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….
Why we could see another Little Rascals case
Oct. 12, 2011
In the digital age more than ever before, no bad idea ever dies. Consider (neo)Nazism, creationism and vaccine-caused autism.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, ritual sex abuse is still being promoted as a significant national peril.
The possibility of another episode of day-care hysteria – e.g., Little Rascals, McMartin, Fells Acres, Wee Care – has lessened but certainly not vanished. A repeat of history requires only an angry parent or two, an agenda-guided therapist and a fervid prosecutor.
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.
Did prosecutors sell out for name recognition?
Nov. 12, 2012
“It is not conceivable that any of the prosecutors (in cases such as Little Rascals) believed a word of the charges responsible for ruining the lives of so many people. The cases were brought for one reason alone: to gain name recognition for the prosecutors.”
– From “The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice” by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton (2008)
Could prosecutors really have sold their souls (not to mention their public trust) for mere “name recognition”? Or did their lust for guilty verdicts blind them to the obvious?
Most days, the latter seems more likely to me. Or perhaps a hybrid….
Indisputably, however, career benefits did attach to trumpeting from the courthouse steps that you’ve sent away Bob Kelly for 12 consecutive life sentences.
‘Long history of panic’ extended to day-care cases
Feb. 6, 2013
“Panic provides a rationale for action, sometimes overreaction or even manipulation. As such, it is the subject of heated accusation and denial that can create a swirl of confusion and frustration.
“Nonetheless, some lessons stand out in the long history of panic. There is no basis for imagining that the frenzied 19th century reactions to disease are a slumbering beast waiting to be roused. Too much government infrastructure and information stand between populations and unfettered panic….”
– From “A Brief History of Panic” by Amy L. Fairchild, David Merritt Johns and Kavita Sivara Makrishnan, public health researchers at Columbia University (the New York Times, January 28, 2013)
“Frenzied…. reactions” to disease epidemics may have subsided since the 19th century, but they were crucial in animating the day-care ritual-abuse prosecutions of the 1980s and ’90s. And “government infrastructure” – that is, district attorneys’ offices – wasn’t a deterrent but an accelerant!