'Twenty-one Boxes' recounts story of Little Rascals case

Betsy Hester’s story in her new book, “Twenty-one Boxes,” is complex and challenging to read.

It is an account of the Little Rascals Day Care Center sexual abuse case in the late 1980s and early 1990s that rocked the Edenton community, riveted Americans across the country, and raised profound questions about American justice, the rule of law, and what justice should look like. The book’s title was inspired by the 21 boxes of evidence that are still stored in archives about the case.

Hester is a former English teacher and the wife of an attorney. During her time in the classroom, she frequently taught students about “The Crucible,” the 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller that is a partially fictionalized account about the madness of the Salem witch trials in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692-93.

So when questions began surfacing about the Little Rascals Day Care case, Hester was fascinated by its parallels to Miller’s play. For Hester and her husband, the trial and the questions it raised about justice in America became something they followed and frequently discussed.

When former Little Rascals defendant Robin Couto — formerly Robin Byrum — came into her husband’s law office as a potential client, Hester formed a partnership with her to tell the Little Rascals story.

The book raises difficult questions and searing memories for families, friends, and now-grown children living in Chowan County who attended the daycare center. Hester’s re-examination will not ease many of those memories and still-raw emotions, but she believes that perhaps, after 35 years, it’s time to pull back the cover and take a long, hard look at what happened at the Little Rascals Day Care Center.

The Little Rascals case consumed the nation’s attention for six years, beginning in 1989 when allegations of child sexual abuse were first raised against dozens of people. Seven defendants were arrested in the case: Little Rascals owner Bob Kelly; his wife, Betsy Kelly; and daycare employees Dawn Wilson, Byrum, Shelly Stone, Scott Privott, and Darlene Harris.

The children were offered extensive therapy, during which they were asked about events at the Kellys’ daycare center. Lawyers and psychologists would later charge that the children were subjected to suggestions of abuse that they later confirmed under questioning in court.

Parents saw changes in their children’s behavior as the therapy and questioning continued. Understandably, many saw the trauma their children exhibited as proof that something terrible had happened at the Little Rascals Day Care Center.

But it was hard to pin down charges in a traditional legal sense. The children’s memories mixed reality, protective fantasy, and perhaps even suggestion, producing stories that defied belief. The charges were hard to accept: babies shot inside the daycare when no infants were reported missing; sexual abuse occurring in rooms with large picture windows on a busy street. Children were said to have been stabbed with large kitchen knives but showed no signs of injury, and children were threatened, it was charged, with being thrown into a pool of live sharks in the backyard of the daycare.

Those kinds of accusations ignited a debate over how a court should evaluate testimony from vulnerable children. Should jurors be allowed to deliver a guilty verdict without direct documentary evidence?

Despite those kinds of questions, Bob Kelly Jr. was convicted in April 1992 on 99 of 100 counts of rape and related crimes against children after 12 children testified against him, leveling charges of ritual killing of infants, inappropriate trips in hot air balloons, and victims being thrown out of boats. He received 12 consecutive life sentences.

Wilson, the daycare’s cook, refused all plea bargains. After deliberation, the jury convicted her and sentenced her to life in prison.

Betsy Kelly accepted a plea of “no contest” in January of 1994 after spending two years in jail awaiting trial. She received a sentence of seven years and spent an additional year in prison before she was released in 1995.

Six months after Kelly’s release, the North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed the convictions of Robert Kelly and Dawn Wilson because of legal errors by the prosecution. All charges against the pair were dismissed in May 1995.

The state dismissed charges against Stone, Harris, and Byrum after Byrum spent one year in prison awaiting trial. Privott had his bond reduced from $1 million to $50,000. Once released on bond, he accepted a “no contest” plea.

Hester’s book is unique in that almost a third of it contains chapters written by Byrum. Byrum claims she was intimidated and pressured by investigators who wanted her to testify against her co-defendants. Offered a plea deal that would have saved her jail time, Byrum said she refused and ended up in jail under a bond set so high that she languished in jail for a year.

Now a soft-spoken grandmother, Couto is adamant that nothing ever happened at the daycare that should have warranted charges against her or any of the other Little Rascals defendants.

In an interview, she said the front of the daycare building was faced with plate glass windows that were open to the public at all times, and parents were constantly picking up and dropping kids off unannounced, things she maintains make the abuse that was alleged almost impossible.

Previous statements made by those who made the allegations against the Little Rascals’ defendants, or whose children were affected, said that they believed the children were not lying and that something terrible occurred inside the Kellys’ daycare, something that demanded some form of punishment. The slogan, “Believe the children,” was often repeated during the trial.

This newspaper will not publish the names of families and victims affected by the Little Rascals case, but efforts were made to reach out to several of them for comment on the account Hester tells of the Little Rascals’ case in “Twenty-one Boxes.” None wished to comment for this story.

Hester has received strong interest in her book from around the state, but two offers of book signings in Edenton were withdrawn quickly after they were made. Signings were arranged at All Booked Up on Sept. 5 and The Recycled Reader on Sept. 25 in Elizabeth City. Both events will be held at 6 p.m.

The book is not available locally but may be purchased through online booksellers like amazon.com and barnesandnobel.com.