Frontline is a presentation of the documentary consortium.
Two years ago, Frontline went to Edenton, North Carolina, to investigate charges of multiple child sexual abuse.
It's about sexual abuse of little children, preschool-aged children, and it's also about abuse of trust.
If I couldn't trust a daycare owned by my best friend for my child to be safe in,
then I knew that I probably wouldn't be able to trust much of anything else.
That program, Innocence Lost, told the story of Bob Kelly and his wife Betsy,
and what their friends and neighbors believed they and others had done.
Everything that I'm telling you is coming from my child.
Betsy participated and physically and sexually abused these children, just as Bob did.
In America now, if you want to get even with a man, all you do is accuse him of a sex crime.
What really happened at the Little Rascals' daycare?
To me, you have that many children saying that something happened.
Common sense says something had to go on there.
I don't understand how anybody could think that that happened.
Tonight, Frontline returns to Edenton to examine the history and prosecution
of one of the largest child sexual abuse cases in the country, and the trial of Bob Kelly.
To hear the witnesses...
The screaming. I would hear the children screaming.
Investigators... This is a mouth off.
Parents... I asked him if Mr. Bob touched him on the bottom, and he said yes.
And children... Are you afraid of Mr. Bob, Jamie? Yes.
And to discover what the jury found.
The evidence was there. All you had to do was look at it and listen to those kids.
In my opinion, it wasn't. The evidence wasn't there. I didn't see any hard evidence.
Tonight, part one of a special four-hour Frontline report.
Innocence Lost. The Verdict.
With funding provided by the financial support of viewers like you
and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
This is Frontline.
In Farmville, North Carolina, a small town of 4,000 people,
the longest criminal trial in the state's history had been taking place in the local courthouse.
The jury had been out for more than three weeks.
For seven months, they'd been hearing the evidence.
Now, there was only the wait.
For the defendant and his family.
And for the friends and families of the plaintiffs.
Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes. It's on the court.
Being held in until the county feels we're now resuming the city for the dispatch of business.
I'd say the state is on the court. You may proceed.
Madam Foreman and members of the jury, have you agreed on verdicts
and the cases of state against Robert Fulton Kelly Jr.?
Yes, sir.
Will you hand them to the bailiff, please?
State of North Carolina versus Robert Fulton Kelly Jr.
Wherein the defendant is accused of first-degree sin of taking indecent liberties with a child
in that he inserted his finger in the anal opening of William Dam.
We, the jury, as attested by our signatures below,
unanimously find the defendant guilty of first-degree sexual offense,
guilty of taking indecent liberties with a child.
Is that your verdict? So say you all.
Yes.
We, the jury unanimously find the defendant guilty of first-degree bravery,
guilty of first-degree sexual offense,
guilty of taking indecent liberties with a child.
Is it your verdict? So say you all.
Yes.
Guilty of first degree sexual, guilty of first degree rape, guilty of taking indics, guilty of crime against nature.
Is this your verdict, so say you all.
I feel great right now. I just feel really good.
I think this sends a message to the world that the justice system does work because it worked today.
We can go home and hug our children and tell them that the jury believed them.
I'm so thankful for each and every one of those kids that had the strength to get up there and be very brave.
They had a story to tell and every single one of them just got right up there and told it right in the presence of the perpetrator and that's something.
Mr. Kelly, how do you feel about the verdict?
I'm innocent.
What do you think went wrong?
I don't know.
Why don't you think they believed your story?
I don't know. You'll have to ask them.
We went through this thing very precisely and it was very agonizing.
We got short tempered. We lost our temper.
I'm sure some of the bailiffs sitting outside more than one time heard us expressing our opinions, but we left out of there.
We all hugged each other and we felt like we did the right thing.
We did the best we could.
Finally, I think all of us were just worn down that we finally just gave up on it.
And it wasn't right.
And I'm sorry.
And I always and I told them in the very beginning that this was something that I would have to live with the rest of my life.
And I will.
I'll always remember it.
And deep down in my heart, I don't think the truth was all brought out.
One by one they take me back to the days when you were mine.
And I can't stop this tear bud in my mind.
It all started just 60 miles away in Edenton, North Carolina in 1988.
First there were just whispers. Then the rumors began to grow.
Rumors about the local daycare called Little Rascals.
Rumors about abuse of the children.
People came to believe that in the very center of town, in what used to be the best daycare in Edenton, children were repeatedly abused.
Allegedly they were sexually abused by the very people who were supposed to take care of them.
People everyone in town knew and respected.
I heard about the case from Bob.
Lynn Layton grew up in Edenton.
I walked in the door to carry my children in.
And Bob met me at the door with his arms folded.
He said, I have something to tell you.
I said, what?
He said, well, I've been accused of abusing a child.
I said, Bob? Physical abuse?
He said, no, sexual abuse.
Well, it was, I felt like all of the air had just been sucked out of me.
I was just in shock from what I heard.
Who could be doing this to Bob and Betsy?
I first thought these wonderful people.
Lisa Baker came to Edenton when she was married.
She had a daughter in the daycare.
I asked him who would make this ridiculous charge.
And I laugh now and it's all so ironic.
But I was very shocked.
Susan Dixon had a son in the daycare.
I remember I was standing there beside another mother.
And both of us sort of looked at each other and thought,
well, this is just a bad joke that somebody's playing against him.
This is some way to get at him for something if they had a grudge against him.
I don't know.
Nancy Smith's sister, Betsy, owned Little Rascals.
Nancy sometimes worked there.
At the very beginning, parents did exactly what I did as a parent.
We went, oh, there's something terribly wrong here.
I'm misunderstanding. This will all work out.
Don't worry about it.
People brought food to the daycare.
People sent flowers.
People sent letters, wonderfully supportive letters and cards,
and said this is all something terrible.
Misunderstanding. It will work out.
Don't worry. Keep your chin up.
Then and how Betsy did this, I will never know.
Then every morning between 6.30 and 8 o'clock, the phone would begin to ring.
And an irate parent would say everything they ever wanted to say to anyone,
to her, to Betsy on the phone,
and tell her that their children wouldn't be back to the daycare that day or ever again.
They told her what they thought of Betsy's heritage, of Bob's state of mind,
and what they hoped would happen to them in the near future.
And she dealt with that every morning from 6.30 until 8 o'clock,
and then she went to the bathroom and cried real hard and washed her face
and took care of the children who came.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Betsy Kelly ran the daycare with the help of her husband Bob.
It was against Bob that the first allegations of abuse were made.
It was not clear who had made the charges.
The investigation had gone from social services to the police department,
and then to the county's district attorney, H.P. Williams.
Chris Bean, the most prominent lawyer in Edenton, had been hired to represent Kelly.
In late January of 1989, someone made a complaint to the Department of Social Services
that there was child abuse.
During that period of time, of course, there were no charges.
We were just really trying to find out some specifics.
I believed completely that he was innocent and that this was a terrible,
horrible allegation that had been made against him,
and what a horrible thing to happen to anybody.
We haven't been in four years.
While Chris Bean was trying to find out specifics,
he and his wife began to notice that they were losing their friends.
People who had been our friends for years who would not even look at us,
would not speak to us.
Grace even went to one of our friends and said,
What's wrong? What's the matter?
And she said, Nothing. Nothing's the matter.
But it was obvious.
It was obvious that something was wrong and she wouldn't tell me.
And said, Oh, everything's fine.
But continue not to speak to me.
It was in this atmosphere of rumors and hostility
that Chris Bean represented Bob Kelly at the first court hearing.
The probable cause hearing was scheduled for April the 25th.
And on the date of that probable cause hearing,
the district attorney and one of the police officers advised me
right before we entered court for the hearing
that my son had been named as one of the children who had been sexually abused.
And they told me that the reason they were telling me
is that a grandmother of another child who had named my son
had told them that unless I was told and this grandmother was going to tell me herself
that I was a father first and a lawyer second.
And I was shaken, just really devastated by it
and had to go into the courtroom and represent him with that information.
And then it was shortly after that that I talked to the grandmother
and then withdrew from the case.
Chris Bean's resignation as Bob's defense lawyer
and then going over to the other side was a major turning point.
From then on, things developed fast.
This is Channel 3 Eyewitness News.
With today's indictments by the grand jury,
Kelly is charged with 11 counts of first degree sexual offense,
12 counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor,
and 12 counts of crimes against nature.
He owned the little rascals with his wife Elizabeth.
Bob Kelly was re-arrested on more charges.
Then a friend of Kelly's, Scott Privet, and Bob's wife, Betsy, were arrested.
Then there were more rumors and more charges and more arrests
and still more charges and more arrests.
High bonds were set and then increased.
Little rascals became a familiar name in newspaper headlines
and on television across North Carolina.
Eventually, seven people would be arrested.
The prosecution hit it strongly.
The charges involving more children and defendants are all a part of the same nightmare.
I will tell you that all seven people are charged with conspiracy
and they're charged together.
The people of Chawan County again wonder how long this nightmare will go on.
This is in North Carolina, Bruce Barry, News 3.
All this had happened in the year before we first came to Edenton in the summer of 1990.
We found a beautiful, small southern town, peaceful, proud of its history and tradition.
It was a friendly town. People were friendly to each other and seemed open even to strangers.
But it wasn't long before we discovered that beneath it all, it was deeply divided.
We don't talk to anybody in the family.
I mean, they avoid us, we avoid them.
It's just the way it is.
If you're riding down the street in a car and they're riding down the street in their car,
you just look in opposite directions.
There's a line that's been drawn and you're either on one side or you're on the other.
And there is no crossing over as far as I'm concerned.
And I believe I'm speaking for everyone I know.
These were the people who were the friends of Betsy Kelly's parents.
We're just off the list, if you want to put it bluntly.
Because people are not inviting you because it may be...
They just don't want to be with you because it could have repercussions.
The majority of these people are good people, good people, solid people.
But this has brought out the worst in a lot of people.
They're people that I've known all my life.
And I've never seen this side of them.
And I don't ever want to see it again.
Good morning to you all.
Now, Nancy sat in the courtroom, across the aisle from people she knew well,
some of whom had been her sister's dearest friends.
I love Betsy like a friend.
And it was very hard to turn this love into a hate.
Because I can truly say that I despise Betsy.
Yes.
When I look at Betsy, I hate Betsy.
These were my friends.
These were people I respected, people that I grew up with and I looked up to.
All the parents were my friends, but my best friends?
Probably Lynn Layton.
And then probably Jane.
How do I feel about her now?
You know, she's just not the person that I knew.
She's someone else.
I buried the other Betsy.
There were rumors that the whole case started with a falling out
between the two good friends, Betsy Kelly and Jane Mabry.
It all started in the fall of 1988,
soon after the opening of the new daycare center,
when for reasons which are not clear, Bob Kelly slapped Jane's son, Joel.
Joel was then four years old and attending Little Rascals.
The first week that Betsy Kelly and Bob Kelly opened their new Little Rascals
at their new location, I walked home with my son Joel and he said,
please don't make me ever go back there, Mommy.
I was slapped.
And at that moment, I knew that life would never be the same again.
And I'm not really sure why, but if I couldn't trust a daycare owned by my best friend
for my child to be safe in, that I knew that I probably wouldn't be able to trust much of anything else.
Had I foreseen anything like sexual abuse?
In retrospect, I always felt that there would be something that was going to happen
that would be traumatic, simply because I felt everything was so calm and tranquil.
God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food.
There was little question that the slapping incident happened,
but not everyone agreed on what happened next.
Betsy Kelly's sister, Nancy Smith.
Betsy's friend Jane showed up at the daycare
expecting Betsy to be very contrite and expecting her to apologize profusely.
Betsy didn't do it.
And we had a very bad scene.
I was crying and weeping and saying, how could this happen?
At the time, still thinking it was an accident,
but knowing I could never bring Joel back down there unless he understood
that adults can make mistakes and they can rectify them.
And that was never done.
And somehow in my mind, I picture her going back to her house
as I've known her to do on other issues and just seething.
And the more she thought about Betsy not groveling and apologizing,
the madder she got.
And she came to the daycare a second time looking for an apology,
looking for more than she got the first time, giving Betsy a second chance.
And poor Betsy didn't take that one either.
This was September.
In October and November, I spent a lot of time
praying, ruminating, thinking something's not right.
There was just like this gut feeling.
There's something not right.
By then, Joel had been out of the daycare for two months
and had not been asked back.
I was hoping that both Bob and Betsy would realize that losing Joel
was a loss, mainly because he was my son and Betsy and I were friends.
Finally, Jane's husband went to the daycare to talk to Betsy,
but he came back saying he was not satisfied.
If Betsy had been different and acted differently that day
and had been more magnanimous and said, oh, I'm so sorry,
and we really want Joel back, I would have bought it.
And I'm not so sure that I would have been where I was
when this whole investigation broke.
I could very well have been her advocate.
Yes, yes, yes, the Tombo Security Court of Chawan County,
the dispatch of business, got to say the state of Tombo Court.
Be seated, please.
Thank you.
By the time we met Betsy in the summer of 1990,
she needed much more than Jane's advocacy.
She was involved in the largest sex abuse trial in the history of North Carolina.
By then, 29 children were directly involved in the case.
There are 29 children that are named in the indictments involving these seven defendants.
In all, the seven defendants were charged on 429 separate counts, including conspiracy.
The charges included raping and sodomizing the children,
having sex in front of the children, forcing the children to have sex with each other,
inserting knives, scissors, and toy hammers into the children's vaginal and anal openings,
forcing the children to perform oral sex,
forcing the children to urinate and defecate on each other,
photographing the abuse, and more.
Two other women, Shelly Stone and Darlene Harris, were also charged on multiple counts.
They were released on bail.
The largest number of charges, over 240, were filed against Bob Kelly.
They all maintained their innocence.
We had a real good daycare.
But in America now, if you want to get even with a man, all you do is accuse him of a sex crime,
whether it's child abuse, whether it's rape, or it doesn't make any difference.
And the public automatically assumes that people are guilty.
But one of these days, we'll be free, because I've not committed these crimes.
Robin Byram was just 19 when she was arrested.
Little Rascals was her first job out of high school.
The children know I didn't do anything, because I saw them after their daycare closed.
And they come up to me and hug me.
That's a different story, because I'm sitting here because of what their parents want.
So the parents have really done it to the children, not me.
Dawn Wilson was 23 when she was arrested.
She did the cooking at Little Rascals.
They arrested the last three of us just so that we would talk to them, tell them what they wanted to hear.
I mean, taking me away from my baby at 19 months old, taking Robin from hers, and he was three months,
putting pressure on us so that we would talk to them and give them what they wanted.
But they didn't think we'd last this long.
Scott Privet, the owner of a video store and a shoe repair business, said he wasn't sure why he was arrested.
That's a question I've been asking myself for 15 months. I don't know.
The only people I knew that worked down there were Bob and Betsy.
They used to rent movies from me.
So I don't really know how I got involved.
Don't know why, don't know what's going on, still trying to figure it out.
Do you understand what you're being accused of?
No, I don't understand what it's all about.
It's something that you read about or you hear about,
and it's one of those horrible things that you think, you know, well, it's kind of like cancer.
You just can't even say it, and you don't want to even believe that it exists.
And then when you wake up one day and it's your life, you try real hard,
but I don't understand.
I don't understand how anybody could think that that happened.
No.
The parents were just as firm in their beliefs.
I believe they're guilty.
In the bottom of my heart, I mean, I know they're guilty.
No, I have no doubts, no.
I've seen and heard enough of my little girl and seen her reactions and her nightmares and so forth.
No, I have no doubts.
Sadly, I have no doubts.
There is not one hair on my body that even has a doubt.
I am completely positive they did this.
To me, you have that many children saying that something happened,
common sense says something had to go on there.
So what happened in Edenton?
How did so many terrible things occur over the course of a few months,
just a few blocks from Main Street,
in a town where people knew each other and each other's business?
Did anyone notice anything happening at Little Rascals?
Bob Kelly's trial opened in August 1991 in Farmville, North Carolina,
60 miles from Edenton.
...the county chief and the uncle Mark of Plano Church of Latter-day
and Everett's
God save the state and the survival of all.
Thank you and good morning to you all.
Possible eyewitnesses were called in to testify.
Former daycare worker Deanna Chesson.
Did Bob ever discipline children aside from putting them in the ugly chair or spanking?
As within my statement that I gave, yes.
That children were spanked.
And I do remember children being held on too tightly, almost shaken,
when trying to calm them down or to discipline them.
Mrs. Bunch, while you were at the Little Rascals daycare during the summer of 1987,
did you ever see any children sexually abused by anyone?
No.
In the morning when you would go in to the daycare...
...you would see the two-room daycare for about 35 children that Bob and Betsy Kelly ran for two years...
...before they moved into their new and bigger building in September 1988.
They now had about 65 children.
Most of the charges allegedly occurred in the new Little Rascals...
...immediately after they entered the new building...
...within a period of three months, September 30th to December 31st, 1988.
Both facilities were a couple of blocks from Main Street.
Nancy Smith, Betsy Kelly's sister, worked in both places.
At the old or new daycare?
Oh, sure. Yes, sir.
Would that apply to both daycares?
Yes, sir.
Did you ever observe anything unusual going on in any of those cages?
A lot of snoring.
And that's about it.
When you would see your son Daniel at the daycare, did you only see him one time at that?
No, sir, I did not. I saw my child several times a day.
I was in and out of the room with him. He was in and out of the room with me.
I would see him at the snack table.
Philips, who also worked in the old and new Little Rascals, had a two-year-old son there.
We were constant. Nobody was confined in that daycare.
Everybody was in and out of those rooms as they pleased.
If you would, tell the members...
Neighbors were called to testify.
...in relation to the children being out in the backyard.
What brought your attention to the being there? What do you remember about it?
The screaming. I would hear the children screaming.
To the extent that it would break my concentration.
I'm sensitive to children crying, so I'd get up and look out the back window and watch them to see if I could see if they had fallen off the monkey bars.
Of course, by the time I looked, I never saw any...
Just the children. I just saw them crying and screaming.
Was this something that occurred every day?
Yes, sir.
What did you do about it?
Nothing.
Why?
I didn't know what to do about it. I talked with my co-workers about it.
You felt there was something wrong going on over there?
I don't say that there was something wrong. I say that the children crying caught my attention, and I observed the children.
Most of the children alleged that they were driven around town by Bob and then abused.
But there were no conclusive eyewitnesses.
I was in the traffic going south on Broad Street, and I got behind Bob's van at the intersection near the post office, which is Church Street and Broad.
I got exactly behind the vehicle, and as I was standing there waiting for the light to change, I noticed a small child waving at me like this here in the back window at me.
Could you tell at that point who was in the front of the vehicle?
No, I couldn't. The driver was kind of hidden from the rear of the vehicle. It was like a plywood section was shelved, and the driver, you could not see him.
But I think when he turned onto East Queen Street, I glimpsed this area of his shirt when he was making the turn, and it looked like Bob's uniform that he normally wears, white shirt with blue pants.
The door was open on the vehicle so you can see exposed to the side of a person in people's drive.
You didn't see his face?
No, sir.
It was what we had been told since we arrived in Edenton. No one saw anything.
People like Brenda Ambrose, who worked in the daycare and whose daughter had allegedly been abused behind her back.
Right up until the time it closed, I still didn't believe it happened. I mean, I worked there every day.
If something like that would have happened, I would have seen it. But it happened. I've got to say it happened from my own experience with having my daughter and everything.
I've got to say that it did happen, but if the court of law asked me did it happen, I would have to say I didn't see anything because I didn't see anything.
People were constantly in and out. Staffers coming to work at different times during the day, parents coming to pick one up for dentist, one for doctor, one was sick this morning so he's coming in at 11.
You never knew when the door was going to swing open. Never.
Even Lynn Layton would agree.
I went in that daycare. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. It was kept nice and quiet. I did not see anything myself that would cause me to believe that anything could have happened like that.
You were there.
That's right. I was there every day except for lunch and there was a couple of days when I had doctor's appointments or something like that.
I still lay in bed at night right now thinking about how they could have done it.
How could they have done it with me right there in the room across the hall?
Could it all have come about because one child was slapped?
Setting off an avalanche of allegations as Betsy Kelly's family has always claimed?
Jane Maybring knew that people were pointing fingers at her and she was dismayed.
How could anybody believe somebody would make it up about a friend? But see what I realize now is it was much easier to believe that I had made this up than it was to believe that the people that you thought were taking good care of your children, Bob and Betsy Kelly, could be doing this to your children.
The truth, she said, was very different.
After Thanksgiving, talking with my cousin and not getting any feedback from either Bob or Betsy, I decided that I was going to kind of start asking people how things were at Little Rascals and that's basically what happened.
That's really all I said.
However Jane talked to, she said, she talked briefly and in generalities until she came across a certain mother.
I honestly don't know exactly what happened other than my understanding is this one particular mother I talked to was concerned in our talking it raised some more red flags and she pursued it and found that it wasn't a physical abuse that was taking place but that it was sexual abuse.
And that's what precipitated the investigation by the social services.
The mother was Audrey Stever, who quickly turned the case over to the police.
How hard was it for you to believe your son at first when you hear these awful things?
Well when he first began talking, I wasn't sure.
I had to have someone, I had to go to someone else and have them talk to him because I didn't know if any other children had experienced these same things.
So I sort of turned it over to social services and the investigating officer really rather quickly.
The police officer Audrey Stever turned to was Officer Brenda Toppin.
What Audrey's three year old son told her when questioned was that he liked Mr. Bob least of any of the daycare workers, but that Mr. Bob doesn't do it anymore.
He also told his mother two months before that he had played doctor with an older neighborhood kid.
He now said that Mr. Bob had played doctor with some of the children.
Playing doctor according to the three year old was sticking something in your butt.
Officer Toppin came to interview the child.
It was this interview which would trigger the entire investigation.
When you said to him how did he play doctor, I don't know how to play, what was his response?
He just, he would just sort of, he sat there and sort of just kind of went down a little ball-like, but just, not actually a ball, but just sort of withdrew and wouldn't say anything.
He did not say anything?
He would not say anything.
When he didn't say anything, did you pursue that any further?
I just asked him if he, if we were to let him use our special dolls or special tools, I don't know what terminology I used, that could he show us how he played doctor.
So after the one question and the one failure to respond, you went to the dogs?
No, it was not after one question and one failure to respond.
There was quite a length of time there that we just sat there, he would not respond at all.
Okay, so after he failed to respond, you both sat there, there were no further questions?
It was just very obvious that he was not going to be able to tell us, but maybe he would be able to show us.
So you assumed at that point that it was something he could tell you further and he just wasn't able to do it.
So it wasn't a question of a lack of knowledge on his part?
It was in the look on Kyle's face and because I knew him, there was, he couldn't tell us how to play doctor, however that way was, so we asked him if he could show us on the dolls.
And he pulled on the dolls penis?
That's correct.
What else did he do with the doll?
He had pulled the pants down off the doll.
Now, it's my understanding that before you began using the dolls, you could not get him to say anything.
That's correct.
You could not get him to describe anything.
That's correct.
A day or two later, the defense asked her to demonstrate to the jury the so-called anatomically correct dolls she used in her interviews with the children.
This is a male doll.
The dolls became important tools in the investigation the police and social services immediately launched.
Debbie Forrest's son, Frankie, was the second child to be interviewed by Brenda Toppin as a possible eyewitness.
Debbie Forrest remembers her using the dolls.
They asked him if he understood the dolls and the various parts of the anatomy and that these were just like little boys and little girls, and he said that was disgusting.
They asked him if he knew what the word sex meant, and he said he wasn't stupid, that it meant you colored and you stayed in the lines.
They asked if they watched movies or did anybody take pictures, and he said yeah.
They got to bring movies from home and they had movie day, that he had his picture taken for school.
But they constantly asked him the same thing over and over again, and they would rephrase it.
And he's very outspoken and very blunt sometimes, and he just continually told them he already answered that question.
They asked him a lot of things about taking your clothes on, taking your clothes off.
They asked him about had anybody ever played doctor and did they play doctor, and he got excited and said yes, Mr. Bob is the doctor.
And they got real interested in that and asked him again and again about it.
And he finally told them that when they got hurt on the playground, he went and got the first aid kit and brought them out, Flintstone Band-Aids and GI Joe Band-Aids.
They talked to him, it had to be an hour and a half or so before we interrupted, and they wanted to continue talking to him.
I would guess the same questions were asked five or six times.
Do it again.
With the growing rumors, Betty Ann Phillips, who worked in the daycare, worried.
She began to wonder if something might have happened to her child without her knowing about it.
After questioning him extensively, she called Brenda Toppin to come and talk to him.
He said absolutely nothing to Brenda.
He wanted to play when she was there talking to him.
He was running around, he would, you know, it was something that he just didn't want to sit there and talk with her about.
So finally I asked her, I said, in your opinion, has my child been sexually abused?
And she said, I can't tell you this on the record.
She said, but off the record, yes he has.
And she told me to expect the worst because there was a lot more to come.
I asked her, would charges be brought?
And she said she was going to bring this tape to HP and let HP listen to it and then HP would decide, well, there was nothing on the tape because Daniel hadn't said anything.
Whatever was on the tape, it was enough for HP Williams, the district attorney, to re-arrest Bob, who had been out on bail, and add new charges against him.
What was on the tape?
In fact, what was on all the tapes of the critical first interviews with the children?
Whatever tapes were made, it seems, had been misplaced or taped over, and all the original notes were destroyed.
Do you keep your original notes?
Not as a usual rule, no, sir.
Have you destroyed the notes that you use to prepare the reports in this case?
I have kept everything since I had gotten the order to keep everything, but before that I did not.
So all of the notes that you made during the period of time you were actually interviewing children for the first time are now gone?
Yes, sir.
When did you destroy them?
As these were typed.
And do you know approximately when that was?
Shortly after the interviews.
Is that your standard practice to destroy your notes?
Yes, sir.
And you go along?
After I type them, yes.
And you do that in every case?
Yes, sir.
And is that something that you were taught in your law enforcement training to destroy your notes as you have typed them in the report prepared?
I don't believe that was covered.
Pardon?
I do not believe that was covered.
You don't believe that's something they taught you?
The defense asked for records of Brenda Toppin's training, but the prosecution had their subpoena quashed.
Toppin testified that she had 80 hours of courses in sexual abuse investigation in the 10 years prior to the case, but brought no material to support that.
She also testified that she had attended a seminar on sexual abuse sometime before the case broke.
The district attorney, H.P. Williams, also attended this seminar.
So I just destroyed, there's just a lot of extra paper, so I just destroy those.
I just have not been involved in any type of a criminal case where what is basically crucial evidence was simply discarded.
Anyone that knows anything about this field will tell you that the first contact with the children, the initial interviews with the children, are the most critical.
How they were conducted, what the individual conducting the interviews said, what they asked, how the children responded are the most critical things in these cases.
And they were just gone forever.
There was no effort to either create them or preserve them at all.
This is all that exists of Kyle Stevers' first interview.
Thirteen lines of Officer Toppin's account of the two hours she spent at the child's home, with no more detail than she'd given in her testimony.
The Frankie Forrest interview, which his mother reported lasted over an hour and a half, ended up in little over half a page.
The prosecutors would not talk to Frontline, but Special Prosecutor Bill Hart explained in an interview to the local TV station the importance of Officer Toppin as a witness.
Brenna Toppin has been most involved in the case right from the very beginning.
A witness like Officer Toppin can really bring things together and show why some of the things happened as they did and put it in more perspective.
But it became obvious that Officer Toppin either couldn't or wouldn't put very much in perspective, because she could seldom remember what she'd asked the children to elicit their allegations.
Sometimes the children, when I was talking with them, they would just come right out and just say it.
I didn't even have to ask a question.
Is that what happened on this occasion?
I cannot tell you exactly if that is what happened. I know that has happened.
But you do not know on this occasion whether that's what happened or whether you asked some question or made some remark to Lauren.
I feel like that's what happened on this occasion.
Do you know that?
I can just tell you my recollection.
Did you pursue that with him and ask him how he got back out of the water?
I don't know whether I tried to or not. I don't have any documentation.
Frequently if I would ask a question and got no response, I didn't put anything down. So I really don't have any way of knowing.
And you asked her if she had her clothes on or off?
She stated that she had no clothes on.
Do you know how the question of whether or not she had her clothes on or off came up?
As I have told you before, I have not written down my questions as far as what were asked of Lauren.
What did the jury make of Officer Toppin's investigation?
We were not allowed to film them in the courtroom, but a few of them agreed to speak with us after the trial.
Juror Mary Nichols.
Why would a police department make an investigation into serious charges like this and not keep the evidence?
But they admitted that it had been destroyed or they had lost it or something had happened to it.
Juror Dennis Ray.
When Brenda Toppin first went out for her interviews, the kids were literally saying nothing.
So why tape something if it's not going to be an allegation or something?
You really don't have nothing there to tape.
Juror Marvin Shackelford.
Why was all that stuff discarded and thrown away?
It just don't make sense.
If I had something against somebody and the note was true, I wouldn't throw the evidence away.
It just looked like a plot to me.
Juror David Williams.
It was kind of funny that they did lose it.
But we had enough evidence and the man did it.
So we didn't get it lost enough.
Innocence Lost, The Verdict, will continue after a short break.
We now return to Innocence Lost, The Verdict.
Back in the first months of 1989, when the police and the Department of Social Services launched their investigation,
Edenton was a hotbed of rumors and anxiety.
There were names being bandied about the town of people involved here.
And I said to myself, now, wait a minute, this is getting ridiculous.
I said, you could just go out and say anything.
I could walk out on the street and say someone's name and say, did you know that?
And all of a sudden, the next day it would come, it would go full circle.
It would stay in the loop and come around the loop and come right back at me.
And it was so easy to start something.
These people panicked.
I mean, they looked at each other, you know, who's involved.
I mean, the rumors were unbelievable.
You heard crazy things.
I mean, it was everybody from the guy that ran the bank to the guy that ran the gas station to the police.
It was just absurd.
And everybody was looking at everybody else as you walked down the street.
Maybe that's what happens when people are frightened.
I mean, that was the focus on our life.
Every time the phone rang, it had something to do with little rascals.
And every time we spoke, it had something to do with little rascals.
And I'm sure, you know, we're not the only parents who are like that.
I'd be more willing to bet that the majority of the parents are still like that.
That's why they're so obsessed with this.
I became very obsessed with having to know exactly what happened.
I had to know what happened to her.
I'd go down to the police department and, you know, see what I can get from them.
And in the course of a criminal investigation, they can't divulge that and they never have.
But it was a drive in me that I just had to play out.
And I pushed my little one and pushed her until she just had to close up.
Most mothers claim that they tried not to ask their children any leading questions.
My child did not say anything that was coaxed out of her.
There were times that I wanted to pick her up and say, please tell me who did what to you.
And I did ask—cut this. Wait a minute. I want to incriminate myself here.
They had to have been questioned by these parents. They want to admit to it, but they didn't.
In the beginning, Betty Ann Phillips was a confidant of some of the mothers.
The parent refused to give the child her dessert unless she told her.
When the child had told her for three weeks that this person did nothing to her,
and the parent refused to give the child her dessert unless she tell me that this person did something to you.
Did she do?
Yeah. Do anything for your dessert.
Betty Ann readily admitted that she questioned her child relentlessly.
He finally, you know, was like, if you're going to keep on doing this, then I'm going to tell you what you want to hear.
And he finally said something to me, in which it was very upsetting when you heard him say it, because I had never heard him say it before.
It had been me questioning him and, you know, him laughing and wanting to go about his business,
wanting to go on and play, you know, get this over with so I can go and play.
He understood enough to know what we wanted the answer to be or, you know, what we were trying to get at.
Because after he would, I mean, you say no enough and that's not the right answer, you figure, you know, you'll try yes.
And I think that's basically what he did.
The issue of whether the parents repeated questioning of their children had helped to create allegations of abuse was a central question for the defense.
The press was not allowed to film or photograph the indicting children or their parents.
The parents were questioned by one of three prosecuting attorneys, Bill Hart, Nancy Lamb, and H.P. Williams,
and cross-examined by the defense lawyers, Mike Spivey and Jeff Miller, in front of the 12 jurors.
For reasons of time, the mother's testimony has been abridged and excerpted.
Peggy Brooks had a four-year-old son who was interviewed by the police the first week of the investigation.
He said nothing about abuse in the daycare and actually said that he liked Mr. Bob.
But his mother said that she was concerned because he acted hyper whenever the topic of Mr. Bob or nap time came up.
So after the police left, she questioned him. Her testimony is read by an actress.
I said, you remember what Miss Brenda and David said to you about truth and lie? And he said yes.
And I said, it's real important for you to tell Mommy the truth.
And I asked him if Mr. Bob had ever come into his room at nap time, and he said yes.
And I asked him if he ever touched him, and he said yes.
And he started getting a little nervous, and I said, did he ever touch you on your bottom? And he said yes.
And he got very nervous and kind of got off my lap and ran to the other side of the room.
And I got him by the shoulders, and I knelt down, and I looked him in the eye, and I said, son, you have got to tell me the truth.
Did Mr. Bob touch your bottom or your private parts? And he said yes.
And he put his hand in the crack in his bottom.
Mike Spivey, the defense attorney, wanted to demonstrate that she was leading her child.
He didn't on his own say anything to you about Bob or the daycare, did he?
No, he didn't.
Not until you said to him, did Mr. Bob come in your room at nap time?
That's right.
And your next question right after that was, did Mr. Bob touch you?
That's right.
And his answer was just yes?
Uh-huh.
And you didn't say, well, tell me about that, did you? You said, did he touch you on the bottom?
I asked him if Mr. Bob touched him on the bottom, and he said yes.
And then he ran across the room because he didn't want to talk about it.
And you went across the room after him, and you took him by the shoulder, didn't you? And you held him there.
I didn't hold him there. I took him gently by the shoulders and made him look me in the eye.
And you insisted that he tell you what Mr. Bob had done.
I said, are you telling me the truth? And I asked him to show me how Mr. Bob touched him on the bottom.
And that was after you had already talked to him about getting touched on the bottom.
Yes, but I didn't tell him to put his hand in his crack.
Did you know anything about how suggestible children at that age are?
No.
That was early in the investigation.
At least three mothers had taken their children out of Little Rascals.
Peggy, Audrey Steber, and Debbie Swicegood.
They were in constant touch.
The defense wanted to demonstrate that they were passing information to each other about the case.
The mothers denied it.
Do you recall telephoning Debbie Swicegood and telling her that your son had told you a real weird story about the upstairs?
I don't remember doing that, but I may have.
So you just don't ever remember calling her and discussing the allegations in the case?
Oh, yeah, we discussed the allegations in the case, but not the specifics.
Were you aware that she told the SBI in April of 1990 that she had discussed specifics of her son's case with you?
We may have talked some specifics, but mostly what we talked were generalities.
I may have said, you know, my son said something weird about going upstairs,
but I didn't tell her what he had said about going upstairs.
What did you call her for?
I needed to talk to somebody.
So you weren't going to tell her anything, you just wanted to talk to her?
I was asking her probably if her son had said anything like that, because I was trying to figure out what was going on.
You mean you were asking her about specifics?
I just asked her if he had said anything about upstairs.
And you didn't consider that to be a specific?
Betty Ann Phillips was clear about how the stories had spread.
You could get on the phone and you could be talking to the parents, and, well, my child said so-and-so.
And the very next week, you know, your child just happened to say the same thing.
I mean, it happened. I mean, I did it. They did it. They won't admit to it, but they did it.
I mean, they would get on the phone with the parents.
I mean, they'd get on the phone with me and tell you, you know, my child said this about your child, you know.
Your child said this about my child, and my child said this about the other child.
And then they would tell that parent, and that parent would question that child on what was supposed to have happened.
And then the child would go to therapy the next week and would say the same thing.
The defense believed that the stories began to go round and round the small town.
From parents to parents, from parents to children, from children to children, and then from children back to parents.
What complicated it all was the fact that 90 children were sent to therapists, mostly paid by the state.
And almost all of them returned having disclosed some allegations of abuse.
It was a long process, and it took about 10 months before she felt comfortable and safe enough to indicate that there was something that had happened there.
He wouldn't tell me for a long time, but finally after going through therapy, it eventually came out.
Once the children got in therapy and started working it out, it didn't come right away. It took quite a while.
But once it started, it was just devastating.
If it was a long process for the children, it took no time at all for the therapists to decide that massive abuse had taken place in Little Rascals.
Four therapists, Judy Yabbit, Susan Childers, Dr. Betty Robertson, and Michelle Zimmerman, treated most of the children.
Audrey Stever was among the first group of mothers given the name of Michelle Zimmerman, a psychiatric nurse by Officer Toppin.
Audrey took her son there to be evaluated.
What Ms. Zimmerman told Mrs. Stever and the police after her first session alone with the child was that the three-year-old boy had disclosed that Mr. Bob made him suck on his ding-dong.
By the next session, Ms. Zimmerman felt that she knew that there was repeated abuse at Little Rascals.
The defense attorney asked Mrs. Stever,
Ms. Zimmerman told you that she didn't have any doubt that Betsy knew what was going on?
That's right.
She told you that Bob was a sadistic pedophile?
Not at that time.
She didn't tell you that on that occasion?
She said she felt like he may be a sadistic pedophile.
This was the second time she had actually talked to your child?
To my child, yes.
The defense found only one transcription of an early therapy session in which Ms. Zimmerman's questions were recorded.
They included, Did he put your hand on his ding-dong?
What else did he do with his ding-dong?
Did he put it in your mouth?
That was bad of him to do.
Did he put it anyplace else?
Did he put it in your bottom?
By the time Kyle ended therapy and moved away from Edenton 14 months later, he would make more than 50 allegations.
Among them, Bob tied him with a rope.
Bob choked him on a boat.
Bob put his penis in both his bottom and mouth.
Shelley put a tractor toy in his butt.
Bob cut his own neck and licked the blood like a puppy.
Bob broke into Kyle's house and threatened to break all his toys.
Betsy played doctor with Kyle and made him touch her boobies, peepee, and hiney.
He also implicated Betsy, Dawn, Shelley, Robin, the Fat Man, the Black Gas Attendant,
a black man called Andre, a white man called Andre, Nancy Smith, Scott Privet, and Privet's stepdaughter, Debbie.
A few months later, the Stevers' youngest child, who was a year and a half old when Little Rascals closed,
and now two years old, pulled at his bottom and said, Bob's bad, Mommy.
He, too, was sent to therapy and began disclosing.
Mrs. Stever testified that there was now sibling rivalry between brothers over the disclosures.
After Daniel, Betty Ann's son, had been interviewed by Officer Toppen,
Toppen advised sending the boy for a psychological evaluation.
This time, the therapist Officer Toppen recommended was Judy Abbott,
whose organization sponsored the sexual abuse seminar Officer Toppen had attended.
Judy Abbott, who had a master's in social work, would end up treating 17 children from Little Rascals.
She felt that Daniel needed therapy and accepted him as a patient.
Daniel was being investigated by Judy. He wasn't...
It wasn't therapy. It was an investigation that she was doing on this child.
She gave him time to get to know her, and then it was, you know, question, question, question.
And then there were just so many doubts, so many things just kept on popping up
that I would still question and question and question him at home.
So he was getting it from me, and he was getting it from Judy still.
And he was very insecure. He did not want to be left at preschool by himself.
He screamed every morning when I took him. He was very shy of strangers.
He had nothing to say to... I mean, even to his grandparents, he was, you know, shy of people.
He was not a friendly child anymore. He was just a changed little boy.
The investigators told you, you know, this is how a sexual abuse child behaves.
And they said we were brainwashed, you know.
Everywhere you turn, you know, your child is sexual abuse, and that's why he's doing that.
And we didn't really question the fact that before he was questioned by us and everybody else, that he was fine.
And, you know, it was after he was being questioned and almost interrogated that he started acting this way.
The more Betty Ann heard, the less comfortable she felt.
They had these little pictures of them in the paper.
We had picked up a newspaper, and I had thrown it back there on the back seat where Daniel was sitting.
And I asked him if he knew any of those. He remembered any of those, and he couldn't name any of them.
So I said, Daniel, you know who these people are. No, I don't. I don't know who they are.
I said, come on, Daniel. I said, you know. No, I don't know.
So we went to therapy, and he brought the picture in there with her, and I happened to be listening to this time.
And, you know, she said, you know, who are these people? And he said, I don't know.
Well, he didn't know who they were. He was getting them all mixed up.
I mean, this had been a year, you know. He didn't remember what they looked like, really, I don't think.
But when she wrote up her therapy report for him, then he had gotten every one of them right the first time.
And she hadn't had to tell him who they were.
But I don't remember exactly how. I came about to show him this picture with the sheriff in there,
but he told me that the sheriff was the bad guy, that he had went upstairs and had wanted to put handcuffs on the people.
Anyway, he was one of the ones that was sexually abusing them, too.
And he had pointed to Bob in the same picture and had said that Bob was a good guy.
But, you know, I kept on telling him, my child is confused. You know, he is very confused.
I have confused him. Judy has confused him. We need to get this straightened out.
And Judy kept on saying, no, he's not confused. And H.P. and Brenda would say, no, he's not confused.
He knows what he's talking about. You're the one that's confused.
So I said, well, then we need to investigate the sheriff.
I said, because he has pinpointed the sheriff as being upstairs when this was happening, too.
And then that's when Daniel was confused. Brenda talked and said, no, he's confused now.
Well, you know, a few minutes earlier, now he wasn't confused.
Chris Bean's wife, Grace, testified on direct that she and her husband were determined to find a therapist who was independent
and knew nothing about the case, so there would be no danger of contamination.
Mrs. Bean said they looked until they found Dr. Betty Robertson, a psychologist who supposedly knew nothing about the case
and would conduct three or four evaluation sessions before deciding if a child needed therapy or not.
It didn't quite work out that way. Mrs. Bean was cross-examined by Mike Spivey.
Your intent at that time was to find somebody out of the Edenton area who did not know anything about this case.
That's right.
And you wanted somebody that hadn't had any contact with anyone that would have a fresh approach to it.
Exactly.
So you went to Dr. Robertson and were satisfied that you had somebody that was independent
and knew nothing about the situation in Edenton?
Yes.
When you went there on May 8th, did you know she was already seeing children from little rascals?
She may have seen one other child, but she had not seen more than one.
Did you know that at the time you got to the third session during the evaluation of your son,
she had at least a dozen children there?
No, I did not.
Do you know that she had 17 before she ever finished his evaluation?
No.
She never told you that?
No.
She told your son in your presence that she knew some scary things had been going on in Edenton.
Right.
Didn't that strike you as an odd remark from somebody that didn't know anything about little rascals
or what was going on in Edenton?
I don't know what my husband had told her.
He obviously had given her some background about why we were coming.
Okay, and her remarks to your son based on whatever information she had at that point
was she knew some scary things were going on in Edenton.
Right.
That's what she told your child?
That's what she said.
At the beginning of the evaluation process?
Yes.
Soon, Dr. Robertson would have at least 23 little rascals' children
and opened an office a few minutes from Edenton.
She had a good reputation among the mothers, and a few of them switched their children to her.
One of her techniques was to give the children homework,
that is, to repeat allegations to their parents at home.
Grace Bean explained.
The first time he was given a homework assignment, we decided at the session when he would do it,
and we agreed that it would be Saturday at lunchtime.
When lunchtime came on Saturday, I reminded him that this was the time for him to do his homework,
and he said he was too tired to do his homework, and he would do it after he took his nap.
So he took his nap, and then when he got back up, I said,
now it's time to do your homework from Dr. Betty, and he said, ask me some questions.
And so I would have to set up the whole disclosure.
He was not willing to say it on his own.
I had to ask the questions to get the answer.
So I asked him, did Mr. Bob touch you anywhere he shouldn't?
And he said, no, not really.
He just put his finger hard on my back, and I said,
well, didn't you say that he had put his hand down your pants?
And he said, yes.
And I said, well, what did he do?
And he said to me, you know what he did, Mommy, and then he wouldn't talk about it anymore.
So your feeling at that time was that your son was holding back on it when he told you,
no, that nothing happened.
He was not telling the truth, that he was holding out on you
and that he needed to go through this process so that he could tell you the bad things that happened to him.
If there had been bad things that happened to him, we wanted him to be able to tell us.
And of course, no, or that bad things did not happen was not an acceptable answer.
We didn't think...
Or one that you did not believe and accept.
Right. We felt like he was not telling all that he had on his mind.
What did the jurors make of what they heard about the children's therapy?
Juror Dennis Ray.
The therapist in all probability was trying to get everything out of him.
In the process, there were a lot of things said.
But that's one of the things that bothered me about the trial is why the psychiatrist didn't...
The therapist didn't testify.
And it left a big hole in our trying to go through all the verdicts now
because we didn't know exactly what was said to the children,
how it was said to the children, or why it was said to the children.
Juror Roswell Streeter.
A case like this, I would think that that would be videotape, at least audio tape, you know, third possession.
Maybe the first interview for some kid, nothing happened.
Mr. Bob never touched me.
Three months later, after questioning or interviews, Mr. Bob spanked me.
Maybe a couple more months later, Mr. Bob touched me.
Then you got all these bizarre things happen to the children.
And that's what I wanted to look at. It wasn't that clear.
The therapists themselves did not take the stand.
It was a strategic decision which was made separately by the two sides.
The state either didn't think it necessary or did not want them cross-examined.
The defense regarded them as hostile witnesses.
Instead, they gave the therapy reports to experts to examine.
Dr. Henry Adams, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia.
You've got to remember that most of these children, from what I read, initially denied that any abuse occurred.
These children were repeatedly interrogated until they made disclosures, some of them as long as three, four months later.
This kind of concern about abuse, this conveying to the child that something terrible has happened to them,
and the fact that they might not be telling the truth, certainly would be distressing to any child.
There was almost a consistent, in the early stages, refusal to take the child's word for what had happened.
Dr. Moisey Schopper, professor of child psychiatry at St. Louis University.
I think every one of these cases seemed to be stamped from the same mold, and they all had their agendas.
They all were involved in securing allegations.
I found that very little to nothing was done in the way of treatment.
Major issues were totally ignored or unrecognized.
Everything was put under the general heading of, this must be related to sexual abuse, no matter how far-fetched that may be, theoretically and practically.
This did not meet up to anything that I'm aware of in terms of minimal standards of therapy.
And in terms of treatment, I don't think the kids got any treatment.
In fact, I think a lot was done to undermine their mental health.
Dr. Mark Everson, associate professor of psychology at Chapel Hill, was the only psychological expert the state presented.
He did not read the therapy reports and testified only in general terms.
There are, with many kids, especially traumatized kids, it takes a long time to help them feel comfortable to tell you something.
And even when they start telling you things, you often feel there's a lot more they have to tell that they have not told.
And you often get a kid who will come in and recant.
And then they'll say, yeah, it did happen, and they'll recant, they'll say it did happen.
The problem is you're dealing with very strong fears on the child's part.
And again, they're very easy to intimidate.
So it is a process. That's why you can't do just one interview.
You do one interview, and you may get bad information.
That's why we really advocate a series of interviews with a child.
But, Dr. Schaper says, it depends how you interview.
To have a child present allegations to the therapist and then calling in the parent and having the child repeat the allegations to the parent,
or giving homework assignments that the child must go home and repeat those allegations to mom or to dad, first of all, is very coercive.
It's got nothing to do with any kind of technique that I've heard about or know about.
But what it does is it creates a reality for the child that gets reinforced and reinforced and reinforced, so that we get an allegation.
Whatever way one gets that allegation, whether it's correct, distorted, accurate, but as it gets repeated and repeated and retold, it then becomes a reality for that child.
And this is one of the ways to take allegations and make them into firm, firm memories.
We'll rock you out! We'll show you what we're all about! We'll rock you out!
At A.C. without a doubt, we'll rock you out! At A.C. without a doubt, we'll rock you out!
Life went on in Edenton.
On the surface, it was all still familiar.
But it was all so different.
Warren and Alice Twitty, Betsy's parents, have lived in Edenton for over 30 years.
Churches have been very difficult for me.
Well, I have been a superintendent of the Sunday School. I've been on board the ushers. I've been a Sunday School teacher. I've been a department head.
And no one in the church except the preacher has been to this house.
I should have come up for a re-election on the usher board and I was not asked.
We go because it's our church. I don't always go.
It's a sad life. It's something I never thought that I would ever have to handle.
But apparently, I do have to handle it. And I'm trying.
They were all trying.
Laura, Bob and Betsy's daughter, was being raised by Nancy Smith, Betsy's sister.
Laura has a problem with being angry. She's very angry. And she just doesn't know who to be angry with.
She has had her whole world taken away from her.
Everything that she knows and understands has either been forcibly removed from her or sold or packed away.
About a month ago, Laura began to call me mommy and call Jimmy daddy.
And the first time she did it, we were standing in the kitchen and I remember I was cutting an apple for their after school snack.
And I whirled around and I said, I'm not your mommy. And it scared her.
And I felt terrible after I'd done it, but that's very important to me. I am not her mother.
Look, this is your mom. That's when she was going to her prom.
She has a mother who loves her very much, who's coming back to be her mommy.
And Laura's got hold on to that, just like the rest of us do.
She carried flowers. Look in there, she is again. Isn't she pretty?
All the defendants were separated from their children.
Robin, who was pregnant when the alleged abuse occurred, left behind her baby Anthony, seven months old,
and her husband Kevin, who was 19.
Kevin was raising Anthony with the help of his mother and Robin's mother, Lou.
I just can't believe it. All her dreams and illusions get shattered.
You teach your children, you know you'll pay the law. You don't cheat on your income taxes.
You believe in God and you'll be good to people and nobody will bother you.
And this whole thing just means shatter, reputation.
I always said, reputation means more than anything, Robin. And she knew that.
She had a good reputation. In fact, my neighbor told me, she said,
of all the teenagers she knew, Robin was squeaky clean.
You know, it was what you call a squeaky clean teenager.
And all the letters I get from her, you could read them, I've got them all in a box.
Not one word of hate, blame. She just says, well, Mom, you know, the one letter she wrote to me,
I'll find it for you one day when I get in there.
She said, I had it all. I was happy as a child, happy in high school.
I had a man to love me and I loved, a new baby and a good mother. And it's gone.
The case also took a toll on the parents' lives.
Jim Baker, an airline captain, was gone a lot.
His wife, Lisa, tried to continue her life, but she thought about the case constantly and blamed herself.
A mother can't help feeling guilty. You voluntarily put your children into a situation,
a dangerous situation, unknowing.
Like many other couples, their marriage suffered.
It didn't bother me so much that Jim was gone. What surprised me is his lack of emotion.
We've had some bad times. She's had some hard days that I just kind of had to remove myself and go for a long bike ride.
Things have to be very logical for Jim and this was not logical and therefore he could not understand.
I needed him to share my frustration and my anger and he could not always do that.
Now it's that healing process has begun and now it's the time to put it all in order again.
It is still overwhelming. It's still more to comprehend than you can imagine.
They all felt that the lives of their children had been irrevocably changed.
It is a lifelong thing with him now. We know that through therapy. We know that through seminars.
That we need to be prepared for him so we can help him go through these different periods in his life that he will face.
It's something that's going to be with our children for the rest of their lives that we're going to have to deal with for the rest of their lives.
This is not something that goes away. You know you deal with it and but you keep dealing with it.
It's never going to go away. It's going to be part of our lives.
Looking at the parents sitting at the court hearings, it was hard not to wonder if they had second thoughts.
Would their children have been better off if they hadn't sent them to the therapists?
No, they said. There were definitely symptoms before therapy.
I want to ask you a real hard question. I'm told that many children denied that they were abused.
And the parents didn't see any signs of abuse either.
Is it possible that if you let the children alone that they would have been alright?
I'm going to say no. I think things would have...there were things that were...or she had lots...my child had lots of anger before she opened up.
There were lots of violent temper tantrums.
And the things that she was keeping bottled up that had to come out and they were coming out in really violent temper tantrums.
And I really didn't know where they were coming from.
He started out coming into our bedroom about five times a night.
And he would be so afraid to go in his room. And I just thought this was something normal for a two and a half, three year old child.
But this continued on for ten months and he would be absolutely petrified.
Lisa Baker tormented herself for months that as a mother she should have known.
The signs were there. There were signs there that every mother should know.
There were things I should have checked out.
But didn't. And only in retrospect have I realized this.
That issue of mothers noticing symptoms in retrospect was a crucial one for the defense who argued that none of the mothers saw anything wrong at the time.
Peggy Brooks testified on direct that her child exhibited severe problems in the fall of 1988.
He developed many fears of slides, of the dark, of monsters.
He had problems sleeping.
He had bruises on his arms and legs.
Pain with bowel movements.
And he complained constantly that his bottom hurt.
Peggy had taken her son to a mental health clinic a few months before the case broke.
Peggy and her husband had separated when her son was five months old.
And the child had on and off problems visiting the father.
Now that the father had recently remarried, the child once again did not want to see him.
He was also aggressive at his preschool and did not like the daycare.
Mike Spivey questioned her about the visit to the clinic.
Did you tell her at that time that you were finding bruises all over him?
No, I didn't.
Why not?
I don't know.
Did you tell her at that time that he was pulling at his bottom all the time and that it hurt and his bottom was red and that he had pain with bowel movements several times each week?
No, I didn't.
Why not?
I don't know.
Did you tell her at that time that he was scared of being on slides and the fears of animals?
I don't remember if I discussed his fears or not.
You don't find anything in this report about such things, do you?
No.
Did you tell her about the sleep problems that had been getting progressively worse?
I told her he had trouble going to sleep at night.
Can you explain to me then why she says that you reported that his appetite was usually good, he sleeps well, although he doesn't seem to need much sleep.
Why would she have gotten the impression that he slept well if you just finished telling her about the sleep problems that he'd been having?
That was her interpretation, I suppose.
She misinterpreted what you were saying again.
Apparently.
You said he was having a red rectum, would pull at his bottom all the time, he would cry and carry on with the pain with bowel movements.
How many times did you take him to the doctor for that?
I didn't.
Never? Did you not once?
No, I didn't.
Now, did you choose to simply ignore your child's pain at that point or was he just not having the pain?
Neither. I asked him what was wrong, why his bottom was red.
You said it was a severe, serious problem, didn't you?
I didn't know how severe a problem it was.
Well, you didn't know how severe it was. Why didn't you take him to the doctor?
If he was doubled over screaming with pain, I might have taken him to a doctor.
These are children that had good parents.
These are children that had parents who were very concerned about the welfare of their children.
These were children who regularly saw pediatricians and family doctors, some of them every single month.
And nowhere in all of those records on any of these children is there anything that indicates they were having any of these problems.
Now, it's very difficult to believe that a mother who is very concerned or a father who is very concerned about their child and their child is waking up, for example, screaming every night for a month with terrible nightmares.
It's difficult to believe that that parent is not going to go at their next doctor visit and make some mention of it to their doctor.
And that never occurred.
Grace Bean, whose husband represented Bob Kelly until April 1989, testified about the severe symptoms she had noticed in her son beginning six months earlier.
She testified that very soon after her son entered Little Rascals, he developed terrible temper tantrums.
He would lie on the floor, kick and scream, lashing out at her.
It sometimes lasted for more than an hour.
The prosecutor asked her, What other changes, if any, did you observe in him?
He began having nightmares that he had never had before.
They were such that he was kicking, screaming.
His eyes would be open.
You couldn't talk to him.
You couldn't wake him up.
And there was nothing to do but wait it out.
How long was it after the daycare opened that these nightmares began?
Probably three or four weeks, maybe at the most.
How often would he have a nightmare?
Every night.
She also testified that he was belligerent, started baby talk.
He wouldn't go to the bathroom unless she went with him and stood guard at the door.
He had pain with bowel movements.
He had stomach aches and leg aches.
He became hysterical over any small injury to him or to anyone else.
He would scream and kick when she tried to wash his hair.
Mrs. Bean testified that all those symptoms started very soon after he started going to Little Rascals.
Mike Spivey cross-examined her.
Now, when you took your son to the doctor in the fall of 1988,
what were the symptoms that led you to carry him to Dr. Perry?
I don't remember the specific visit, but he has had bronchitis more than once, so it's very possible.
That's why we went.
But at that time, there was nothing about having nightmares or night terrors
where he couldn't sleep every single night for a month,
having tantrums for an hour every single day, baby talking, being uncooperative, having tingling,
having to have a guard outside the bathroom door, having continuous stomach aches and leg aches,
overreacting to pain.
None of those things at that time concerned you enough to go to a doctor or a psychologist
or any other professional person about your child's behavior during the fall of 1988?
Yes, it concerned me. Of course it did.
Not enough to go to a doctor, though, did it?
I wouldn't go to a medical doctor about it.
You didn't go to anybody about it then, did you?
No. We rationalized ourselves about it.
You went to your medical doctor for a cough, but you would not go to a doctor
or anyone else for a child that was sitting up screaming every single night for over a month?
We tried to think why he would be doing that.
After allegations of sexual abuse were made in January of 1989,
and your sons were still in the daycare,
and your son was still sitting up every single night having night terrors and pain
when he went to the bathroom and all these other things,
it never crossed your mind then you needed to see some professional person?
We continued to do our own homework that we could.
We are not hysterical people that jump to conclusions.
And when you couldn't find any answer and the behaviors multiplied...
The only children who did not seem to have been abused at the daycare
were children of parents who did not send their children to therapists
or who sent them to independent therapists.
The Bloom children, Brittany and Tanner, went to Little Rascals.
Bob and Betsy Kelly also babysat for them.
When other parents began sending their children to be evaluated, the Blooms worried.
Tanner's godfather is a psychiatrist in Atlanta.
And we were upset. People were talking about how they were having their children evaluated.
And I called him up and I said, his name is Sam. I said, Sam, what do I do?
Do I have them evaluated?
So he said, if they acted normally, then he felt that they were probably okay,
but if I was not comfortable with it, to take them to a psychiatrist, not one in the area.
And when I had them evaluated, do not mention anything about Little Rascals, a daycare situation.
Just say, I want my children evaluated. I'd like both of them evaluated.
And see what the results are.
And I felt very comfortable with that, because I didn't feel like there would be any prejudice.
And that's what he said. He said that that way there won't be any prejudice
and you know what's really going on if you go in for a true evaluation.
And what happened finally? What did you do?
Well, we talked about it and we never had them...
I think we never saw the indication that anything was wrong.
And what happened? Do you find that they're okay? I mean, are they fine?
I think they're fine. I mean, they've never showed any results.
They haven't done anything out of the ordinary.
They've never talked about anything bad happening to them.
And I don't know, they act like normal kids to me.
Debbie Forrest also felt her child was fine.
In fact, she never believed any abuse occurred at Little Rascals.
I was probably unique in that I worked full time.
And a lot of the moms there didn't.
They worked part time or their kids were there, so they got a break to be with the younger children
or just to get a break from the kids.
And my schedule was awful.
They never knew what time my son was dropped off.
They never knew what time he'd be picked up.
My husband was an insurance agent.
He did a lot of business in the evenings and the early morning.
Someone might pick up Frankie at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, 3 o'clock in the afternoon,
or I might call and say, would you drop him off on your way home?
I won't make it in time.
Our hours were just ridiculous.
They would never have had any idea when I was coming or going.
I frequently would get two hours in the afternoon and go pick him up,
wake him up from nap time and go have lunch and spend a little bit of time with him.
And all that time, 18 months of being there, and all my comings and goings
and my husband's comings and goings, we never saw anything to give us any concern, ever.
And yet the children in their various interviews with the police and therapists
mentioned Debbie Forrest's son as one of those who had been abused.
I got phone calls. My family got phone calls.
One particular lady, Judy Abbott, who told me that she was working with a number of children
in a group therapy, called my mother and said she was concerned
and that I might have fallen through the cracks.
And she phoned me at work and upset me very much.
She told me that it was imperative not only that I get treatment for my son,
but that I was being a neglectful mother if I didn't,
and that the best thing for me to do would be to bring him back there.
And I said that I preferred to have an independent type evaluation,
and she said that was a very bad idea, that it needed to be somebody
that was familiar with the case, knew what happened to the other children,
and that if I did that, that they would take care of paying for it.
There would be no expense to me.
Of course, if I chose someone locally, I'd have to pay for it.
In spite of the financial disadvantage, Debbie Forrest decided to send her son
to an independent clinic in Charlotte, where she now lived.
I took him to a clinic and had him talk to and physically examined
and discussed everything I could think of at the pediatric clinic there.
And they spent hours with him.
And they told me not to be concerned.
He seemed to have the level of awareness and understanding
and knowledge that was appropriate for his age.
He was extremely vocal.
He was a kid that probably would come home and tell me if something disturbed him.
He tells me everything else.
Hello, Mama.
Don't jump. Don't get any ideas in your head, okay?
Betty Ann Phillips, who worked at the daycare,
also felt that her child told her everything.
So she was surprised and dismayed to learn that her 3-year-old child
had made allegations in therapy which contributed to the arrest of four people.
Bob Kelly, Scott Privet, Betsy Kelly, and Don Wilson.
Judy Abbott's therapy notes of the session in which Daniel implicated Don reads,
What are you doing to the dolls?
Put Mr. Bob and Miss Don in jail.
Why do you want to put Mr. Bob and Miss Don in jail?
They mean.
Why are they mean?
They touched each other's privates.
Can you use the dolls and show me how they touched each other's privates?
Daniel took the two nude dolls and demonstrated vaginal penetration
with the Miss Don doll on the bottom and the Mr. Bob doll on top.
He then demonstrated fellatio with the Miss Don doll on its knees.
How do you know that Mr. Bob and Miss Don did this?
Watched.
This is how Daniel's parents remembered it.
He was playing with the dolls, female doll and the male doll.
The head end was just listening. She wasn't watching.
But evidently the male doll was on top of the female doll.
He was calling the male doll Mr. Bob, but he would never name the female doll.
Judy Abbott kept saying, Who is this female? Who is this girl?
He never would say.
She said, Is that Miss Don?
And Daniel said, Yeah. And that was how Don's indictments were handed down.
Indictment No. 89 CRS-1281.
In the presence of the victim, Daniel Phillips,
Robert Fulton Kelly Jr. put his penis into the mouth of the defendant.
At one point, the defendant was on bottom and Robert Fulton Kelly Jr. was on top.
At one point, the defendant was on her knees with Robert Fulton Kelly's penis in her mouth.
Daniel Phillips did not testify at the trial.
Twelve other children did.
Hundreds of allegations of abuse by Bob Kelly had been reduced to 100 counts.
The most horrible charges involved penetration.
Children raped by Bob Kelly, sodomized, had instruments and objects inserted into their orifices.
The question of whether there was any evidence of this trauma was crucial.
Almost all the children had undergone medical examinations.
The physicians were called to testify.
North Carolina watched.
WCTI-TV 12, the News Leader.
It's a matter of opinion or more precisely, whose medical opinion the jury believes.
Did you ever observe anything in his physical conditions that would indicate any type of sexual maltreatment, abuse or physical abuse?
No, sir.
Dr. Devine brought with him four children's medical records, each was allegedly abused by Bob Kelly, but Devine said he never saw any evidence of it.
Next on the stand, a Norfolk doctor and expert in child abuse who saw one of the children on a referral from the boys' therapist.
No abnormal dilatation or dilating of the anus.
No abnormality of the anal grip or the ability of the anus to contract and certainly no evidence of any external injury.
But under cross-examination, the prosecution asked about the same child.
You didn't make a diagnosis, did you not?
That's correct.
And what was your diagnosis?
The diagnosis was suspected child abuse.
Dr. Dietrich later explained that medically there was no evidence, but legally he couldn't ignore the therapist's findings.
I use the term suspected abuse because that is the history that I was given.
The state expert, Dr. Jean Smith, was sure of her findings.
Definite rape.
In other words, vaginal penetration of the three little girls she examined.
What makes you be able to assign that degree of certainty with regard to Lauren?
The history and the physical examination were consistent with vaginal penetration.
And what specific findings were consistent with vaginal penetration?
Dr. Smith explained the subtle physical differences she found in the three girls.
Accumulation of the findings of the growing together of the tissue at the seven o'clock and the five o'clock positions.
There was also the thinning of the hymenal edge at the right side on the photograph itself.
The defense physicians did not have the opportunity to examine the little girls, but they could compare Dr. Smith's slides to those of non-abused girls.
The North Carolina News Report told of their findings.
An expert in the medical photographs disputed those subtleties, arguing that sexual penetration leaves a more obvious scar.
When tissues are torn apart in a large way and they heal back together, especially without a surgeon's skill, they don't always heal perfectly.
Dr. Irons, who said he's testifying because of professional interests, told the court that penetration of a prepubescent girl would do severe damage.
I have never diagnosed a case of penile penetration of the vagina when I did not see very significant physical findings.
And late in the afternoon, another family practitioner and another denial of abuse.
But I did a complete examination and dealing with child abuse, I examined the child completely from head to toe, including a perineum, and I stated that it was within normal limits.
In Farmville, I'm Katherine Ricks, TV 12 News.
While the jury was left to sort through the inconclusive medical evidence, the prosecution shifted its stance and ended up dropping the argument they had worked hard to build.
So when you're in the jury room thinking about this issue, think about the definition of vaginal intercourse.
Penetration, however slight.
In North Carolina's law, rape does not necessarily mean penetration.
Rape can mean a touch of the sex organ, however slight.
If the vagina is past the hymen, you may not see evidence of it. And that's all they're talking about here. Penetration, however slight, it's not necessarily the vagina to be entered or the hymen to be ruptured.
And that's what Bob Kelly was doing. And that's what we're talking about.
Because if he had gone into a violent kind of act with these children, then the parents would have known. It just didn't happen like that, because he didn't want it to happen like that.
But they tell you he raped these children. They tell you in their documents he penetrated these children.
They tell you that he inserted things into these children.
You know, every other time they're telling you these things.
But in the light of day, the physical evidence doesn't bear it out.
And so we've got to change. We have to move. We have to shift again.
Penetration now is, however slight. You'll hear that. That's the law.
And he didn't really penetrate.
This sadistic human being that they have reviled for so long has the wherewithal and the ability to control his emotions and control his sexual desires to that extent.
Now which is it? Is he a guy that wants to be real gentle and be careful so you don't hurt the children?
Or is he this vicious brute that's inflicting all these injuries on children?
Doesn't make any difference. Run you whatever will sell.
It's just not realistic.
The members of the jury we spoke with were not convinced by the medical evidence.
Juror David Williams.
No. No. Definitely not.
The medical evidence doesn't faze me, I won't get it. No, it didn't.
Juror Roswell Streeter.
You would think there would be some real hard evidence, but I didn't see that.
I mean, I'm no medical expert or anything like that, but I'm just a person with common sense.
I mean, I didn't see it. I didn't see it there. And there was no way that they were going to convince me that it was rape based on physical evidence.
Juror Dennis Ray.
We don't know to what extent he went in and violated these children.
A lot of these cases, the children were six, eight months later after these things happened to them that they were taken to Chapel Hill for an examination.
And the state of North Carolina says rape is ever how so gentle. It doesn't have to pass through the hymen to be rape.
Mary Nichols summed it up.
Well, you really couldn't put your finger on it. But you didn't have anything but circumstantial evidence.
So you don't want to convict a man on circumstantial evidence for life.
Yet that's exactly what they would do. They would convict Bob Kelly on 99 charges out of 100 and see him sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences.
Tomorrow in part two of Innocence Lost, the verdict. The children testify.
He would say he would kill my mommy and daddy. Well, he put his penis in my private.
Did Mr. Bob ever do anything to your ding dong? He sucked on it.
The jurors listen. All the evidence is that it is the work of the children. And I believe that.
The children are easily led and I just could not go along with what they were saying.
When I walked downstairs, we started the liberation. Bob Kelly was not a guilty man.
So what happened in the jury room? There was a lot of hostility that if you did not agree, they looked at you like you were the village idiot.
I finally agreed just to get out of there. But I don't believe justice was served on a man.
It was not honest. It was contaminated. I didn't follow the judge's instruction.
And what does Bob Kelly's guilty verdict mean for the other defendants?
As I said, you would be eligible for parole immediately. You would have served approximately a year and four or five years.
Part of me wants to take the plea, but there's always that bad side of it that I pleaded guilty to something I didn't do.
Watch the conclusion of Innocence Lost, The Verdict, tomorrow night.
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