It was in 1987 that Great Neck resident Arnold Friedman, an award- winning former high school science teacher who now held computer classes for boys in his home, was charged, along with his 19-year-old son, Jesse, a college student, with multiple counts of child abuse and sodomy. The parents of five of Arnold Friedman's victims have talked at length about the case in recent months. 3:00 pm. He refused to accept later calls from home, and for the next few weeks tried to forget developments in Great Neck. "David was recommended to me as No. Two of the victims objecting to the film wrote, in an open letter to the Academy Awards Committee, "Don't use our story to promote the agenda of a confessed child molester who destroyed our childhood and confessed numerous times.". I talked with Jesse, his mother, victims and their parents, police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, psychologists and many other players. They often appear confused. Computer teacher Arnold Friedman admitted yesterday that he sodomized or otherwise sexually assaulted numerous young boys who were students in his Great Neck home and pleaded guilty to 42 counts of various forms of sexual abuse. After uncovering such a tangled and sorrowful real-life chronicle, what does Mr. Jarecki envision as his next project? They cannot be abusive or personal. You were children when this started. ", "People wanted me to take a position. Friedmans defenders want all the evidence reviewed in a hearing seeking to overturn his conviction. Yet Ms. Rice's report, in all instances, found that the preponderance of evidence pointed toward upholding the conviction. "Jesse used to sneak up from behind me and he would slide his hands the same way his father did. "It is a sensitive time for the case because it is pending in front of the court, so I'm not sure if it's smart for me to be commenting," Jarecki wrote in an e-mail response to questions Newsday posed earlier this month. I'd still be locked up. Then, one day, he asked David what inspired him to become a clown. ", 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.". The movie also contains astoundingly personal footage shot by the Friedmans themselves. I just have this picture flashing in my head of Jesse opening the door. When the case broke, her son told detectives that he witnessed when another child, who was overweight and reportedly the frequent target of humiliation, was sodomized in front of the class -- an event supported by that other child's detailed statement to police. On top of the refrigerator they found a Polaroid print of the youngest daughter posing naked and exposing her genitalia. What they didn't know was that he and his son were sexually abusing pre-teen boys. The ruling strongly criticized the judge, prosecutors and police and suggested the case be reviewed. The convictions lacked physical evidence and relied on children's testimony obtained by discredited investigative techniques. ". It is described by critics as a brilliant movie that raises questions, in particular, about a child sex abuse case in Great Neck and, by extension, about the reliability of child sex abuse prosecutions in general. Whether the case against Arnold Friedman - award-winning school teacher, computer instructor, admitted pedophile - fits in that latter category is the question posed by "Capturing the Friedmans," Andrew Jarecki's scathing exploration of the Great Neck child sex-abuse case and a movie that is in turn surgical laser and blunt instrument. The case became widely known after an Oscar-nominated documentary about it called "Capturing the Friedmans" was released in 2003. Based on the quality of the police work, I think the case should have been thrown out.". In 1995, his father, an admitted pedophile who was convicted of sending child pornography through the mail, died in prison of an antidepressant overdose. One guest credited Friedman with turning his life around. (1) Although Jarecki shows the house looking porn free and a voice-over says porn was only found in the office, the prosecutor says in the movie that child pornography was found all over the house. Arnold Friedman was a respected science teacher and musician who taught computer classes in his basement to children, mostly boys, ages 8 to 13. He pleaded guilty March 22 to three counts of first-degree sodomy and one count of using a child in a sexual performance. `Tell and this will happen to you,' " he quoted the Friedmans as saying. Thirty minutes after police arrived, she got home to find neighbors, reporters and camera crews gathered out front and her husband inside in handcuffs. We're not the Osbournes. Jesse spent 13 years in prison for crimes that almost certainly never occurredand to which he was forced to plead guilty because the hysteria of the moment made a fair trial impossible. Things got murky when the filmmakers asked him a harmless question about his childhood. Jarecki began researching the Friedmans' sexual abuse case and dropped the clown project when David Friedman handed over a treasure trove of family home videos taken throughout the time of the case. But why are we reliving these events? Although initially admitting to abusing only one boy, Arnold admitted in a therapy session with Elaine to abusing (though not sodomizing) two boys, one of whom was the child of his good friend. I stalled for a long time before seeing "Capturing the Friedmans." But Silberg and Boklan say the victims didn't undergo hypnosis until after they told their stories to police. They want to forget the lessons in the house on Picadilly Road. There is no crime in admitting to an untruth wrung from you by a persistent detective when you were 9 years old, if that is what happened. And we both looked at each other and were both equally kind of dumbfounded. She led a symposium on the science of child abuse for the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Seattle earlier this month. This is not a frivolous point. So I've just gotten used to -- I guess the sense of whatever privacy you sacrifice by not being anonymous. Minutes later the police knocked on the door of his Schiller Park, Ill., apartment and arrested him for importing child pornography. Discrimination is the essence of art, but there are moments in this fine film where a reporter can't help but feel that the artist is playing a little too loose with the facts. ", Jarecki, too, said he had been concerned about how residents would withstand the poking of an old wound. Files were established for each child. He said that "a man went to jail based on embarrassingly bad police work, and now Newsday continues to give [the police and the judge] credence. "It analyzes everyone's approach. Arnold and Jesse Friedman were arrested Nov. 26, 1987, after Nassau police and federal agents executed a search warrant at their house at 17 Picadilly Rd. The other man immediately became uncomfortable, and after mentioning that his childhood was difficult, suggested Jarecki speak to his mother Elaine. Life. During searches and subsequent investigations, agents looked for signs that their suspects had jobs or hobbies that brought them into contact with children. "Capturing the Friedmans," a documentary that premieres tomorrow at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, is a sobering re-examination of events that stunned Long Island in the 1980s, when they seemed to cast doubt on the very notions of normality, community and safety. He immediately put his plans for the clown documentary on hold and pursued this story instead. Arnold and sons David, Seth and Jesse were home movie enthusiasts who loved to make hammy films about themselves. After vehemently defending himself, and being threatened with a 50 year jail term if found guilty, Goldstein ultimately accepted a deal to testify against Jesse in return for a 6 month term in county jail and no criminal record. 823 F.2d at 6-7. But he provided a written statement saying that the documentary, and the resulting flurry of interest in the case, is cruel and unfair to him and the others who said they suffered abuse. When he pleaded guilty against his attorney's advice the following December, Jesse Friedman made a short statement admitting his guilt and saying he too was a victim of his father's abuse. Unfortunately, that fact resulted in me getting arrested and charged as a serial child rapist.". "Jesse is guilty and you are going to ask me how I know," he said, according to the report. Did the Friedmans fall prey to a national paranoia? See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. "And when I started to tell them things, I was telling myself it was not true. The deal was struck yesterday after daylong meetings between the victims' parents and prosecutor Joseph Onorato. It's not hard to surmise that something horrible happened in that house on Picadilly Road. Arnold, for instance, emerges clearly as a pedophile; in fact, it was his mailing of pornographic material that initially put him in the crosshairs of law enforcement officials. Could dozens of boys, age 7 to 11, suffer sodomizing episodes in front of each other without any of them ever telling their parents? "We were abused, tortured, and humiliated by Arnold and Jesse Friedman," the letter states, while complaining that Jesse Friedman "is being paraded like a celebrity while we have been left in the shadows, powerless and voiceless once again.". The material includes police interviews in which alleged victims are pressurised to report abuse they initially said had not occurred. 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. I think we didn't think to ourselves, well, it's a documentary and therefore it needs to follow this structure that's based on historical information and putting it in the context of other cases like this. "There were 243 charges against me," Jesse Friedman said. "I'm not saying there's no such thing as a general ambiguity in the world, but I think there are some questions that have answers, and those answers have to be pursued," he says. Experts say silence in the face of abuse is commmon for childen whose first response to the unthinkable is figuratively to pull the covers over their heads and forget it ever happened. When he was 10, Jesse began psychiatric therapy. But I, too, am a victim,' Jesse said.". It's the integration of them into the story that makes "Friedmans" so masterful. "When I ask [at screenings] how many people feel that Jesse Friedman went to prison unfairly, I would say more people than not raise their hands . In 1987, investigators searched his home in Great Neck, New York, and found a collection of child pornography. . Arnold, sentenced to ten to thirty years, died in prison; the death itself is part of a generous gesture that becomes one of the many revelations offered late in the film. And they told the story of a 56-year-old man and his then-18-year-old son who were charged with molesting young boys at a computer class they taught at their home. He pled guilty to 3 counts of first-degree sodomy. The film, directed by Andrew Jarecki, is one of the favorites in the documentary race, along with "The Fog of War," a portrait of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. In 1988, Jesse didn't know that some materials were never turned over to the defense. "When these PSAs aired on other channels, calls to our hotline increased by a hundredfold. When postal inspector John McDermott told police that Arnold also taught preteen boys, the Nassau County sex crimes unit (headed by Galasso) got lists of his students and interviewed them. He has launched an appeal to clear his name based in large part on Jarecki's evidence, which suggests that police detectives, lacking any physical evidence, aggressively interrogated children over periods of weeks until their firm denials gave way to false but incriminating testimony. Because Friedman pled guilty and there was no trial, a spokesperson for the Nassau County District Attorney claimed the records of witnesses who did not testify are confidential, and the law does not mandate their disclosure. (No physical evidence of sodomy or penetration was ever documented.) paedophile; on the other, their film contains much persuasive evidence that both men were wrongly convicted. Jesse Friedman was regarded as a "narcissist" and a "psychopathic deviant" by a psychiatrist his attorney hired to conduct an evaluation. ". Physical evidence is typically rare in such cases. "The Academy once used the awards platform to give legitimacy to the suffering of millions who suffered from the once unspeakable, AIDS. . This subsequently led to a score of little kids accusing the Friedman patriarch of molesting and sodomizing them in the most gruesome fashion imaginable. Subsequently, Judge Costantino ruled that the evidence of Friedman's sexual abuse of children, his collection of pornography, the seriousness of his federal charges and the erosion of support for him in the community justified detention prior to trial. The abuse escalated into sodomy. When asked for comment, Nassau County prosecutors told "Nightline" their report spoke for itself. Director Andrew Jarecki was recognized with the best nonfiction film award for "Capturing the Friedmans." The prosecutor in the film actually states "There was a dearth of physical evidence" and "We didn't find any of that." The movie, which reconciles gravely serious content with gallows humor and exploitable oddness, is playing at both the Cineplex Odeon Dupont Circle 5 and Landmark Bethesda Row Cinema. His explanation: He worked in the Nassau County DA's office when the case was there. Jesse was 19 when he pleaded guilty to the sex abuse charges in 1988. Nassau police have traveled around the region to view child pornography seized in other jurisdictions, Galasso said. "Capturing the Friedmans," by director Andrew Jarecki, is among the favorites to win best documentary at the Feb. 29 Oscar ceremony. Looking back, she said she remembers thinking it was odd that parents were never allowed inside the classroom. "I have a great photo book from Holland that might be copyable. Police said the classes took place for about eight years, starting around 1979. Despite having been jailed for a sizeable portion of his life, and despite his protests that he was an innocent railroaded by police, prosecutors, and the media, Jesse seems quite willing to refrain from anger and disdain. I covered the Friedman case for Newsday. Refusals to cooperate were punished by Arnold and Jesse. And what of Jesse's uncle's statement that his now-dead brother told him that Jesse was guilty? ", Once you've released a documentary on such a controversial subject, says Jarecki, its resonance and repercussions are out of your hands. Wood noted that fantasy films from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Star Wars" more often take home technical achievement nods - not Best Picture wins - during awards season. As the two victims noted in their open letter, "If this film does win an Oscar, it will be won at the expense of silencing the plaintive voices of abused children once again, just as our own voices were silenced 16 years ago by the threats and intimidation of our tormentors, Arnold and Jesse Friedman.". The only thing I'm hoping for is that the people in the computer classes hear the message, see the film and they come forward and tell the truth. "I guess it mostly started out with my father trying to love me." Then, the day after Christmas, 1985, Friedman renewed the correspondence. I am joined in this belief by my sibling {names removed} who were also your students. So, on Oscar weekend, those questions have come off the movie screen and into court, thanks to this highly unusual post-plea, post-sentence change-of-venue motion. Boklan, though, says the film paints an incomplete portrait of the case against Jesse Friedman. "That guy should have never been around kids. On Jan. 24, 1989, Jesse Friedman was sentenced to six to 18 years in prison. Still, Mr. Jarecki has submitted an affidavit on his behalf to the court. I was telling myself, 'Just say this to them to get them off your back.' "I am not a child molester," he said. Finally, when his son told him what had happened, he came to understand his son's anger. Capturing the Friedmans is a 2003 HBO documentary film directed by Andrew Jarecki. The flaw of human perception - the real theme of the film, the one thing it firmly establishes - is that people are not only capable of seeing what they want to see, but of embracing what they fear the most. And these efforts have paid unexpected dividends, leading investigators to two dozen alleged child molesters. "It was wonderful, the things you said about my father," Speiser remembers Jesse telling him. I asked Gary if he noticed anything funny going on in the class and he said no. He said: "I still haven't found anyone who gave credible evidence of Jesse's guilt. But mostly, it has to do with the disintegration of a family. Despite the nomination of three films that have child sexual abuse as a central theme, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is ignoring 15,000 emails, the personal pleas of 200 victims, and the recommendation of 300 organizations and health care, law enforcement, academic, mental health and sexual assault professionals who asked the Academy to allow time on their awards show to air a public service announcement that would educate the nation about the tragic reality of child sexual abuse and tell people where to turn for help. Caring parents had no clue. An early newspaper report said "Talking Sam", in which a male figure exposes his genitals, was used to demonstrate and initiate touching games with the boys. After the drop was made, the agent would radio a team of federal and local officials waiting nearby with a search warrant. He was swept up in the suspicions, which ultimately resulted in hundreds of charges of appalling molestation. "I'm very suspicious," she added. Here's Why 'Capturing The Friedmans' Is One Of The Most Upsetting Documentaries Ever Made. "I have the best memories of my childhood," Friedman began, before trailing off. All these years later, he can still close his eyes and feel the haunting stare of the wiry young man who he said started fondling him a few weeks into computer classes when he was 10 years old. Harvey A. Silverglate is a Boston-based criminal-defense and civil-liberties litigator and writer. Not because his family was in jeopardy, but because they took his pictures. All but one of the families agreed that the plea bargain was the best way to resolve the case, Onorato said. In the past we offered a clearinghouse of information, resources, support and advocacy. 2252. "You know, Jesse had this hair," she said. "In my whole career I don't remember students ever throwing a party like this for someone," Speiser says. His mother, Elaine Friedman, sat with her eyes closed or her gaze averted during most of the proceeding. Some of the Friedmans' alleged victims and family members wrote to the Awards Committee, protesting the nomination. . would have had a very, very good chance of being acquitted.". Friedman was arrested and charged with sending and receiving child pornography by mail. The documentary also brings to light the use of hypnosis and group therapy techniques and how those practices could have created false memories in children.