alien abduction, we have a long way still to go before credulity, superstition and hysterical epidemics are on the wane…”

– From “Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media” by Elaine Showalter (1998)

Dec. 16, 2015

On this day 25 years ago: Bonds for Little Rascals employees Robin Byrum and Dawn Wilson are reduced to a still excessive $200,000 – Byrum’s from $500,000, Wilson’s from $880,000.

Byrum will be released four days later, Wilson not for eight weeks.

Because she went to trial and the jury returned a guilty verdict (eventually overturned), Wilson’s story is much better known.

But Byrum suffered her own coercive torture at the hands of prosecutors before charges were dropped in 1996.

Nineteen years old when she was arrested in January 1990, she spent almost a year in jail, leaving her 7-month-old baby in the care of her husband. Had she agreed to testify against Bob Kelly, she could have walked out a free woman – and mother.

In “Innocence Lost: The Plea” (1997), Byrum explained why she had been tempted by but repeatedly refused the prosecutors’ deal:

“…. 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.”

Jan. 20, 2014

“Eighteen months ago I petitioned Attorney General Roy Cooper to issue a statement of innocence for the Edenton Seven.

“ ‘In 2001 Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift signed a resolution proclaiming the innocence of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials. In time, such victims of the ritual-abuse day-care panic as the Edenton Seven will surely receive similar exoneration. Why not now? Why not in North Carolina? This is an opportunity to demonstrate moral leadership on a national scale.’ ”

“Cooper has yet to respond.”

– From “Like Salem’s ‘witches,’ it’s time for NC to exonerate the Edenton Seven,”
my Jan. 19 op-ed column in the News & Observer (cached here) on the 25th anniversary of the first Little Rascals sexual abuse complaint.