In Non-Homeric Odyssey, the System Is Victorious

Title it McMartin II. Or Salem witch hunts anew.

Ofra Bikel’s three “Innocence Lost” documentaries about the deeply troubling Little Rascals Day Care case--the last of which airs Tuesday night on the PBS series “Frontline”--are one long, throbbing, agonizing ache, a remarkable body of work that records an odyssey of anguish straddling a hellish eight years.

And does nothing to inspire confidence in the legal system.

“Most people think if you didn’t do something, the system will take care of you,” the Israeli-born filmmaker said from New York last week. “It’s a terrible mistake. The system will not take care of you.”

Bikel believes strong evidence of that lies in a picturesque hamlet where fierce accusations have come in soft drawls. It’s Edenton--lovely, serene and historic, a North Carolina costal village of 6,000 known for its lazy summers, traditional values, gracious living and genteel society.

Yet not genteel in the eyes of the Little Rascals Seven. In 1989--when the screaming din of L.A.’s McMartin alleged molestation case would soon fall off to a barely audible hum--they were arrested and charged in Edenton with sexually abusing scores of children at a preschool facility operated by well-liked Bob and Betsy Kelly.

Accused were the Kellys; three of their employees, Shelly Stone and young mothers Robin Byrum and Dawn Wilson, and Edenton residents Darlene Harris and Scott Privott. The latter was a middle-aged video store owner who claimed never to have been inside the day-care center, a bustling place located just a block off the town’s main street.

Some of Betsy Kelly’s best friends became her accusers, and the case has left a thick residue of ruined lives, wrecked marriages and broken families, pain felt on both sides of the case. Bob Kelly and Wilson, the only two defendants tried, were convicted. Other defendants, initially unable to make seemingly exorbitant bond, spent long stretches in jail.

In an age when more and more emphasis is put on victims’ rights, here is a case whose main victims, judging by Bikel’s films, appear to be the accused. You can’t help inferring that North Carolina authorities were the ones doing the abusing, ultimately advancing their case against seemingly innocent defendants in order to avoid losing face.

That view is not challenged on camera by the Chowan County District Attorney’s office because, Bikel says, prosecutors repeatedly rejected her requests for interviews. Nor did Asst. Dist. Atty. Nancy Lamb, who became the case’s lead prosecutor, return a call to her office last week by The Times. So Bikel’s documentaries (which give substantial air time to some of the parents) have done most of the talking, shining national publicity on a case that otherwise might have languished in relative obscurity.

Bikel artfully chronicled the case in sad, frightening, revealing “Frontline” programs that aired in 1991 and 1993, and her latest program is a powerful update that includes a dramatic new twist that came about just Friday.

Lacking physical evidence, conclusive medical evidence and eyewitnesses, the case against the seven defendants rested almost entirely on a “flood of allegations” by about 90 children. Echoing the McMartin case, parents of alleged Little Rascals victims insisted that children “do not lie about such things like this.”

There were other McMartin parallels, with defense lawyers arguing that these children, so pliant and anxious to please, had been manipulated by therapists into making up stories of abuse. And prosecutors tenaciously pursued some charges that defied logic and were seemingly too absurd to be believed, such as mass baby killings and lewd acts in spaceships.

But believed they were, in trials that meted out life sentences to Bob Kelly and Wilson, the day care’s young cook who took her chances on a trial after rejecting a prosecution offer of spending just a few more months in jail--away from her husband and small child--in exchange for a guilty plea.

“In the end, jurors heard the children,” shouts a newspaper headline.

Those guilty verdicts were later overturned by an appeals court, which ordered new trials for Bob Kelly and Wilson. But the district attorney’s office on Friday dropped Little Rascals abuse charges against them. The slate is not quite cleared, though, for prosecutor Lamb may still proceed with another sexual abuse charge her office filed against Kelly after his Little Rascals conviction was overturned.

Charges earlier had also been dismissed against Byrum and Stone. And Privott--after spending 1,333 days in jail, reportedly without hearing specifics on the charges against him--agreed in 1994 to probation in exchange for a no contest plea, a sort of legal limbo in which the accused neither admits guilt nor makes a defense.

He makes a crucial point, asking in Tuesday’s documentary: “If I’m supposed to be the monster they said I was, if I did these crimes they said I did, why would they offer me a plea?”

The same question applies to the other alleged monsters who agreed to plea bargains to avoid the likelihood of long jail sentences, including Betsy Kelly. After repeatedly vowing never to take a plea, she agreed to plead no contest in 1994, only moments before her trial was to begin, angering her loyal, spirited sister, Nancy, and disappointing other members of her family who had stood so solidly behind her.

“I was beaten,” Betsy explains almost pitifully in Tuesday’s film. “I know that Nancy was so angry. I know that my father was very disappointed. But I was going to be the one who walked through those gates . . . and spend the rest of my in prison if it didn’t work out.”

Nancy says she understands, but that “the bottom line is she quit. And that leaves the question always hanging there. If she wasn’t guilty, why did she take a plea?”

Nancy says she believes in her sister’s innocence but, ever brutally candid, adds that when she learned of Betsy’s no contest plea, she had a doubt for a “split second.”

If there are any illusions about Betsy’s stigma enduring, they’re shattered by the words of a parent of one of the alleged victims: “People know she is a child abuser. That’s what’s important.”

The importance of Bikel’s latest film lies not only in its eternal questioning of accepted truths, but also in its ability to force you into the shoes of the defendants, making you wonder how you would decide if confronted by the choices facing some of the defendants: Plead innocent at a trial that brings the probability of a lifetime in prison, away from your loved ones, or agree to the partial admission of guilt that comes with freedom?

The trial danger looms even larger when three of Bob Kelly’s jurors tell Bikel’s camera that they endorsed a guilty verdict despite believing him innocent. In footage repeated from Bikel’s previous films, they admit they buckled under pressure from their fellow jurors. One woman says she was made to feel like the “village idiot” for opposing the majority; a man with heart trouble feared for his health after feeling a “hurt” in his chest. “I finally agreed [with the guilty verdict] just to get out of there.”

We hear also that, in violation of the judge’s ban on outside material entering the jury room, Kelly’s jurors reached conclusions about him based on a magazine article about pedophiles that one of them smuggled into the deliberations.

Ugly case, ugly picture, despite the community’s postcard good looks.

“This is a glorious little town, incredibly beautiful with a wonderful, fun inn,” Bikel said on the phone, sounding briefly like a member of the local chamber of commerce. “And it has very nice people who are attractive and interesting. It’s the kind of town that when you come there, you wish that you could move there. It seems like America at its best. That’s what’s so depressing about it.”

Meanwhile, life goes on. Sort of. Hollywood has called, naturally. Bikel says that Steven Spielberg has acquired the rights to Betsy’s story, and a script has been written. But the Betsy of old “is not there anymore,” Betsy wearily tells the camera.

* “Innocence Lost: The Plea” airs on “Frontline” Tuesday at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28.