Attention turned to Jesse Friedman as the vicious charges mounted against him. At 18, Jesse did not know what the word “sodomy” meant. He had to look it up in the dictionary.
As the fear of and anger at the Friedman’s mounted, the once-ordinary community of Great Neck, Long Island became deranged. A furor, a mania of hysterics took hold and a tidal wave of aberration drowned all reason.
But there was absolutely no evidence to convict, except the bizarre testimony of the coerced children.
There was not a single child who ever reported being victimized before they were informed by the police they had been abused. Many signed up for the classes over and over. The computer room where these violent acts, which would have caused considerable screams and bloody injuries, was visible through a huge picture window. Parents came and went freely without incident.
One student leveled 124 counts against Jesse Friedman, 56 from just one class — which would mean that during the ten-week course he was violently raped six times in each session, or once every 15 minutes, in front of the picture window with all the other students watching. This child then went home uninjured and calmly ate dinner with his family without any signs. Preposterous!
The prosecutors knew with such shaky testimonies and absolutely no physical evidence they could not convict. So they approached Jesse’s childhood chums, told the other teenage boys they had been implicated by the computer students and would go to prison unless they testified against Jesse and said in court they witnessed the offenses. Tragically, one of Jesse’s friends, whose parents were afraid their son would go to prison, encouraged him to do the unthinkable — “bear false witness against his neighbor.”
After the commandment was broken, events careened out of control in a downward vortex turning everyone into a liar. Jesse and Arnold were told there was a witness and if the case went to trial, they would be convicted and given sequential life sentences. With fear in control, and no end to the torture in sight, Jesse and Arnold took the plea and bore false witness against themselves.
At 18 years of age, Jesse Friedman, who needed a dictionary to understand what he was accused of, went to prison for 13 years. Arnold Friedman allegedly committed suicide in prison in an attempt to make Jesse the beneficiary of his life insurance policy.
How I became involved
After I saw the film Capturing The Friedmans, I wrote to Jesse. Due to the popularity of the film, Jesse received hundreds of letters. He told me he only answered mine because I was a volunteer teaching modern dance to boys at Highland Correctional Youth Prison. We struck up a friendship. He sent me a picture of himself with his mother and father when he was a little boy, on top of Mohonk Mountain during happier times. On Aug. 16, 2007 I published the picture along with a column I wrote about the case. That year, Michael Cacchio and I sponsored an event at the Rosendale Theater. The movie was screened. Jesse answered questions about the case and garnered some early support from the locals who attended.
Since then there has been a groundswell of energy, all aimed to get this egregious miscarriage of sanity and justice overturned. Jesse is still a registered sex offender to the highest degree. He wants to start a family with his beloved wife Lisabeth, but will not until his conviction is overturned. Famed lawyer Ron Kuby has taken on the case. Some of the children, now grown men, have admitted they were lying and recanted their testimony.
On Sunday, Nov. 18, Jesse Friedman and his wife Lisabeth returned to Great Neck for the first time since the tragedy. Now 43, it was almost 25 years to the day of his arrest. The occasion was the screening of new testimony, which will aid in his appeal. Although Jesse said visiting Great Neck was like “having a picnic in Auschwitz,” in the end he found the event to be very healing.
Although most of the comments and questions rehashed the details of the police, prosecutorial and therapist misconduct, there were two touching moments that caused Jesse and Lisabeth to hold tightly to each other and well up with tears of relief.
“I knew Jesse when he was a little boy,” an older woman in the front row said. “Jesse was top of the heap. Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! I would love to have a son like you any day of the week.”
Another woman, mic in hand, stood to face Jesse. “Let’s bring these proceedings into present time. This room is filled with people supporting you. This room is filled with people who remember. I just want to publicly say I am so sorry for what happened to you.” That comment was met with some applause.
It was then, with the long ride home in front of me, I handed the mic back. And if a heart can be both heavy and light at the same instant, I left believing just a little more that justice is possible, Wrong can be righted and people care about the truth.
Excellent piece describing the struggle of Jesse Friedman to clear his name. The prosecution, the writer describes, was intent on obtaining a conviction at any cost. They essentially forced false confessions from these children and coerced, cajoled and lied to them and their parents until they made the most horrendous and completely unbelievable allegations imaginable. With no evidence Jesse was himself forced to accept a plea after the judge in the case made it clear she would sentence Jess to life in prison.
The police, prosecutors and the psychologists at North Shore University Hospital were responsible for this injustice and the tragedy that continues not only for Jesse but for the 14 children, now adults, and their parents who for 25 years believed that these horrible things happened, even though they never did.