Film targeted by child-abuse foes

Faced with the prospect that a provocative film about a case of child abuse may win the Oscar for best documentary feature, advocacy groups and some of the victims have launched a belated campaign to discredit “Capturing the Friedmans.”

The film directed by Andrew Jarecki is one of the favorites in the documentary race, along with “The Fog of War,” Errol Morris’ portrait of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Voting for the Academy Awards ended Tuesday, so it’s unclear whether the group’s actions will have an effect on the outcome.

A notice one of the groups posted Saturday on the Internet triggered responses from 1,700 people who e-mailed three top executives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the producer of the Academy Awards show and the president of ABC television, which will air the ceremony Sunday.

The academy acknowledged receiving an unsigned letter purported to have been written by two men molested as children by Arnold Friedman and his son Jesse during computer classes in the basement of their Great Neck, N.Y., home in the 1980s.

“There was a letter -- but we don’t comment on anything that arrives anonymously,” said the academy’s director of communications, John Pavlik.

Jesse Friedman, who pleaded guilty to sexual abuse charges in 1988, was paroled after 13 years in prison. A registered sex offender, he’s hoping that evidence revealed in Jarecki’s documentary will help him obtain a trial in which his guilty plea is retracted and his conviction overturned. In 1995 his father, an admitted pedophile who was convicted of sending child pornography through the mail, died in prison of an antidepressant overdose.

Irene Weiser, founder of New York City-based StopFamilyViolence.org, came across an Associated Press story late last week that raised questions about the movie’s portrayal of the case. After contacting a psychologist quoted in the piece, she launched the Internet campaign.

Respondents can visit a site that allows them to send a form e-mail urging recipients:

* Not to honor the film with an award.

* To have celebrities from “Mystic River” and “Monster” -- which also deal with child sexual abuse -- make a brief comment on the Oscar telecast about the problem.

* To have ABC air public service announcements about child abuse during the show.

The five addressees are those of Frank Pierson, president of the academy; Fay Kanin, president of the board of trustees of the academy foundation; Freida Lee Mock, chairman of the documentary branch executive committee; Joe Roth, producer of the Oscar telecast; and Alex Wallau, president of ABC.

Roth was unaware of the e-mails; an academy spokesman acknowledged receipt of a large number of duplicate e-mails.

ABC spokeswoman Charissa Gilmore said the network took requests “into consideration, but ultimately declined to run the [public service announcements]. As for the celebrity comments, that’s not under our control. That’s up to the academy.”

StopFamilyViolence.org’s mission is to “organize and amplify the nation’s collective voice against family violence.”

“We’re all for freedom of speech,” Weiser emphasized, “but when a project receives the industry’s highest recognition, that gives it credibility.

“Among the myths this film promotes,” she said, are “that abused kids immediately tell their parents and that there are telltale signs of the abuse.”

Last week the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, a group of psychologists, lawyers and other professionals, submitted to several newspapers an op-ed piece critical of the documentary. “Clear evidence is omitted, facts distorted, and uncertainty is created about the guilt of these two confessed pedophiles,” the letter said.

Abbey Boklan, a retired judge who presided over the Friedman case, has verified that the purported authors of the letter to the academy were among the 13 victims. She also voiced criticisms of her own.

Boklan noted she had “said from the very beginning, that the movie was unfair and inaccurate, leaving out much of the evidence against Arnold and Jesse. The primary omission was leaving out the third co-defendant, Ross Goldstein, who was prepared to testify against Jesse.... And very few of the victims are in the film -- almost none, in fact.”

Boklan’s charges are off the mark, Jarecki maintains. Goldstein was offered a six-month jail term and a clean record in return for his testimony, which reduced the weight of his statements, the director asserted. Attempts were made to reach each of the approximately 100 computer students, including the 13 victims -- only three of whom agreed to be interviewed on camera, he said. Jarecki added that two others spoke off camera.

Steven Donziger, a member of Jesse Friedman’s legal team, has his own problems with the film, claiming that Jarecki left out facts pointing to his client’s innocence. Additionally, Friedman’s attorneys on Jan. 29 filed a change of venue motion accusing Boklan of “improper comments and actions” in the case.

Jarecki defends his work.

“I never set out to make an advocacy piece for the Friedmans, but to present the material unearthed in a 3 1/2-year investigation,” he said. “People wanted me to take a position ... ‘Did they do it or not?,’ but I wanted people to make up their own minds.

“The Friedmans couldn’t have been pleased with my description of Arnold’s affinity for pornography and the full-color portrayal of his guilty plea,” he added. “And, though you can’t reduce individuals to a single adjective, law enforcement would say that showing them as human beings is unfair. Everyone is unhappy, which is the earmark of a balanced piece.”