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….
‘Right much training but nothing like she needed’
May 8, 2013
“We just had all kinds of rumors. Everybody in town was involved in it, with this one pointing fingers, that one pointing fingers. My telephone was ringing right steady….
“We really didn’t know what we had. I had a police officer who works as a secretary (Brenda Toppin) who deals with this type case, and she had right much training but nothing like she needed. So we had problems right from the start.”
– Edenton Police Chief Charles Harvey Williams, recalling for a North Carolina House committee how his 15-person department struggled to sort out allegations about the Little Rascals Day Care center (April 23, 1991)
Toppin has been variously described as a secretary and a dispatcher in Edenton’s 15-person police department – she may well have been both. Regardless, she seemed utterly unaware how far in over her head she was interviewing children about supposed ritual sex abuse.
When Betsy Kelly was released from jail, much persecution still lay ahead
Oct. 9, 2016
Five days after her bond was reduced from $1.8 million to $400,000, Betsy Kelly is released from jail.
In January 1994 Kelly would accept a plea of “no contest” and a sentence of seven years in prison. Since she had already served two years and two weeks in jail, she became eligible for parole almost immediately. But Assistant Attorney General Bill Hart, angry over her unwavering insistence that she was innocent, reneged on a plea agreement not to contest her release, and the Parole Commission kept her imprisoned another 10 months.
The prosecution used excessive bail as a sledgehammer on the lives and freedom of Betsy Kelly and the other Little Rascals defendants:
- Bob Kelly, $1.5 million (later reduced to $200,000 – after his conviction was overturned – then $50,000 )
- Scott Privott, $1 million (reduced to $50,000)
- Shelley Stone, $375,000
- Dawn Wilson, $880,000 (reduced to $200,000)
- Robin Byrum, $500,000 (reduced to $200,000)
- Darlene Harris, $350,000
What outrageous conditions! Did Hart, H. P. Williams Jr. and Nancy Lamb fear that the defendants would flee to Argentina? That they would prowl the town’s playgrounds in search of new victims? No, these obviously out-of-reach amounts surely had no purpose but to coerce confessions. How shocked and disappointed prosecutors must have been that not one of the defendants, though crushed financially, succumbed.
Nancy Lamb: ‘Would you want someone like me?’
June 3, 2014
“I want all of you to ask yourselves: If you were to find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of being the victim of a crime, who would you want representing your interest in the criminal justice system?
“Would you want someone like me, with 30 years experience as a veteran prosecutor, a person who has prosecuted every kind of criminal case there is?
“Or would you want someone like my opponent, whose entire criminal experience comes as in the role of being a criminal defense attorney, defending criminals who commit crimes against the people of the 1st District?”
– Little Rascals prosecutor Nancy Lamb, now a candidate for district attorney, comparing herself – most favorably! – with incumbent Andrew Womble
Lamb won the Democratic nomination for DA in last month’s primary and will face Republican Womble in the general election. Although her campaign website boasts that she has been “nationally recognized for her work with child abuse,” it somehow neglects to mention her star turn in one of the country’s most publicized “satanic ritual abuse” prosecutions. Fortunately, the five months between now and Nov. 4 should provide ample opportunity for her to address that issue.
Can Edenton squeeze in one more historical marker?
Nov. 27, 2014
“Of the dozen or so historical markers clustered in the town of Edenton, only one – recognizing novelist Inglis Fletcher – postdates the 1800s.
“The North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Committee now has the opportunity, 25 years after the first arrest in the Little Rascals case, to add to that number a 20th Century event inarguably significant in the legal and social history of not just North Carolina but also the nation.”
– From my application proposing “history on a stick” recognition for the Little Rascals Day Care case
The marker committee, composed of historians from four-year colleges across the state, will meet in December to decide which pending applications meet its criteria.