capturing the friedmans.

we watched "capturing the friedmans" in cognitive development today... man, was it disturbing. the movie/documentary was about a father and son (arnold and jesse friedman) who were accused of sodomizing and abusing boys who took computer and piano classes under arnold. arnold and jesse repeatedly maintained their innocence, and there was a lot of ambiguity about whether or not the children were giving accurate information or if their stories were false memories.

the thing is, it's really easy to lead a child into believing something really happened when it didn't, which was something we studied in class. apparently the children were asked a lot of leading questions - there's a difference between saying "did jesse do anything to you?" versus "jesse touched you, didn't he?". and a few of the children later admitted that they said they were sodomized because they felt pressured to do so, and that they wanted the questioning to end. parents said that investigators pressed children into saying they were abused - when a child said nothing had happened the investigators said they knew something did happen and they wanted the children to tell them the details. one child was sent to therapy by his parents and underwent hypnosis, which has been found to sometimes plant memories, and through hypnosis the boy remembered or "remembered" a repressed memory of being sodomized - his first memory of anything of that sort.

on the other hand, arnold was found to have stacks and stacks of paedophilic material. he admitted to being a paedophile, and said he had his first sexual encounter when he was 13 and his brother was 8. his brother doesn't remember anything about it, but his brother is now gay. i don't know if there is a connection between the two. arnold's mother divorced his father when he was really young, and his mother shared a room with him and his brother. and she used to bring her boyfriends into the room and have sex with her sons present. it's so messed up.

in the end, both arnold and jesse pleaded guilty - arnold pleaded guilty because he hoped to save jesse, and jesse pleaded guilty later because he didn't think he had a chance of being found innocent against the public hysteria, so he was hoping for a lighter sentence by pleading guilty. he was 19. arnold later committed suicide.

oh, and arnold's son/jesse's older brother is the best birthday clown in new york.