Capturing the Friedmans

This review contains massive spoilers!

Like many of the great documentaries, Capturing the Friedmans was the result of an incredible tale being unearthed while documentarians are pursuing something completely ordinary. Jules Naudet, Gédéon Naudet and James Hanlon were making a film about a novice fireman when 9/11 happened. The Staircase seemed like any other true crime documentary for Jean-Xavier de Lestrade until sensational revelations were unearthed. For Andrew Jarecki, it was a film about children's birthday entertainers which led him to New York clown Silly Billy - David Friedman, who sat down one day and bemoaned the state of his family. He had a brother and father in prison, both having pled guilty to child sexual abuse - but it was the way this all unfolded and the dysfunction on the part of all parties involved which made for one of the most sensational documentaries I've ever seen. Nobody escapes condemnation in Capturing the Friedmans, and Jarecki had the great fortune of happening on a family who were obsessed with video cameras and documenting their lives.

One thing can be easily summed up : Patriarch Arnold Friedman invited disaster upon his family because of his paedophilia, and the fact that he regularly bought pornographic material which depicted underage boys having sex. If he hadn't of been doing that, then none of this would have happened. There are some uncomfortably candid moments in this film. One describes an admission from Arnold that he once had sexual contact with his 8-year-old brother, and that he was exposed to sex from a very young age due to the fact that his mother had to share a bedroom with the kids, and brought guys home at night. He was obviously a very damaged individual, and from what he reveals, along with his wife Elaine, it doesn't seem that he was all that interested in women once he'd grown into a man. Elaine describes sex with Arnold as mechanical, and lacking in passion. Arnold did admit to molesting children in the past, and considering the fact that his paedophilia is very much confirmed it was probably for the best that he was behind bars.

Worryingly, Arnold conducted computer classes which specifically involved children. Once the police had discovered his pornography, their next step was to ascertain whether or not this man had ever abused any of the kids in his care at that time. What happened next was bizarre - incredible revelations from police interviews which confirmed that not only Arnold, but also his son Jesse, then a young man, had sodomized and brutalized multiple children during these classes. Jesse was described as a tormentor and monster, almost animalistic in the way he ranted, shouted, abused and demonically harangued kids. By this stage all of the boys in the computer class would be naked, tortured and brutally sodomized - sometimes forced to participate in strange games and raped. They'd supposedly be bleeding, wounded and mistreated - but it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that by the time their parents would come and pick them up, everything would seem normal. The kids happy and fine. Not only that, but the way Jesse had been described - loud, angry, abusive and abnormal - was nothing like the Jesse that everybody had known all their lives.

For all we know, some of these kids may have been molested by Arnold at these computer lessons - but the facts are long gone, and what we're left with are all of the statements these kids have made. They're not to blame for them - the police squeezed these bizarre allegations from them. It would start when a couple of detectives would inform the parents that their kid had been abused sexually at Arnold's class, before the child involved had even been questioned. The next step was the interview with the child, and the interview wouldn't end until the child had confessed to being abused - and in a torturous way where any child would be desperate to tell the investigator what he or she wanted to hear just to make them go away. These are some of the statements from those who were questioned :

"...someone else put those words in my mouth.”
"The police repeatedly told me that they knew something had happened, and they would not leave until I told them."
"I remember other parents of students who were allegedly abused telling my parents that my brother and I were in denial and pressuring them to give us therapy or hypnosis."
“What I do remember is the detectives putting on me a lot of pressure to speak up. And at some point, I kind of broke down, I started crying. And when I started to tell them things, I was telling myself that it’s not true. Like I was telling myself just say this to them in order to get them off your back.”
"I remember saying that not because it was true, but instead because I thought it would get them off my back.”
"They were operating as if everyone had been molested, abused.”
"...remember the police being aggressive and scary."
“I was very insistent that nothing ever happened to me. And that never seemed to be good enough as a response."

And on and on. Nearly 50 people have testified as to having been forced to invent stories, go along with what the police were telling them, and being pressured into admitting they were abused. To admit to this biased interview technique isn't unquestioningly demanding that we see Jesse and Arnold as innocent, it's only pointing out the fact that the police investigation was so hopelessly flawed as to be completely unreliable. They believed all these kids had been abused, and they believed they were just making them admit it - even if it took time and great effort to do so. They weren't acting in bad faith, but the way they investigated this matter is almost a textbook case as to how not to question children. If something ever did happen in those classrooms, it would be hard to ascertain now. But this wasn't the only thing wrong about the justice system in this case - once matters got to the courts it became even more one-sided and unfair.

Arnold Friedman pled guilty to all the counts of abuse and sodomy against him - true or not. He did so in the hope that it would help his son, who was facing the same charges. When faced with something like this, prosecutors will offer "deals" to the accused. Go along with the deal and you'll get favourable treatment - but plead not guilty and take it to trial, and there's a chance you'll spend the rest of your life in prison. To help convince Jesse to plead guilty as well, those prosecuting piled nearly 100 serious charges up against him, and suggested that if forced to test his innocence, he might well be locked away for the rest of his life. As an alternative, he could plead guilty and be assured of probably being jailed for less than 10 years. These deals, where defendants are often forced to risk it all if they don't give in, are something that has the feel of going against fairness and truth. Once Jesse had pled guilty (to something he still insisted he had never done) he was paraded around as a child rapist, attacked by angry parents and admonished by a judge who sentenced him to six to eighteen years in prison. If he has molested or sodomized children, which he may have, the authorities have done a wonderful job of giving him a claim to innocence.

One of the great things about this feature is the way we get an inside look into how the Friedman family were operating at this time, through home video footage. The fights, and the strange attitude the guys in the family had, to the point of performing - whether it be improvised comedy skits, music, or happy interludes in the midst of this horrible case and the fact two of them were going to prison. Elaine and David Friedman were on bad terms, with the latter constantly calling her out, arguing with her, demanding she give her unquestioning support to Arnold, and always nagging or belittling her. Elaine had found out about her husband's paedophilia, and his magazines - so I think it understandable that her attitude was "who is this man I married?" I'm not sure if she knew earlier, but if she did she may have been in denial. The proclivity the gang had for performing made those prosecuting the case uncomfortable and hostile. For example, the day Jesse was to be sentenced, he stood outside the court dancing around and performing Monty Python sketches - both unusual, and not displaying the remorse expected of him. They are simply a very strange family, and make for an interesting film.

Arnold ended up committing suicide in prison, distraught over what his paedophilia had done to his family. That did mean, however, that Jesse received $250,000 from his life insurance policy - which covered suicide at that time. Jesse ended up serving 13 years in prison, and although he's constantly tried to prove his innocence investigators still insist he was guilty of abusing those children. Elaine remarried, and seems much happier. David still seems to have a chip on his shoulder, but that's understandable. It's all summed up in expert fashion by Andrew Jarecki, who has a certain skill when it comes time to reveal facts, interviews, video footage and what music he adds to the film. It's riveting stuff, with one jaw-dropping revelation after another - but in some quarters his film is judged harshly by those who believe that Arnold and Jesse are guilty of the worst kind of crimes imaginable. Arnold comes out a very dark, damaged figure in the movie, and the family as a clan that's not quite right. The police and the justice system also come out looking quite bad - as does the suburban upper-middle class part of America where the Friedmans existed for so long with their unquestioning peers.

I've seen Capturing the Friedmans three times, and I'm still rocked by what the documentary reveals about the inner secrets at the heart of this family unit, their persecution, and ultimate destruction. I wish Elaine all the best with her life, and she's the only person in the film to whom I can comfortably say that.