And in the midst of the investigation, as Arnold is trying to figure out whether a guilty plea will improve or harm Jesses chances of acquittal, it watches the three boys try to cheer up their dad by outfitting him in a balloon animal costume. "I never touched a child in an inappropriate way. Some relationships have that, where the woman controls the man. We know how many times you been to the class. Free! forced to . I remember them talking to my parents about this within earshot of me, he said. . Edit Edit profile photo . Mr. Friedman, now 44, married and running an online book-selling business, was freed on parole in 2001 after serving 13 years and is now classified as a Level 3 violent sex offender, which bars him from being near playgrounds, schools, houses of worship and other places children may gather. But they have no such reservations about their own interviews, conducted with other detectives twenty-five years after the investigation concluded: All officers spoken to by the Review Team reject the claim that victims were told what to say.. My father and I are collectively charged with hundreds of counts. But rather than arrive at this conclusion, the Review Team decided that all the available evidence pointed to Jesses guilt. Jarecki has provided the DA's office a ton of new evidence supporting Jesse's innocence. Only one member of the Friedman family seems to have made a clean getaway. They told me repeatedly that other students in my class had already told them that they had been abused, one former student said, and that they were certain that in fact I had also been abused and that I should tell them so. Eventually, students began to realize what was going on: the police would not stop returning for more interviews until they heard that abuse had taken place. It focused overwhelmingly on sexual abuseno groups of day-care workers were accused of banding together to simply beat or kick the kids they cared for. Now grown men, they deny ever having been touched by either of the Friedmans. "He is recounting something that Arnold Friedman -- who by all accounts was crazy -- allegedly said to him. The police assured, through misinformation, through lying, through the pressure of the press, the threats of the judge, that there would be no chance of defense witnesses at the trial," he said. Speaking to the Review Team, however, Howard said that he had in fact been molested and, whats more, that Arnold had confessed to him, before going to prison, that he and Jesse had misbehaved in the basement with the children. In one case, the judges write, detectives visited a child fifteen times and assured the childs mother before the final visit that they were going to stay as long as it takes.. One former student told Andrew Jarecki that while he was never abused in computer class, he did remember Arnold patting kids on the legs through their jeans, or putting his arm around their shoulders and letting the embrace linger. I remember actually eavesdropping on what they said [happened]. My lawyer's position was, basically, 'It doesn't really matter if you're innocent or guilty. But the child-care sex abuse panic did not just flare up in one kind of community. Arnold Friedman ultimately died while serving his prison sentence. In addition, Geraldo Rivera was one of the most unreliable television journalists in the country, a man who made a career out of getting stories totally wrong and then making a show of atoning for his sins. Jesse Friedman spent 13 years in prison for sexual crimes he says he didn't do. Adolescents are much more likely to be victims of sexual abuse or assault than small children. They were both freed within a few years. The parents of Arnolds students were helpless to protect themselves from the police because they thought (wrongly, it seems) that they had been helpless to protect themselves from the Friedmans. Arline Epstein, whose son Michael attended classes in which some of the most frequent abuse was said to have occurred, kept detailed notes during that period. The panic was able to take root in such a wide range of communities because there are certain institutions that pervade the whole of American lifeamong them the police, the courts, child protection services, and psychiatry. Theres nothing there! he said in a memorable scene from Capturing the Friedmans, eyes wide, touching his palm to the top of his forehead. FRIEDMAN ELAINE D. FRIEDMAN (nee Drost) beloved wife of the late Elias Friedman; devoted mother of Judy Schnitzer (Robert), Ronnie Friedman and Amy Broman (Clifford); cherished grandmother of Joel Schnitzer, Ari Schnitzer (Jennie Braden), Michael Broman and Jesse Broman (Holly); loving great grandmother of The DA convened a committee to review the case and included on that panel Barry Scheck, director of the Innocence Project. Arnold and Jesse Friedman were indicted on 54 counts of sexual abuse in December 1987 and were arraigned before Judge Abbey Boklan, a former sex crimes prosecutor. The total number of students in classes dating to 1982 was much higher. Twin bombings at Jerusalem bus stops kill teen, injure 26. I never harmed a child. The review panel has been locked in a less-than-harmonious embrace with Mr. Jarecki and Mr. Kuby, who have continued their own investigative work, interviewing five of the complainants who have backed away from all or parts of their original stories. Wake up to the day's most important news. Our office has certainly listened to all of those questions and has confidence that the report will answer them.. This repeats until they are just slightly apart, nose to nose, and then they circle one another, and once they have rotated 180 degrees, changing positions as though in a stop-motion animation, they begin to back away from the center of the room, eyes always locked, until they back out of the frame entirely. This is Andrew Jareckis documentary film Capturing the Friedmans, released in 2003, which over the last ten years has forced a number of impossible problems on the legal apparatus that is trying, and failing, to bring the Friedman case to some kind of a conclusion. When writing briefs, opinions, and other professional documents, lawyers and judges usually do not like to mention the social or political context that surrounds their work. He is now a highly visible advocate for Jesse Friedman, and he is sure of his innocence. After all, Mr. Friedman, then a troubled 19-year-old, not only confessed to the crimes but also gave a television interview saying he committed them because his father had abused him. He, his colleague Marc Smerling and Mr. Friedmans attorney, Ron Kuby, have amassed 1,700 pages of interviews and documentation, which have been turned over to the district attorneys office. One of them, known at the time as Barry Doe, told Jarecki, in an audio-taped conversation, "I can tell you as God is my witness and on my two children's lives, I was never raped or sodomized And if I said it, it was not because it happened. Tali Friedman is the kosher cooking guru to politicians and celebrities if they know who to ask. Its called being pussy-whipped. (Page 2) My mother is crazy, David said in an interview, and my mother has control over my father. Capturing the Friedmans occupies a complicated position with respect to this context. This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Andrew Jarecki, the director of the documentary Capturing the Friedmans.. He added: There have been questions raised by the court, there have been questions raised by Mr. Friedman, by Mr. Jarecki and others. Browse Locations. Self: Subject. Judge Boklan died last year. The District Attorney had already filed a second, thirty-seven-count indictment against Jesse, and within six months of his fathers guilty plea Jesse would be facing an additional 302 counts of sexual abuse. The Friedman family in the early 1970s, including, from left, Jesse, in front, Arnold, David, Seth and Elaine. At the center of the case was an admitted pederast, Arnold Friedman, regularly spending time around young boys. I know my friends said to me, Dont you feel, like, terrible being alone in such a big house? she says in Capturing the Friedmans. One hundred and twenty-five miles up Interstate 5, more than thirty people in working-class Kern County were convicted of abusing children as part of an organized Satanic sex ring. Nurse! There is only one line in the brothers performance that isnt also in the original sketch, and it happens right after one of the brothers says to Jesse that his brain will have to come out. Jesse says, But Im using it!. pose in hundreds of photos for my father in all sorts of sexual positions with the kids. Twin bombings at Jerusalem bus stops kill teen, injure 26. Toward the end of the reinvestigation, Jesse Friedmans lawyer, Ron Kuby, contacted the Review Team to say that a former complainant, referred to as Witness 10, wanted to recant his allegations. We have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that it was a bad case, that it was atrocious police work, that the guilty plea was unequivocally coerced, and this isnt me saying it: its the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Mr. Jarecki said. "I couldn't get support from my lawyer. They accuse the circuit court of relying almost exclusively on Capturing the Friedmans. Likewise, Jesse Friedmans whole defense relies on little more than the film. The Review Team says it has examined the material itself. Manhattan Beach was a white, wealthy, beachside town, and despite the long trial, nobody went to prison. Before he became a filmmaker, Andrew Jarecki founded the website Moviefone and became very wealthy. The DAs office failed to win a single conviction. He was 15 years old, the youngest of three brothers. Years before his arrest, Arnold says in the film he told a therapist about his pedophilia, and the therapist had suggested he go to Times Square and buy porn, to sublimate with. Even David Friedman, in an interview with the Village Voice, said that he and his brothers found their fathers magazines when they were young and rummaging around in the basement one day. She said her son adamantly denied any abuse had taken place and that psychologists and the police had emphasized how important it was for him to come to terms with his abuse and how, according to her notes, testifying is a very positive experience that would bring victims enormous relief. Finally, Michael provided an account of abuse, later telling her it seemed to be the only way to satisfy psychologists and the police, even though it hadnt happened. Elaine Friedman did not understand her sons or her husband, and in turn she was not understood by them. One example illustrates the Review Teams approach. (He later said that, facing a long sentence and having just confessed to horrific crimes, the interview was the only way he knew to try to gain sympathy that might help him survive prison life. Beloved wife of late Judge Sy Friedman. But the Review Team cannot really have wanted what it thinks it wanted, since what it actually did was draw Jesse Friedman, his family, his attorney, and Andrew Jarecki as close as possible, then lock them all in an angry embrace. The testimony gathered by and presented to the Review Team is an impossible tangle. They didnt say, Believe. They said, Know. Ron Georgalis, who attended Arnolds computer classes and insists that nothing criminal took place, remembers the police interviews as frightening. By simplifying the case in this false way, District Attorney Rice has actually made everything more complicated. Jesse is out of jail on parole now, but he still lives with a fiercely negative stigma: under Megan's Law, he is classified as a Level III Violent Sexual Predator. The Review Team admits that the method of questioning that the detective describes is not consistent with best practices, but they excuse these mistakes on the grounds that police didnt know any better in the 1980s. . Jesse Friedman, who along with his father, Arnold, pleaded guilty to sexually abusing children in the 1980s. They should never have been made at all. In shopping the film around at Sundance and other festivals, Andrew Jarecki honed a marketing strategy predicated on ambiguitythe films tagline was Who Do You Believe?and in the years since its release, some of Jesses supporters have criticized the film for failing to mention the child-care sex abuse panic. The detective is very careful to make sure the child feels comfortable saying anything at all, except for one thingthat he was not abused. The married father of three later admitted he was sexually attracted to teenage boys, but denied having molested any of the boys in his computer classes. In the end, 17 students, boys mostly between 8 and 10, testified before a grand jury of abuse that was said to have taken place in front of other students. Formal legal proceedings began in August 1984, and did not wind down for good until July 1990, making McMartin the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history. I didnt know what they were searching for, to tell you the truth. Along with his videos of family quarrels, David Friedman kept a private video diary, and in one entry, from after Arnolds guilty plea, he makes the family alliances, and the speed with which they are collapsing, clear: I dont care about my parents. Detective Fran Galasso, who was head of the sex crimes unit in Nassau County at the time, said the abuse was just a "free-for-all" and the boys were forced to participate in "mass games" in the classroom. "I was so tired of re-hashing it over and over again and I didn't think and I kind of gave up hope on everyone to convince them that nothing had happened because they believed in recovered memories so eventually I just consciously decided to lie and to say that I had been abused and repeat these crazy things I had heard. But we have a Constitutional right to shut up, as well as to speak. The Conviction Integrity Review is nearly six times as long. My father and mother are not the only two people in the world who have that relationship. Capturing the Friedmans makes it difficult to gauge the accuracy of Davids claim, because the home movies record almost no interactions between Arnold and Elaine. In between speculative reporting about the underground child pornography industry, Geraldo asked Jesse to describe his crimes. When victims of abuse feel unable to speak out about what has happened to them, as they very frequently do, they are often made to feel this way not by awful outside threats but by the dynamics that organize family life. And what of Jesse's uncle's statement that his now-dead brother told him that Jesse was guilty? About one third of the way in, the reports authors pause to mention the various difficulties they encountered in reinvestigating Jesse Friedmans conviction; one, in particular, stands out. Twenty-five years ago, when Friedman was 19, he pled guilty to 25 counts of abuse. Because this was a hysteria, as opposed to a conscious, coordinated conspiracy to imprison the innocent, the allegations and the situations that produced them varied from case to case. Before he decided to enter his guilty plea, he regularly speculated at home about trying the case in the media. Once he decided that he could not possibly come out of a trial with an acquittal, he decided to play the media in a different way, and in the months after his guilty plea, he sank deeper into his adopted role of traumatized abuse victim turned abuser. He said in an on-camera interview that he remembers being questioned by police when he was 8 years old. During the child-care sex abuse panic, the place and purpose of the American family was the social context. Nowhere is this resentment more keenly felt than in the Conviction Integrity Reviews account of the police interviews. . "Kenneth Doe specifically and categorically stated none of things attributed to him -- none of the complaints, none of the allegations -- made by him ever happened. 2. Her first husband, Arnold, and her son, Jesse, went to prison in 1988 after authorities found them guilty of molesting children in an after-school computer class held in the family basement. The police, prosecutors, and the judge did everything they could to coerce a guilty plea and avoid a trial, the appeals court concluded. Even if the defense has proved that the original allegations almost certainly cannot all be true, that does not mean none of them are. I never sexually abused a child. By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. ", "Now I had two co-defendants who had both already confessed, and I was the only person standing up and saying, 'These things never happened,'" Friedman said. since 1998. The circuit court ruling, the Conviction Integrity Review, and Capturing the Friedmans all agree on that point. Their theatrical habits would climax on the steps of the courthouse later that day, after Jesse had entered his guilty plea, and after he had tried to win the judges sympathy by making the argument that he, too, was a victim of Arnold Friedmans abuse. I was . What he did remember was that the police repeatedly came to his house to question him and would not leave until he gave them the account of sexual abuse they wanted. Jesse Friedman said his mother urged him to plead guilty, fearing that if he went to trial, he would die in prison. After all these years, most of the case has played out in shadows, a blur of changed stories, hidden accusers, findings kept private. He was given a sentence of 6 to 18 years in prison and served 13 years before being released in December 2001. Witness 10s recantation was just as unambiguous. It explains away any statement suggesting Jesse Friedmans innocence. But Peter Panaro, Mr. Friedmans lawyer in the 1980s, who said hes convinced of his innocence, said that since Mr. Goldstein was charged in connection with only a small percentage of the allegations, his recantation, even if deemed wholly credible, would not affect the bulk of the charges. Rather than contaminate evidence or impugn the integrity of the investigation, weve refused since Day 1 to litigate one way or the other any part of the past case or the current investigation in the media, Mr. Byrne said. Instead, they talk past and at one another through their sons. . It now appears as though overzealous authorities made it their duty to convince the boys to say that they had been molested. I never sodomized a child.". They found about 20 magazines, and a search warrant produced other pornographic material. ", Another, known as Stephen Doe, told Jarecki in an audio-taped conversation, "I don't want to be a perjurer or anything but I can't even say that anyone was hit in all honesty they were asking me a lot of questions trying to get something and I just wanted to give them something.". . It also said that parents were not complicit in abuse, that they could not possibly have known anything was amissif they had, they obviously would have taken swift action to protect their kids. He did not participate in Mr. Jareckis film and has largely remained apart from the attempts to exonerate Mr. Friedman. GREAT NECK, N.Y. The letter to the Nassau County district attorneys office was succinct and unambiguous. The jokes were not as funny on the courthouse steps as they had been in the living room, and the personas did not have such a sympathetic audience. They say that quotation does not represent Squeglias general point, which is that children are to be questioned gently and in an open-ended manner. Today it is probably impossible to know for sure when and where Arnolds sexual troubles began. In many criminal investigations, the passage of time is clarifying. 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