Capturing the Friedmans

574 Words3 Pages
The movie “Capturing the Friedmans” depicts the story of Arnold and Jesse Friedman, a father and son who pled guilty to multiple accounts of sodomy. The film contains many different accounts from people involved in the case with conflicting views on the situation. This leads to confusion within the audience’s minds on weather or not the Friedman’s are guilty. I believe that the Friedmans are guilty, however I believe that the circumstances were exaggerated and that the things they were tried for were blown up out of proportion. First, Arnold Friedman admits to being a pedophile and sexually abusing young boys. Although he denies touching any of the boys in his piano class, I believe that he made sexual advances towards some of them. This explains why some students told policemen that they were abused and other found the statements ridiculous. I believe that although Jesse may have not physically abused any children, he is guilty of not saying anything of the abuse. Jesse’s statements are not very trustworthy in my mind, especially after his retraction of his confession to his lawyer that his father sexually abused him. With the media and police’s involvement in the case, I think the witnesses were influenced into making false statements. Children tend to be easy to persuade so I think that that had a lot to do with the children who testified in court than retracted their statements later, saying they had lied. Other children were put through hypnotherapy, which lead to strong memories of the abuse. Although hypnosis is not a reliable source of memories, I think that there must have been some sort of sexual advances, which lead to the development of more intense memories. The parents also made statements that the officers involved in the case were forceful in the talking to their children and seemed to plant thoughts in their heads. Which supports the
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