THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 3, 1995 TAG: 9505030445
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 191 lines
In decisions harshly critical of the prosecution, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Tuesday that Robert F. ``Bob'' Kelly Jr. should get a new trial in Edenton's divisive Little Rascals child sex abuse cases.
The appellate judges in Raleigh also ordered another trial for Kathryn Dawn Wilson, a cook at the Edenton day-care center who also was convicted of molesting Little Rascals toddlers.
North Carolina Attorney General Michael Easley quickly announced that he would ask the state Supreme Court to intervene to uphold the convictions.
Reaction to the appellate court's ruling, like public opinion during the long and notorious trials, was sharply divided.
``The witch hunt that began in Edenton seven years ago should now be over,'' said Raymond Lawrence, chairman of the Committee for Support of the Edenton Seven. ``We call on the state to close its books on this fiasco as gracefully as possible.
``The seven falsely accused persons who have endured this state-sponsored torment for all these years should now be permitted to rebuild their lives.''
But the decision was called ``disappointing,'' by Nancy Lamb, an assistant district attorney in Elizabeth City who was a special prosecutor in several Little Rascals trials.
``I feel strongly that we ought to carry this case on down the road,'' Lamb said.
By midafternoon Tuesday, Easley had done just that.
``On behalf of the child victims in this case and the people of this state, I am petitioning the North Carolina Supreme Court to review these cases immediately and to uphold the convictions of the trial court,'' Easley said in Raleigh.
There was no word when the state Supreme Court would act on the attorney general's plea.
But on Edenton's genteel main street and all over northeastern North Carolina, news that the emotionally wrenching Little Rascals case might be aired again spread quickly, rekindling some of the community distress that had all but died down in the three years since Kelly's conviction in 1992.
``We'd put it behind us; the children, the parents, all of us were getting on with our lives - now this . . . ,'' said a Chowan County employee, who asked not to be identified.
Kelly received 12 consecutive life sentences for molesting a dozen children. Dawn Wilson got life after being convicted of five sex-abuse counts.
Betsy Kelly, wife of Bob Kelly and a co-owner of the center, pleaded no contest in January 1994 to 26 counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor and to four other counts, including conspiracy and committing a crime against nature. She was sentenced to seven years in prison and paroled last Nov. 28.
Both Kellys have insisted on their innocence.
A fourth defendant, Willard Scott Privott, spent three years in jail awaiting trial. Last June, he pleaded no contest to taking indecent liberties with a minor, crimes against nature and conspiracy. He was sentenced to five years' probation.
Three other defendants have not been tried.
After the sentences, community tensions were slow to ease as families whose children had testified as victims were initially shunned by former friends and neighbors who thought Kelly and the other Little Rascals defendants had been falsely accused.
Coming as it did after several other widely publicized child abuse trials, the Little Rascals case added to national polarization about whether the sex charges were legitimate or the result of witch-hunt hysteria.
The appeals court decision, written by Chief Judge Gerald Arnold, found that the Little Rascals prosecutors had erred in several ways in the trials of Kelly and Wilson.
In one comment on the Dawn Wilson trial, the appeals court called a maneuver by the chief special prosecutor, William Hart, ``a grossly improper argument.''
In their unanimous opinion, the three appeals court judges found that Hart at one point had tried to impugn the reputation of Wilson by placing in the courtroom audience two people whose presence was likely to intimidate Wilson.
Hart never called the pair as witnesses, but the court decided that by his actions, Hart had implied to Wilson that he intended to use the two people against her in a way that might result in self-incrimination.
``We take this occasion expressly to disapprove of the foregoing arguments by the prosecutor in that they mislead, misstate the law, and are calculated to demean defense counsel,'' said the appelate ruling in the Wilson decision.
In the decision supporting Kelly's appeal for a new trial, the three judges continued their criticism:
Prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense before Kelly's trial, the judges ruled. And Judge D. Marsh McLelland, who presided at the trial, did not comply with rulings from higher state courts that he examine some of the evidence to see whether the defense should rightfully examine it.
Some of the evidence from ``lay witnesses,'' including parents of abused children, was improperly introduced against Kelly by the prosecution, the appeals court found. Several of the parents attributed bizarre behavior by their children directly to sexual assaults by Kelly. The court held that technical descriptions of abnormal behavior ``can come in only through an expert'' witness.
During the trial, one parent testified that after his child was examined by a physician who found evidence of abuse, he (the parent) ``knew without a shadow of a doubt Bob Kelly raped my daughter.'' The court held that ``even an expert witness is not permitted to express his opinion that it was defendant who raped an alleged victim.''
Another parent testified of ``night terrors'' that her child experienced and added that as a parent she realized ``that it is a common occurrence'' with children who are sexually or physically abused.
``This testimony clearly oversteps the boundaries of permissible opinion for a lay witness,'' the appellate judges said.
Arnold and the other two Appeals Court judges, Joseph R. John and Clifton E. Johnson, concluded their review of the Kelly case with a critical examination of the role played by Christopher Bean, then an Edenton attorney and now a District Court judge in the 1st Judicial District.
When Kelly was first accused of sexual abuse of many of his small charges at the day-care center, he retained his friend Bean as his personal defense attorney.
But Bean abruptly withdrew as Kelly's lawyer when Bean discovered that his son had been named as a potential sex victim in the Little Rascals case.
After his withdrawal, Bean ``became a vocal proponent for the prosecuting witnesses,'' the appeals court said, even though Kelly sought to prevent Bean and his wife, Grace, from testifying against him.
``Defendant's motion (to restrain Bean) should have been granted,'' the court held. ``The trial court erred in allowing reference to the attorney-client relationship and its effect on the Beans.''
Bean's testimony during the trial was dramatic:
``I had believed adamantly and completely in Bob Kelly's innocence,'' Bean testified, ``I've never been so shattered . . . to face the possibility that the allegations . . . could be true. And then to think that my own child had been abused. Grace and I stood in the kitchen and we cried.''
The appeal judges were blunt.
``Highly prejudicial statements like `I've never been so shattered' and `I had believed in his total innocence' have no probative value whatsoever.
``It was error to allow such testimony.
``It is untenable to assert that this error did not prejudice defendant. The prejudice inherent in having your former attorney, once your champion and defender, announce his knowledge of your guilt to the jury is blatantly obvious,'' the court concluded. ILLUSTRATION: FILE COLOR PHOTOS
KATHRYN DAWN WILSON
The former Little Rascals cook - convicted of five sex-abuse charges
- is ``just ecstatic.''
ROBERT F. KELLY JR.
He received 12 consecutive life sentences for molesting a dozen
children.
Color photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/Staff
The day-care in Edenton. Town residents had hoped the trauma was
finally past.
Graphic
THE LITTLE RASCALS CHRONOLOGY
January 1989. Chowan County officials begin investigating the
Little Rascals Day Care center in Edenton for possible sex abuse
after the mother of a child who attended the center raises
suspicions.
April 1989 to January 1990. Day-care co-owner Robert F. ``Bob''
Kelly Jr. and six others - including his wife, co-owner Elizabeth T.
Kelly - are charged with more than 400 counts of sexually abusing
more than 30 youngsters.
April 1992. A Pitt County jury finds Bob Kelly guilty of sexually
molesting 12 children. He is sentenced to 12 consecutive life
terms.
January 1993 - Kathryn Dawn Wilson, the day-care's cook, is found
guilty of five counts of sexually abusing four children.
July 1993. The television series ``Frontline'' airs a documentary
in which three jurors in Bob Kelly's trial allege juror misconduct.
December 1993. The state Court of Appeals orders a hearing to air
allegations that one of the jurors, who worked at a state prison,
had told fellow jurors that an inmate at the prison said Kelly was a
known child molester. The judge denies Kelly another trial.
January 1994 - Elizabeth Kelly pleads no contest to 30 counts of
sexually abusing children at the day-care. She is sentenced to seven
years but is given credit for the two years she spent in jail
awaiting trial. She is paroled later in the year.
June 1994. Willard Scott Privott, a golfing buddy of Bob Kelly,
pleads no contest to 34 counts of taking indecent liberties with
children. He is given credit for 3 1/2 years spent in jail awaiting
trial and receives a 10-year suspended sentence and probation.
January 1995. Attorneys for Bob Kelly and Wilson ask the North
Carolina Court of Appeals to overturn their convictions.
May 2, 1995. The court orders new trials for Kelly and Wilson.
KEYWORDS: DAY CARE CENTERS CHILD ABUSE SEX CRIME
CHILD MOLESTER TRIAL SENTENCING
RETRIAL by CNB