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kottke.org posts about Capturing the Friedmans

Recapturing the Friedmans

Back in November, I posted about the effort of the filmmakers of Capturing the Friedmans to prove the innocence of one of the film’s subjects, Jesse Friedman. On Monday, a 168-page report released by the Nassau County District Attorney’s office found that there was enough evidence to charge and convict Friedman of sexual molestation of minors.

Friedman, his supporters and the makers of the Academy Award-nominated documentary have long maintained he was railroaded into pleading guilty to charges he molested 13 kids in the late 1980s, and were expecting the report to exonerate him.

It did the opposite.

Friedman, they found, was labeled a “psychopathic deviant” by his own shrink, and had actually sexually abused a total of 17 children.

“The District Attorney concludes that Jesse Friedman was not wrongfully convicted,” the blistering 172-page report says.

“In fact, by any impartial analysis, the investigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman … has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea adjudication as a sex offender.”

The panel said it interviewed three of Friedman’s now-adult victims. “Each confirmed that he was sexually abused by Jesse Friedman. Each told their separate story, marked by pain and recovery,” and “recounted years of shame and humiliation,” the report said.

The Washington Post has more. (via @DavidGrann)


Uncapturing the Friedmans

Since Capturing the Friedmans came out in 2003, the filmmakers have been quietly working to prove the innocence of one of the films subjects, interviewing the sexual abuse victims of then 18-year-old Jesse Friedman. What they have found may point to Friedman’s innocence.

One of those affected by the case was Arline Epstein, the mother of a child who had attended group therapy along with children who had testified against Jesse. Earlier this year, Arline’s son Michael told her that, as a young boy, he had lied to his therapist about being sexually abused. In her testimony, which was featured at Sunday’s event, Arline talks about revisiting a file of notes she had kept during the case and finding one that mentioned that during the first round of questioning of the children by police, none of them said they had been abused.

Arline and Michael Epstein are two of the witnesses featured in the video reel of new testimony compiled by Jarecki and Smerling, and both were at Sunday’s event. Friedman was overwhelmed by the warm welcome he received from someone, who, as he put it, “for 25 years thought that I’d raped her son.”

The evidence the filmmakers have compiled is available on a web site they have set up. (via @DavidGrann)