At 3:00pm on Monday, March 31st, we will be hosting local authors Betsy Hester and Robin Couto for a presentation with Q&A on their recent book: Twenty-One Boxes: Robin’s Story and the Tragedy of the Edenton Seven. We would like to invite and encourage you to attend. The case is fascinating on many levels and continues to serve as a cautionary tale of misinformation, social contagion, and faulty law enforcement procedures. Robin Couto’s first-hand experience as one of the defendants is deeply moving.

About the book:

In 1989, the Little Rascals Day Care in Edenton, North Carolina, was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight. One day, the owner’s husband disciplined a boy at naptime, and soon an angry mother suggested that it was more than just a slap. Rumors quickly morphed into charges of unimaginable crimes against dozens of little children. Panic consumed the town, as the police, therapists, and parents relentlessly pressured the children who attended the day care to name their teachers responsible for multiple allegations of abuse. The Edenton Seven were caught up in the accusations, including nineteen-year-old teacher Robin Boles Byrum. She spent nearly a year in jail under an enormous bond meant to pressure her to “tell the truth” while she had a new baby at home. Eerily reminiscent of the hysteria that gripped Salem, Massachusetts, during the witch trials of the seventeenth century, the Little Rascals case ultimately became the longest and most expensive criminal trial in North Carolina history.

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