THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 15, 1995 TAG: 9509150001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A22 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
To retry or not to retry Robert F. ``Bob'' Kelly and Kathryn Dawn Wilson on charges of sexual abuse of small children at the Little Rascals Day Care Center in Edenton, N.C. That is the question since the North Carolina Court of Appeals firmly declared earlier this month that the two are eligible for new trials. Chowan County District Attorney Frank R. Parrish has promised an answer within weeks.
His answer should be no, even though that may satisfy no one caught up in the Edenton case.
It won't satisfy the sense of justice of those parents still confident that their children were victims of soul-destroying crimes. Nor those youngsters who recounted tales of grotesque abuse. Nor Little Rascals co-owner Bob Kelly, whose dozen consecutive life sentences have been overturned. Nor day-care-center-cook Kathryn Dawn Wilson, who has been confined to her residence since her conviction, now also overturned.
Nor Bob Kelly's wife (and Little Rascals co-owner), Elizabeth, and Scott Privott, who never worked at the day care, both of whom were pronounced guilty of abuse after pleading no contest to charges rather than risk trial by jury.
Nor anyone who is persuaded that the Little Rascals defendants - and others accused but not tried - have been cruelly wronged. Only vindication of the accused will do for such people.
Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson were convicted by juries on the basis of often-fanciful testimony essentially uncorroborated by physical evidence or adult witnesses. The North Carolina high court agreed with their attorneys that their trials were grossly flawed. That the two would be convicted again in properly conducted trials is extremely unlikely.
Skepticism toward multiple sexual-abuse charges against day-care workers and toward the ways in which children's testimony is elicited by therapists and police has supplanted credulity. We know much more today about how children can be led by well-intentioned adults into saying things unrelated to reality. We have relearned much about how quickly passions can override reason.
Few dispute that physical and emotional abuse of children, mainly within families but also by strangers, is all too common and that society and its institutions must strive to prevent abuse and punish abusers. But the charges in Edenton raised doubts in many observers' minds from the beginning. These doubts were reinforced by a probing public-television documentary in which a few jurors in the Bob Kelly case reported irregularities in the jury room and misgivings about having convicted the defendant.
The whole awful business resembles the notorious McMartin School case in Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles County that also featured hundreds of sexual-abuse allegations against several day-care workers. Like McMartin, Little Rascals was marred by police and prosecutorial errors, wrecked lives and cost the state millions of dollars. McMartin produced no convictions. The defendants spent years behind bars anyway, awaiting the outcome of their protracted trials.
Like McMartin, the Little Rascals nightmare blossomed from a single complaint about alleged mistreatment of a child. In each instance, all of the accused steadfastly maintained their innocence and still do. Prosecutors playing by the rules would stand little chance now of persuading jurors that Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson are guilty of crimes against children. Drop the case. by CNB