Capturing the Friedmans: Review. posted by Richard Seymour

This is a film designed to frustrate the comfort of an opinion. Your guess is constantly confounded. Arnold Friedman, the father in the unhappy family of the title, who lived a wealthy suburban life on Long Island, was without doubt a paedophile, a man who was sexually attracted to children - as young, perhaps, as four years old. Everything else, however, is in doubt, up for grabs, and terrifyingly so. If the police were right, Arnold Friedman and his son Jesse abused children in a computer class held at the Friedman home for four years. The charges included 'sodomy of the mouth and anus' as one contributor puts it. If not, then Arnold and Jesse both went to jail for crimes they did not commit. If not, then Arnold was beaten, pissed on and threatened with death for something he didn't do. The process of arrest, charges, trial and conviction are all recorded on Friedman family cameras. It was (I think I'm right in using the past tense) a technophilic family, delighting in filming, recording, and using computers. So an abundance of circumstantial and emotional evidence, the kind that doesn't get into court hearings, is available for the documentary. There's a lot more besides.

It shouldn't be that difficult. Arnold pled guilty on all counts, and his son pled guilty with an excuse. Jesse was given the maximum sentence, of which he served 13 years. Arnold, sentenced to ten to thirty years, died in prison. Several of the children present testified to some of the horrible things that were allegedly done to them. Arnold admitted in correspondence with a journalist to not only being a paedophile, but of having had sexual contact with two boys (unconnected to the charges), 'short of sodomy'. He had been caught with paedophilic material (magazines in those pre-internet days). Jesse told the court that he himself had been abused by his father, and that this had blurred his view of right and wrong.

Still, there's something not quite right about this picture. I watched the film, initially persuaded at some level that the charges were accurate. However, when the film-maker interviews some of those involved in the case, nothing adds up. One man, interviewed with his face in the dark, describes how he was raped by Arnold and Jesse years earlier, and that this was one of a number of rapes that took place in front of the other children, who themselves were sodomised. There was even a 'game', apparently, called 'leap-frogging', in which the boys allegedly pointed their backsides in the air, and Jesse and Arnold 'leapt' from one to the other, inserting their penises. Another man, also in the same computer class, is interviewed in clear day. He says nothing happened, and it was fabricated. He says there were 'leap-frogging' games, but these were the kind generally played by kids with their clothes on. Back to the man whose face is occluded by dark. The director and narrator, Andrew Jarecki, tells him what the other witnesss aid. Yes, well, the actual sodomy took place in the bathroom, away from the rest of the kids...

It later emerges that the man with his face occluded 'recovered' these memories when he was subjected to hypnosis. He had gone into the hypnosis unaware that the abuse had happened, and he had come out with a clear memory in his mind of these disgusting acts. Repressed memory is mostly nonsense: when people are abused, they typically have more trouble with forgetting the events than with remembering. In separate footage of interview with this man, whose testimony led to 35 charges of sodomy, he gives a definite impression of fabulating.

Similarly, one of the detectives involved in capturing the Friedmans gives a clear sense of the difficulty, the painstaking care involved in even making such an accusation. She informs the camera that they had first acted on a list of names held by Arnold (perhaps of kids in his computer class) after searching his house for child pornography. She says they went to the houses, explained to the parents what they were doing, and interviewed the children. This apparently then yielded a surfeit of testimony of the abuse alluded to above. However, one tape survives of such an interview taking place, and it was taken by the mother. The mother recorded the child adamantly repeating that no such abuse had taken place. One officer kept repeating "you had better remember, because if you don't you will grow up to be gay". It was implied that he could become an abuser himself. The detective interviewed on camera also suggested that Arnold had "stacks and stacks" of pornographic material all over the house, surrounding the piano at which he often played and so on. Photographs taken when the search occurred show nothing like this.

Several of those who said they were abused at the time now deny it, and some of them are either on camera or recorded on audio tape saying that nothing took place. One of them explains over the phone that she had been bullied by the police into providing answers that she wasn't ready to give. One of the key witnesses in the film, a District Attorney involved in the case, explained that there was a dearth of physical evidence of such abuse (bruising, bleeding etc). Other parents whose children attended the class said that they went to pick up their children from the computer class, often stopping in early, and never found a thing going on. All of those children who alleged abuse said that they had been filmed, and that pornographic pictures had been made of their experiences. No photographs or video-tapes were ever found. One of the search photographs taken by the police showed pornographic pictures and cameras arranged together in Jesse's room, but the montage was allegedly created by the police themselves, who took the pictures from his Playboy magazines. Detective Galasso tells the camera that they did not ask the children leading questions, and goes on to give an example of a non-leading question: "What about Johnny? He was there, did you see anything happen to him?" Several witnesses who were interviewed themselves say the questions were even more probing than that.

Still, it becomes hard to believe, at times, in the innocence of the pair. Elaine Friedman, the mother, clearly believes that Arnold is guilty, and is hurt and angry that her children expect her to support him. She knows that he has admitted to some sexual contact with two boys. An understandable reaction to that might be to seek divorce, but she stays with him - even when the threatening telephone calls start to come in ("gonna kill your son ... creep Jew cocksuckers ... gonna cut off his balls ..." etc). She also complains on camera that he had never sexually satisfied her, and it is not hard to guess what she thought might be the reason for that. Under terrible emotional stress, and not entirely a stable quantity at the best of times, she cracks quickest and loudest among all the family members. She shrieks at her sons, who berate her for not supporting the father, she weeps bitterly, tries to calm them. They, meanwhile, are furious with her betrayal, as they see it.

It is Elaine who receives advice from the lawyer, indicating that Jesse needs to unhitch himself from his father. If he is standing next to his father in court, he will be chained to stacks of pornographic magazines and an admitted history of paedophilia. If he stands alone, he stands as a young man with no such baggage. Arnold has to plea guilty to save his son. Well, she urges Arnold to plead guilty. There's a furious row, screaming, Arnold - ordinarily, apparently, a very quiet, nebulous and self-effacing person - launches a chair across the room and furiously screeches that he is not guilty and will not plead guilty. He asks his son Jesse what he ought to do, and Jesse tells him to decide. Arnold pleas guilty. As his brother Howard says, if you didn't do it, why plead guilty? It's the most heinous crime imaginable, why accept responsibility for it? Similarly, why did Arnold go for a 'close-out'? A close-out involves admitting to a host of crimes that you have also done which will then by discounted for, so that you cannot be re-arrested. Arnold therefore admitted to having sexually abused practically everyone in his class. Why admit to something like that, if it is untrue? And why does Jesse go on to try and plea-bargain, now that his father is in jail?

Well, to answer the second question first, it seems that the close-out confession - which was supposed to be a confidential document - was taken to a number of the parents of witnesses who were going testify on Jesse's behalf. They were told, 'your son is going to testify that he was not abused, but we have a statement from Arnold Friedman which says he did it'. By the time Jesse came to plea-bargain, the jury already knew his father had confessed to it and he had no supporting witnesses. Another reason Jesse chose to plea-bargain was that he was told if he plead guilty, he would face a relatively small number of charges. If he didn't, they would lay a few thousand on him, and he would never come out of jail. Even his mother Elaine began to tell him he should plead guilty at that point just to reduce his sentence. Well, like I say, he got the maximum possible sentence. Perhaps Arnold plead guilty to save his son, or because he had done something, or because he knew what he was, or because his wife pressured him into doing so. The latter is the charge made by the son, David Friedman. However, it isn't a new phenomenon. Recently, the men convicted of brutally attacking the Central Park Jogger in 1989 were freed when the actual attacker, Matias Reyes, admitted to the crime and DNA evidence implicated him. Several of the innocent men had pleaded guilty to the crime, the longest serving about ten years. Arnold also claimed in a letter to a journalist covering the case that he had engaged in sexual activity with his brother, Howard, when he was thirteen and Howard was eight. Howard, on camera, denies that this ever happened.

Whatever you think about this case, a number of things do come through the bewildering array of contradictory evidence. The original investigation was largely fictitious: it did not occur. There was a concerted attempt by detectives to get answers that would lead inexorably to their prefered conclusion. This was in the height of the 'satanic ritual abuse' and 'sex circles' hysteria, and a number of high profile cases from that era subsequently turned out to be based on bogus or mocked-up evidence. The trials did not occur, as deliberate and enormous pressure was placed on both suspects to cop a plea-bargain, which both did. Many careers were made on the basis of that case, and a great deal appeared to hang on it for those detectives involved. Andrew Jarecki, the film's director, told Charlie Rose in an interview that he encountered enormous obstruction and obfuscation from the police and from lawyers involved in the case. The media, too, had an interest in portraying this story in a salacious and cold-hearted manner (watch for one of the newscasters raising his eyebrows at the word 'sodomy' when he relates the case).

Another thing that is clear is that Arnold Friedman was a guilty man, even if he didn't the crimes of which was convicted. He was guilty of posessing child pornography, and admitted to having had sexual relations with two boys. His son Jesse may be guilty of the charges against him, but given the present state of evidence it is doubtful he would go to jail if the trial were conducted today. Arnold is dead, Jesse lives and is pressing for his convictions to be overturned . David Friedman, who was to be featured in the original documentary about New York clowns that led to this one, remains a professional clown.