THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 6, 1994 TAG: 9408060198
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS AND ANNE SAITA, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Payments from a $1 million civil settlement from the insurance company that covered the Little Rascals Day Care Center are being distributed, attorneys in the case said Friday.
Forty-two children from 28 families will receive payments from a class-action lawsuit against Elizabeth T. Kelly, who ran the Edenton day-care center that shut down in 1989 amid sexual abuse charges.
Each child will receive an undisclosed amount based on injuries and treatment costs. A three-member arbitration panel composed of a former judge, a child psychologist and a retired insurance adjuster set the individual amounts, said James K. Dorsett III, a Raleigh attorney who represented 16 of the children.
Kelly is the wife of Robert F. Kelly Jr., the first of seven defendants charged in the abuse case. Robert Kelly was convicted of molesting 12 children and is serving 12 consecutive life sentences.
During his trial, parents and other relatives testified that they had taken children to private psychologists and psychiatrists for therapy. Some children are still in therapy.
Elizabeth Kelly denied that any abuse occurred at the day-care center. She pleaded no contest to 26 counts of sexual abuse in January and was sentenced to seven years in prison. An acquaintance of the Kellys, Willard Scott Privott, pleaded no contest to sexual-abuse charges and was sentenced to supervised probation.
Kathryn Dawn Wilson, a cook, was convicted in January 1993 of sexual-abuse charges and was sentenced to life in prison. Four other defendants await trial on various abuse charges stemming from the case.
The civil settlement was proposed by the North Carolina Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, which transferred $1 million to the Pasquotank County Clerk of Superior Court on April 20, court records show.
Sealed orders approving about half of the settlements were entered July 26. Some are still pending.
``All the children either have or will soon be receiving the awards they were given,'' Dorsett said Friday.
The attorney said he was satisfied with the out-of-court settlement.
``While we believe that the claims were worth a great deal more than the policy limits, since this was all that was available, we feel that the best possible results were achieved,'' Dorsett said.
``More importantly, we were able to avoid another lengthy trial in which the children would have been required to testify and be further traumatized by that process,'' he said.
Parents, however, were reluctant to discuss the case.
``We just don't want to say anything,'' said one parent who asked not to be identified. ``This is something we wanted to be private.''
Parents of 10 children who attended the day-care center filed the original lawsuit in June 1989 after criminal sexual-abuse charges were filed against Robert Kelly.
Later, the lawsuit became a class-action matter and expanded to 42 children. Prosecutors have said more than 90 children were sexually abused.
Parents said in the lawsuit that Elizabeth Kelly was negligent in allowing her husband to be at the day-care center, failed to tell the parents about the molestation and failed to control her husband.
MEMO: The Associated Press contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTOS
The Little Rascals Day Care Center was shut down in 1989 amid
charges that children were sexually abused. A $1 million civil
settlement from the center's insurance company is being split among
42 children.
Kelly
KEYWORDS: CIVIL SETTLEMENT LITTLE RASCALS DAY CARE CENTER LAWSUIT
CHILD ABUSE by CNB