CrimeViral online - Washington Post online -
Robert Kelly was unjustly convicted on 99 out of 100 child abuse counts and sentenced to twelve consecutive life sentences in 1992. In the longest and most expensive trial in the history of North Carolina, Kelly was alleged to have sexually abused a dozen children at day care centre, Little Rascals, in what has become known as a modern day witch hunt.
Accused of satanic rituals, murdering babies and throwing newborns into schools of sharks, this unbelievable story gathered pace over two years. Based on retrospective memories retrieved under therapy, the prosecution relied on testimony from children aged between 4 and 7 who had been receiving treatment for up to 10 months about crimes alleged to have happened a full two years earlier.
In 1995, the North Carolina Court of Appeals set aside the conviction. His co-defendants, Betsy Kelly, Kathryn Wilson, Willard Scott Privott, Shelly Stone, Darlene Harris, and Robin Byrum were either never convicted or were exonerated as well. CrimeViral online report ‘10 Miscarriages of Justice that Shocked the World #7’
It is rare that a television documentary is overtaken by events, but that is what has happened to Frontline’s latest film about the child sex-abuse scandal in Edenton, NC. By dropping all remaining charges in the lengthy and tortuous case last Friday, four days before the show, Innocence Lost: The Plea, was to air (tonight at 9 on WETA-TV), the prosecutor trumped producer-director Ofra Bikel in perhaps the only way she could.
Bikel took on the story of the Little Rascals day-care center as a cause; this is her third documentary on the case, which began in 1989. She has gone back to the idyllic seaside town every year since 1990, and appears to see in the case a modern morality tale on the level of the Salem witch trials. Although prosecutor Nancy Lamb told reporters last week she was dropping the remaining charges because the parents of the children involved did not want to put them through another trial, her action seems to vindicate Bikel’s dogged pursuit of what she portrays as a gross miscarriage of justice.
The downside of all that doggedness is that the first half of this two-hour film is spent recapping the complex details of the case, which originally involved 7 defendants, 29 children and hundreds of charges. The summary seems endless. The real meat of this film is Bikel’s effective depiction of the lives destroyed by these prosecutions. (The crux of her second documentary was the revelations from several jurors that they wished they had not voted to convict center co-owner Bob Kelly.) Given that Bikel has now produced eight hours of documentary film on this one case, she may have lost her ability to be succinct on the subject. Washington Post online article 27th May 1997, ‘A Stab of Justice in Edenton NC