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 still digging in their heels?
March 7, 2016
“Have any public officials apologized to Dudley?
“No.”
– From “Howard Dudley’s new life: restaurants, cellphones and a cemetery visit” (cached) by Joseph Neff in the News & Observer (March 5)
Aw, what’s to apologize for – it was only 23 years of wrongful imprisonment (cached)….
‘We knew we had a secret’ (so we put Brenda on the case)
June 19, 2013
The Little Rascals parents insisted their children had “disclosed” mostly on their own, rather than a result of persistent interrogation. But this live interview, in the giddy moments after Bob Kelly’s convictions (April 22, 1992), suggests a different pattern:
CNN: How did you find out this happened? You were apparently the first parents to realize something was terribly wrong.
Mark Stever: Kyle, our son, told us in his own way, just different things, like ‘Mr. Bob doesn’t do it anymore. He does it to the other children.’
Audrey Stever: We knew he had a secret, and we knew it happened at nap time, but he couldn’t tell us what it was, and to escape talking about it he would say, ‘Oh, he doesn’t do it anymore, Mommy.’
CNN: And how did you finally bring it out of him exactly what he said had been happening?
Audrey Stever: Well, I approached a friend (Brenda Toppin) who was the investigating officer in the case… and things kind of went from there.
Ever so slowly, progress made toward DAs’ accountability
July 1, 2016
“Prosecutors should have to disclose evidence of innocence obtained after a person is convicted, a North Carolina State Bar panel agreed Wednesday.
“The ethics subcommittee voted 3-2 at a meeting in Greensboro to support the general principle that a prosecutor’s duty to disclose innocence evidence continues after a defendant is sentenced, although the members didn’t settle on specific language. A federal prosecutor and a former district attorney opposed the motion, while three attorneys in private practice supported it….
“The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys had said in a letter to the State Bar that prosecutors say that the rule is unnecessary….
“The panel is just the first step in a lengthy process that – if the rule is approved at each step – involves the full ethics committee, public comment, the full State Bar Council and finally, the state Supreme Court.”
– From “NC panel: Innocence evidence right continues after sentence” by Martha Waggoner of the Associated Press (June 29)
Read more here.
50 students now know the facts
Oct. 28, 2013
“What was surprising was that in a class of 50 students, none had heard of the day care allegations of the 1980s.”
– From a note from Catherine Caldwell-Harris, associate professor of psychology, Boston University
Well, that’s a bracing dose of reality, isn’t it? But thanks to Dr. Caldwell-Harris, those students in her developmental psychology class now have an understanding of the moral panic. Here’s her lesson plan, which she doesn’t mind being borrowed, along with her comments on how students responded.
Maybe the current generation of academics sees clearly what many of their predecessors so horribly misjudged?