RedHanded - Episode 331 - The Friedmans: A Family Affair

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

The Friedmans were your average upper-middle-class family in ‘70s America, but everything changed when one day accusations of mass child sexual abuse landed on the father and one son.What followed was a chaotic investigation of slippery memories, attempted hypnosis, coercive police questioning, disturbing confessions, folk devils and real-life villains – nothing about this case is black-white.In this episode, we tell you the story of the Friedman family as we know it, not that we can say we know the truth.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus Content Follow us on social media:InstagramTwitterVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM,

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A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts I'm Hannah I'm Saruti sorry caught you mid-yawn there I'm not doing I should really just

I think I just need to look at you more it's just there's so many cables in the way yeah it's true there's so many recording implements in the way blocking our faces and my giant mouth yawning.

But yes, I am here and I'm not bored. I'm very not bored because this is a fucking weird case that I've wanted to talk about for ages. But I just needed a bit of a yawn. Well, yawn time is over. Okay. It's talk time. In 1984, a shipment of child abuse magazines titled Boy Love, sent from the Netherlands, was seized by US Customs. One of these packages was addressed to 50-year-old, award-winning teacher, husband and father of three, Arnold Friedman.

No one's yawning now. The subsequent investigation tore a family and a community apart. And that was just the start. Because this case served as a catalyst for nationwide hysteria that blurred the boundaries between truth and fiction. This discovery took place at the beginning of what became known as the daycare ritual child abuse moral panic. You've probably heard about it. It spread across 1980s America like wildfire. The hysteria led to hundreds of childcare workers across the US being falsely accused of heinous crimes in a series of bizarre, chilling and high-profile cases.

And it's in no way hyperbolic to compare it all to the Salem witch trials. There's people still in prison to this day with zero evidence that makes any sense against them. It is a scandal. Now there are lots of cases we can talk about probably the one that people are thinking about is the McMartin preschool one. That's one we will come to at a later date. Today we're talking about a different one, we're talking about the case of the Freedmen's. And it is actually one of the more difficult stories from that era of moral panic to tackle. Because despite the fact that it's been the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary capturing the Freedmen's, and subsequently

was debated fiercely in court, on television, on the internet, and in homes around the world, it's still not really clear what the truth is. With the chaotic investigation, slippery memories, allegations of hypnosis, coercive police questioning, false accusations, false confessions, folk devils, and real-life villains, nothing about this case is black and white. All we can do in this episode is tell you the story of the Friedman family, discuss what we do know, and give you our opinions of both sides of the story. The rest is ultimately up to you. And before we really get into it, we've got a quick disclaimer. Child abuse is obviously a very real and very despicable thing that takes place every day all over the

world. And we would never deny that. So of course, when children do make disclosures, they must be listened to, and their accusations should be investigated thoroughly. But the thing is, moral panics are also very real. We've talked about them so many times in loads of different countries. What we're saying is that paedophilia and hysteria over paedophilia are not mutually exclusive. So with that said, let's get into the story of the Friedman family. So as we told you, the Friedman's troubles began in 1984, when US Customs seized that shipment of boy love magazines. Because yes, in the 80s, apparently, child abuse images were actually printed out and turned into magazines and shipped around. Wasn't that when there was that political party that was like, paedophilia is a sexual orientation?

Pie. Yeah. So one of the packages that was seized was addressed, as we told you, to Arnold Friedman, who lived in the wealthy village of Great Neck, Long Island, New York. America, go home. There's too many places. Great Neck, sure. So Arnold was a prize-winning chemistry teacher who lived with his wife, Elaine, and their three sons, David, Seth, and Jesse. Customs officials quickly forwarded his name to the federal arm of the united states postal service i did not know that there was a federal arm of the united

states postal service it's called the united states postal inspection service and it is a law enforcement agency specifically around the u.s postage system yeah well that's why jez gets in trouble for trying to set fire to the Royal Mail. Same thing. Exactly. So yeah, I mean here I would have just thought the police would have come and got you, but they have like a whole law enforcement wing, which is going to play a big part in this story today. So the

US PIS, so the United States Postal Inspection Service, began an undercover investigation to find out whether Arnold Friedman had actually ordered this magazine himself, or whether it had been sent to him accidentally. So, posing as a fellow paedophile called Stan in search of child abuse magazines, postal inspectors started sending Arnold letters.

It took them about three years of sending letters back and forth to build enough trust for Stan to finally get Arnold to send him a magazine. My God, things in the 80s were fucking slow. Now you've just got like rooms full of detectives pretending to be like children to try and, you know, catch paedophiles. And here they spend three years sending him handwritten letters. But they get there. and Arnold wrote Stan the following letter. Dear Stan, the book is Joe, in brackets 14, and his uncle. I think I'd like you

to send me something, sort of in good faith, and I'll forward this precious book to you. Thanks, Arnold. Stan, of course, happily accepted. And then Arnold sent the postal inspectors a magazine featuring a 14-year-old boy being abused by a grown man, with a note on it saying, Enjoy. After a while, having not received anything in return, Arnold sent Stan numerous letters requesting that he send the magazine back to him. And the USPS decided to

grant Arnold his wish, by way of a sting operation. On the 3rd of November 1987, a postal inspector, dressed as a postman, hand-delivered the magazine to Arnold on his doorstep. He then returned an hour later, in uniform, with a search warrant for child abuse content. At first, Arnold didn't recognise the man who'd literally just handed him the nonce magazine an hour before, and he insisted, there's nothing like that in here. But after the postal inspector jogged his short memory, Arnold gave in and directed him to address a drawer in his bedroom where he had hidden the magazine. And much to Arnold's shock and horror,

the inspector wasn't just going to leave after collecting that one magazine. He planned on using his warrant to search the entire house, because that is what warrants are for. We're just here to search that one drawer. Yes, this is a drawer warrant, actually. And it was a good thing the officer did that, because inside Arnold's home office, the inspector discovered a stack of 30 child abuse magazines

hidden behind a piano. They had titles like this. In the Groove. Young Boys and Sodomy. Up Over and Down Under. Incest. Jailbait. And Chicken Pickens.

I don't even want to ask. A chicken is quite an offensive term for young effeminate gay man. Oh. Inexperienced. Oh. Yeah. Okay, moving on. The postal inspector then discovered something even more troubling.

It was a list of 81 names of male students aged between 8 and 11 who had attended an after-school computer class, which award-winning teacher Arnold ran out of his house. And he'd been running these classes six days a week for five years. The USPIS indicted Arnold on federal charges of possession and distribution of child abuse content, and then they passed his name on to the Nassau County Police Department's Sex Crimes Unit. The news that a paedophile had been running an after-school class for young boys in the privacy of his own home,

of course, sparked another investigation. And it began with officers interviewing the boys on that list and soon enough detectives learned that some of Arnold's students had some very disturbing stories to tell. Within the first 12 days of the investigation officers interviewed 35 boys from that list. Police notes say that 12 of them alleged that Arnold had abused them, shown them pornography, and or encouraged them to play sexually explicit computer games. On the 25th of November, 1987,

officers broke down the Freedmen's front door and placed Arnold under arrest, charging him with sodomising young boys. During this second search, police found pornographic video games, photos of nude children – none of the pictures involved boys from the class, but there were still of naked children –

and they also discovered a poster advocating homosexuality with boys. By this point, news crews and cameras had the house surrounded. And the press were just there in time for Arnold and Elaine's youngest son Jesse to return home from college for the holidays. It was the day before Thanksgiving, after all. To everyone's shock, the police now also placed the 18-year-old Jesse in handcuffs and charged him with the same crimes as his father. It turned out that two of the boys who'd been interviewed also pointed the finger at Jesse,

who had started helping his father with the classes in 1984 when he was just 15. These two boys had alleged that Jesse had also taken part in the sexual abuse, and one of them claimed that Jesse had photographed his father Arnold raping some of his students. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post

by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. Arnold's bail was set at a million dollars, and Jesse's was set at half a million. The following month, on the 7th of December, both Jesse and Arnold were formally charged in court with 91 counts of sodomy and sexual abuse charges. This was the first time in Nassau County's court's history that news cameras

were permitted to film the proceedings. Both father and son pleaded not guilty to all counts. Jesse even managed to successfully appeal his bail on account of it being excessive and he was allowed to remain at home as the case continued His father Arnold remained in jail for six weeks after which he was also allowed to return home under house arrest to prepare for his trial Officers proceeded with their investigation and continued to interview the boys whom Arnold and Jesse had taught

in the after-school computer class and within 10 days of that first arraignment, 11 more boys implicated Jessie in the sexual abuse. So it's now gone from 2 to 13 boys. By the following year, the number of charges against both Arnold and Jessie increased dramatically, and the allegations only became more bizarre and extreme. Some of the students told police that Jessie and Arnold would force their children to strip naked and get on all fours in a big circle. They said that the father and son would then play a sort of twisted game of leapfrog, sodomising the boys as they went. They also alleged that Jessie would beat them viciously,

and Arnold would force them to pose for nude photos and perform sexual acts on film. On the 25th of March 1988, Arnold Friedman pleaded guilty to abusing 41 children, although he denied abusing 12 others or having abused any of his former high school students. Arnold pleaded guilty to eight counts of sodomy, 28 counts of sexual abuse, four counts of attempted sexual abuse and two counts of child endangerment. After his guilty plea,

Arnold agreed to sit for an interview with the police to give them a quote-unquote closeout statement at the behest of his attorney. He agreed to do so on the condition that nothing he said could be used against his son Jesse, and on the contingency that he would also be immune from further prosecution. Oddly, Arnold began his statement by outright denying every single charge that he'd just pleaded guilty to. But after speaking with his attorney again, Arnold changed his tune.

He began to describe in detail the sexual acts he'd engaged in with his students, his methods for selecting them, how he'd groomed them, and what children he found attractive. And Arnold even said that younger children could be easily distracted with video games, which gave him free reign to do whatever he pleased with them. Three days later, Arnold Friedman was sentenced to serve 10 to 30 years concurrently for all of these crimes, and the federal crimes of possessing and distributing the old boy love nonce magazines. Arnold Friedman's guilty plea ended the case against him, but Jesse had maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested. So the Nassau County Police Department resumed their investigation by continuing to interview

Arnold's former students. After this, they only interviewed two students that they hadn't previously spoken to, both of whom provided incriminating statements against Jesse. The rest of their interviews were follow-up meetings with the children who had already provided sworn statements against Arnold and Jessie. So they're not really digging wider. No. They're just like, you've already said this, let's hear some more from you. Have you had time to confer with your peers and build, you know, a story in your mind that you can now come tell me? Let's do that.

This time, the boys gave accounts which substantially expanded on Jessie's role in the abuse, and these statements now involved allegations of numerous extremely violent sexual acts on the boys. Not only this, but six of the boys were now naming a third abuser, a neighbour and former schoolmate of Jessie's, called Ross Goldstein. Based on these reports, police arrested Ross on the 10th of June 1988, and according to him, the way they carried out this arrest was particularly brutal. Ross claimed that the police snatched him off the street, violently threw him into the back of a van,

where multiple officers stood over him, screaming. By August of that year, Ross had struck a deal with the police to get six months jail time and five months probation in exchange for helping them with their case against Jesse. Over the following two months, Ross gave four transcribed interviews, during which he provided detailed accounts of his time in Arnold's computer class. Ross explained how he had been coerced by his friend Jesse into participating in the abuse of the students

and how Jesse had even forced him into being in a homosexual relationship with him. And when Ross said he couldn't remember certain details due to his fondness for weed and LSD, well, the police just read out allegations and Ross was asked to just confirm or deny them. Which is, you know, just seems like sound police work. On the 15th of November, almost a year to the day that Jesse was first arrested, he was arraigned for the third time. Only now he was being formally charged

with over 300 counts of sodomy and sexual abuse of children, with 17 witnesses, including his own former friend Ross Goldstein testifying against him. And the following month, Jesse Friedman, who proclaimed his innocence since the day of his arrest, decided not to take his case to trial. Jesse knew that if he did go to trial, he faced a possible sentence of 50 years or more. Instead, he pleaded guilty to 24 counts of sexual abuse of minors in exchange for the promise of a reduced sentence. Because remember, he's like 18 years old at this point.

So in January 1989, Jesse was sentenced to 6 to 18 years in prison. And although Ross Goldstein cut a plea for six months prison time and five years probation in exchange for testifying against Jesse, he was also sentenced to between two to six years in prison. Ross would, however, successfully appeal this the following year

and be released with time served. One month after being sentenced, while still incarcerated, Jesse appeared on the Geraldo Rivera show. Oh, here he is. Our old friend. Our old buddy. Our pal.

Geraldo Rivera. We're never far from you when we're talking about moral panics, are we? The episode which Jesse appeared on was called Busting the Kiddie Porn Underground. Can I just say, the one about the satanic abuse was called Busting the kiddie porn underground can i just say the one about the satanic abuse was called busting satan's underground or satan's underground like geraldo this man cashed in on these panics like fucking nobody's business he was just like you know people call like uh lawyers or whatever like ambulance chasers he is just hiding out in the bushes in front

of the police station waiting for anybody to say the word paedophile. Absolutely. So on national television, Jesse Friedman confessed to having fondled boys in the computer class, having taken hundreds of nude photos of them, and to having raped them. He also confessed to having threatened to kill the boys' parents if they ever said anything. He even said that his dad Arnold had abused him when he was just a young boy as well. This was a truly bizarre move for Jesse, because he'd already pleaded guilty, and he'd been sentenced. Why he would decide to go on national television and say these things is baffling, but we'll come back to it later.

Six years on, in 1995, Arnold Friedman took his own life in prison by overdosing on antidepressants. He left behind $250,000 in life insurance, with Jesse as the beneficiary. Six years after that, in 2001, Jesse was released from prison, having served 13 years. He was put on five years of intensive parole supervision, the conditions of which included a 12-hour-a-day curfew, wearing an electric ankle monitor, and the mandatory attendance to sex offender therapy three times a week. The story of the father and son paedophiles who'd abused countless young boys that had dominated national headlines a decade before

had now been largely forgotten by the time Jesse was out. But his life was still in tatters. His father was dead, his reputation was destroyed, and he was now a level three sex offender. It seemed like there weren't any pieces of his old life left for Jesse to pick up, and the only option he had was to just make do, keep his head down and move on. But little did jesse know

that his eldest brother david was working on something that was about to change everything for jesse david friedman was at this point the most popular children's party clown in all of new york city and look i am not like he should be tarnished with the brush of his father but like okay and like he was doing very well for himself like i said his name his clown alias was silly billy which is just so terrifying i hate that and he'd even made appearances on letterman and had pieces written about him in the new yorker dav David's list of celebrity clients even included people like Eddie Murphy. If you're going to be a clown, be the best one. And he must have been funny if Eddie Murphy is inviting him to his fucking parties.

Which is why in 2000, a year before Jesse's release, a man named Andrew Jarecki contacted David. Jarecki was the multi-millionaire founder of Movephone, which in the early days of the internet was the go-to site for movie listings, theatre showings and tickets. And he'd got in touch with David because he wanted to make a documentary about children's party clowns. A sort of behind-the-scenes look at their real lives. It was meant to be titled Funny and Silly, but what the documentary eventually evolved into was anything but.

After spending eight months interviewing David on camera, it became apparent to Jurecki when asking him about his childhood that there was some real darkness in David's life. He spent eight months interviewing a clown to make a documentary called Funny and Silly. I know it's just like that John Wayne Gacy has just ruined clowns for everyone. And I'm sure there are some lovely clowns out there. I had clowns at childhood parties. Oh, yeah. John Wayne Gacy and those creepy clowns that the Clowns of America Institute took issue with, who were standing on the side of the road with their own people.

They fucked you guys right over. Yeah. After some time, eight months of time it would seem, David relented and told Jarecki everything. And what he didn't tell him, he showed him. Because the very day that his father and brother were arrested, David Friedman bought a Super 8 camera. And with it, he and his family recorded over 12 hours

of the most intense personal family home videos you have ever seen yeah because jesse and arnold come home while the trial is being prepared so they're there the entire time and david is just rolling the film and armed with these films jarecki created his oscar-nominated gut-wrenching heartbreaking documentary capturing the freeduring the Freedmen. It's on YouTube, you can go and watch it, and we guarantee that you have never seen anything like it in your life. It is one of the strangest documentaries I've ever seen. The film combines David's home videos and his family falling apart at the seams as his father and younger brother prepare to stand trial for mass child abuse.

And there's also present-day interviews with everyone involved, including David, Jesse, their mum Elaine, police officers, Arnold's younger brother Howard, and boys from the computer class. The middle brother, Seth, refused to take part in the film, but I don't blame him. And whilst you watch Capturing the Freedmen, it's really hard to shake the feeling that you have absolutely no business watching it. It's so deeply personal and intimate. Within the first five minutes of the documentary, there's a clip of David's own video diary from 1987 with him saying, if you're not me, you really shouldn't be watching this. This is private between me now and future me. So it really feels like you're spying on a family through a window as they implode.

Pretty soon after the arrest, in the documentary, you see the three sons, Jesse, Seth and David, completely turn on their mother, Elaine. Now, in the documentary, Elaine, even to like, you know, current time, refuses to say that she thinks her husband Arnold is innocent because she knows he's never been honest with her. And, well, like, he's not fucking innocent. I think one thing we can safely say is that Arnold is a paedophile. Yeah, I think that's the only thing I'm sure of. Yeah, like, I think that much about this case no one can really deny. But what is really weird about the documentary

and the home footage you see in it is the way in which the three boys defend their paedophile father and treat their mother Elaine like absolute shit in every single home video and it is so painful to watch. But what is incredible about Capturing the Freedmans is the way it lays out the case of Arnold and Jesse Freed, without necessarily swaying the viewer in either direction. The tagline of the film was even, who do you believe? And well, if I only knew everything that we've told you so far about the case, then I'd almost 100% be convinced that Arnold and Jesse Friedman were both entirely guilty of everything they've been accused of. And I say almost, because although they did make full

confessions, remember, there was literally zero hard evidence for any of the crimes except for Arnold possessing magazines of child abuse content and also sending them to quote-unquote Stan. In actuality, that is the only fact in this entire case that nobody can dispute or argue with. Literally everything else in this story is he said, she said. Arnold and Jessie were accused of taking hundreds of photographs and videos of them abusing the computer class students. No such photos or videos have ever been found anywhere. Not a single one. And at literally no point ever in the five years the computer class was running from 1982 to 1987 did any parent or child suggest anything

untoward took place there. In fact, most of the children who alleged being victims had signed up year on year. A lot is revealed in Capturing the Freedmen's that, in our opinion, changes everything. And Jesse, and millions of others who watched it, thought so too. And that's why, after he was released, Jesse decided to appeal to have his conviction overturned. So let's go through some of the troubling revelations that you are shown in Capturing the Freedmen's. We can't do all of them. Go and watch it. We're not going to do the documentary's job for them. But we're going to tell you about some of the ones that Jesse used to file his appeal. The Nassau County Police Department never ever produced transcripts, recordings or videotapes of their interviews

with any of the students. And of course, because Arnold and Jesse pleaded guilty, the circumstances of these interviews were never explored at a trial. However, it is revealed in the documentary by the former students and their parents that the NCPD were incredibly aggressive and suggestive in their questioning techniques. The interviews border on harassment. One father who speaks in the documentary recalls how the police entered the interview with his child saying, We know something has happened to you.

Not we believe. We know. And then you're obviously just going to get kids that don't want to disappoint these officers. We've seen this time and time again. And also, if your child is walked into a room by two police officers and you're there and they're saying, We know this for a fact. You're going to believe them because you're going to be incandescent with rage. You'll be like, what do you know that I don't know?

And also, this has been proven time and time again when you're interviewing children or especially like vulnerable people. If they are eager to please the person of authority in that room and you're saying, I know this happened to you. Tell me what happened. They will tell the story that they think that the police officer or the person of authority wants to hear just so they're not feeling like, oh, this person's wasting their time. I better tell them what they want to hear. And also when officers didn't get the answer they wanted from the children, they would just leave and then come back. And they would do that again and again and

again. So Saru's absolutely right. That is going to make a child want to give you what you want. In one case, a mother recalled her child being interviewed 15 times with the officer telling her that they would stay, quote, for as long as it takes. My god. So this means for as long as it takes until your child tells us that they were either abused or saw some abuse. This interviewing technique is based on a theory that child abuse victims tend to deny the abuse at first, but will eventually relent after repeated questioning. It's called Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, or CSAAS,

and it was used all the time during the daycare sex abuse hysteria of the 80s and 90s. This is because it tries to justify any statement made by a child as evidence that abuse took place. So if they say that it didn't take place, they're saying that because they were abused. Everything can be spun back to the idea that that child was abused. And you tell a child they were abused enough,

they're going to start believing it. So CSAAS explains immediate disclosure, delayed disclosure, withdrawal and sustained denial, all as positive signs of a child having been abused. Several states have since thankfully prohibited testimony regarding CSAAS. In many other interviews, the detectives would literally tell the children what it was that they wanted them to say and encourage them to agree. Now there is an audio interview in Capturing the Freedmen's

with one former student who says, I remember telling myself it's not true, but just say this to get them off your back. It's also so predatory to just lock these children in a fucking room and go at them time and time and time again, telling them horrific, graphic, sexual things to the point that the child probably just wanted to stop because it's so disturbing and not even the child like this is

exactly what happened to the guilford four like works on grown-ups as well the film then points out that this particular student's testimony the one who was telling himself that it wasn't true led to no less than 16 counts of sodomy against Arnold and Jesse. Even worse, there's a filmed interview in the documentary with one of the detectives on the case. This detective thinks he's defending his methods by saying, if you talk to a lot of children, you don't give them an option really. So he would tell these children, we know you went to Mr Friedman's class. We know there was a good chance that he touched you or Jesse touched you or somebody in that family touched you in a very inappropriate way. These children are aged 8 to 11.

So they're incredibly suggestible. He was hip hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today, I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment,

charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history.

Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster.

Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Now, as we said, the NCPD didn't make transcripts or recordings of these interviews. In fact, they didn't even record how many times they'd interviewed each child. The only detailed notes they kept were that of when the children eventually conceded to having been abused or having witnessed abuse. What's more, the film

claims that many of the children who initially denied having any memory of abuse in Arnold's computer classes were made to undergo hypnotherapy. This was allegedly done to help them resurface repressed memories of abuse. However, there is a plethora of evidence that shows hypnosis for memory recovery can produce bizarre and impossible memories, quote-unquote. These techniques were used again in a number of high-profile cases during the child care abuse moral panic era. So with this, as we said, Jesse filed for an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. But in 2010, the Second Circuit denied Jesse habeas corpus relief, essentially on the grounds that he'd waited too long to file his appeal.

However, that didn't mean that the Second Circuit judges didn't believe that Jesse was innocent, and they made that very clear on the 18th page of their ruling. They wrote that although they were bound by the law not to give Jesse habeas corpus relief, it didn't mean that they couldn't voice their concerns about how he had been convicted. They go on to frame the allegations against Arnold and Jesse in the context of the moral panic of the 80s and 90s, which is described as a period in which allegations of outrageously bizarre and often ritualistic child abuse spread like wildfire across the country and garnered worldwide media attention. The judges then go on to cite dozens of high-profile child abuse cases from that time where people have since had their convictions overturned. And on top of this, they accepted that Jesse pretty much had

no option but to plead guilty to save his own life. Judge Bocklin, who was presiding over Jesse's case, had stated that she knew he was guilty before she heard any evidence or how it was obtained. Strike her off, Jesus Christ! Oh my God. Botcliffe also made it clear that if Jessie were found guilty at trial, she planned on imposing the highest conceivable sentence for each of the charges that he faced. And the likelihood Jessie would have received a fair trial with an untainted jury led by Judge Botcliffe,

who was the former head of the NCPD Sex Crimes Unit, was extremely low. The Second Circuit judges summarised by saying that they believe there is a reasonable likelihood that Jesse Friedman was wrongfully convicted. So what does all of this mean? Basically, the Second Circuit judges said that although they couldn't release Jesse on the grounds of his imprisonment being unlawful because he'd filed his petition too late, they did believe that he was wrongfully convicted and that there was a substantial lack of evidence against him. And also a substantial amount of evidence that the police

had coerced the children into making false allegations. So in their ruling, the judges then basically tell the Nassau County District Attorney that they needed to reinvestigate Jesse's case, on the grounds that their predecessor and the NCPD did a truly, thoroughly shit job of it. The Nassau County District Attorney, Kathleen Rice, pretty much didn't have a choice but to carry out what's known as a Conviction Integrity Review for Jesse in 2013. But a few interesting things took place before her review was completed. A number of the boys who'd accused Jessie and Arnold of abuse all those years before now came forward and completely recanted their allegations. And this included

Ross Goldstein. Goldstein wrote a 10-page letter to the review team explaining that he'd been harassed, tortured and coerced into providing false testimony against himself and Jesse. He was being threatened with a draconian sentence and intimidated by officers and felt that he had no choice. And this is a quote from that 10-page letter that he wrote. My testimony before the grand jury was a result of tremendous and unrelenting pressure and intimidation comes from a former accuser, only ever referred to as Witness 10. Witness 10 is especially significant because he was the very first child to say that Arnold

Friedman sodomised him and he was the first ever to allege any kind of abuse by Jesse Friedman. This witness was also mentioned to be a victim by numerous other students from the computer class. So Witness 10 would have had to have been right at the heart of the prosecution's case against Arnold and Jessie. But he recanted. In his recantation letter, Witness 10 clearly states that neither Arnold nor Jessie ever engaged in any sexually inappropriate acts with him ever,

nor did he witness any. He then explains that it was only after being harassed by the police continuously to tell them something had happened that he gave in and lied so that they would leave him alone. When the Conviction Integrity Review, The People vs Jesse Friedman, was published in June 2013, it was not what anyone was expecting. DA Kathleen Rice had been prompted by the Second Circuit judges to re-interview key participants from the case, review the evidence, documents and actions of the police. What Rice produced was a 177-page report that we read from start to finish.

And it is written in an incredibly angry, dismissive tone, denying that the NCPD did any wrongdoing whatsoever. In the report, Rice rejects every claim made by the circuit court judges, essentially saying every point they made was entirely baseless. The report labels recanted testimony by any witness as inherently unreliable, saying, quote, there is no form of proof so unreliable as recanting testimony. Apart from the unrecorded interviews with eight-year-old children.

Yeah, cool. And the report also rejected the idea that Jesse and Arnold's cases were in any way similar to any of the moral panic cases that the judges cite where they basically say, look at all these other cases

where children gave bizarre testimony and these people were later freed. Though it does that, Kathleen Rice does that with absolutely no explanation for why this case is different. Now it wasn't Rice's job to decide whether Jesse was innocent or guilty. Her task was to see whether, as the second circuit judges put it, there was quote a reasonable likelihood that Jessie Friedman was wrongfully convicted. Instead, the report clearly has the tone of somebody who's taken the criticism of the way in which the case was handled as a personal affront, even though she wasn't the DA at the time. Also, why is the DA doing this? It's like marking her own fucking homework. Why isn't somebody else conducting an independent review of this case? Yeah, and it just reeks of unprofessionalism as well. Like, how have you got to DA with that kind of attitude? But as we said at the beginning,

nothing about this case is clear. And as more time passed, it became even murkier still. Yes, numerous key witnesses came forward to completely recount their testimonies, but some did reaffirm theirs also. So no, there wasn't a single shred of physical evidence ever found of any abuse, but there was a confession mentioned in the documentary and the Rice report that we just can't forget about. Arnold Friedman's little brother Howard gave some background on their upbringing. Arnold and Howard had a little sister who died of blood poisoning at a young age. Her death tore their parents apart and after divorcing Arnold and Howard went to live

with their mother in a one-bedroom basement apartment. All three of them slept in the same room in separate beds and in the documentary Howard says that his mother would often have sex with men in front of him and Arnold. Nope, don't do that. Elaine then appears on screen and reveals that Arnold had once told her that when he was 13 years old he began raping Howard, who was just eight at the time, and he did that for three years. Howard breaks into tears on screen and denies having any memory of that happening. Oh god. So years later after Arnold's suicide, Howard reveals something that Arnold had confessed to him during a prison visit. Arnold had apparently told Howard that he had previously molested Jesse. He then told Howard that he and Jesse had quote-unquote misbehaved with children in the computer class,

but he didn't elaborate. Arnold made Howard promise not to tell anybody until he was dead, and the case against Jesse was over, and that's exactly what Howard did. It's then revealed in the documentary that after Arnold had married Elaine and had children, he'd grown concerned that he was attracted to young boys and sought help from a therapist this therapist simply instructed arnold to quote go to times square and buy some pornography by which she meant child abuse content which as we told you at the top of the show was much more readily available at the time so this therapist is clearly well like just buy some porn and wank

it out and then don't touch any kids but like those kids have been touched to make that child abuse fucking content and also as we know from our favorite podcast ever hunting warhead once you start looking at it you're a short hop skip and a jump away from touching kids so this less than sound advice didn't work arnold also confessed to elaine that he had previously sexually abused two 14 year old boys It had taken place at their beach house years before the police had ever had Arnold on their radar. And Howard Friedman told this to the review team in a lengthy conversation. There were a few more things that we learned

reading the Rice report that aren't mentioned in Capturing the Friedmans. A year before Jesse's release, prison guards confiscated a picture from him of two prepubescent teens, one of whom was naked. He had torn the photo out of a Harper's magazine, and while it didn't constitute child abuse content, it is noteworthy. A few months later, Jesse was disciplined again for having written and passed around a story

about a woman having sex with a dog, and child incest as well. However, he did end the story with the caveat, please do not use this story as a reason to practice incest or especially incest with minors. I don't even know what to fucking say. Now as for Arnold's guilty plea and what he said in his interview with police afterwards. In Capturing Freedmans, you see the family sitting around their dinner table, discussing possible strategies for the trial. The three brothers become increasingly agitated with their mother Elaine, because she wants Arnold to plead guilty, because she believed that it would help Jesse's case. And I think that is why Arnold

pleaded guilty in the end. But this was, of course, a bad decision, because it prevented a trial where the evidence, or lack of evidence, would have been explored. And the same goes for Jesse pleading guilty, although we've obviously already outlined why he pretty much didn't have another choice, what with facing a potential 50-year-plus sentence. But that's the thing in this case, neither of them had a trial, so it was never exposed to everybody how little evidence the Nassau County Police Department or the DA had against them. Now as for Jesse's bizarre decision to appear on the Geraldo Rivera show, well in the documentary you see a video of Jesse and his brothers talking about using the media to try his case. This was another terrible idea but Jesse's thinking was

once he was certain he couldn't have possibly gotten an acquittal at trial, he could at least use the media for sympathy. And he decided to play the role of a traumatised victim turned abuser. During his appearance, Jesse admits to the claims made against him, that he had indeed had the children pose for hundreds of nude photos. But as we've said, during the police's numerous searches of the Freedman's home, no such photos or videos were ever, ever found. Not to mention the fact that Geraldo Rivera is one of the least reliable television journalists in the US, who also at one point claimed that there was a nationwide satanic conspiracy, going as far as to say, the odds are that this is happening in your town. Talking about Satan.

Yeah, I just, whenever I even think about Geraldo, all I have is like that fucking infomercial, whatever the fuck it was, is just on repeat in my head because it's so ridiculous. So this idea that Satan was just around the corner was the same sentiment held by people across the US and abroad during the child daycare abuse moral panic. Although it was certainly a hysteria and not so much a conspiracy,

which would suggest a coordinated deliberate ploy to imprison hundreds of innocent people, the child daycare abuse moral panic began with the Kern County child abuse cases in 1982. And these involved allegations of a satanic sex ring against as many as 60 children who testified that they had been abused. At least 36 people were convicted and after having spent years in prison 34 of them had their convictions overturned. The remaining two died in prison before they got a chance to make an appeal. From the 80s until very recently, there have been countless cases just like it. And almost all of those convicted between 1984 and 1995 have had their convictions reversed.

Obviously, the McMartin Preschool is the most famous. And we'll give you a quick rundown of that case, just in case you don't already know. In 1983, seven teachers, six of whom were women, were charged with hundreds of counts of child sex abuse against hundreds of four to five year olds. Accusations ranged from teachers having drilled holes in students to having conducted ritual animal sacrifices in front of kids inside an Episcopal church. It does make you wonder, like, I know this is a classic question when you talk about the sort of satanic ritual abuse stuff. It's like, where are these kids getting these ideas?

And is it just from the police or the therapist, like, feeding it to them and then recounting? Because it's always so similar. The stories that they tell, the garish creatures that they talk about, the sexual abuse. It's things that no child that age should have any knowledge of so it must have been from them being fed that information from the therapist or from the police which just makes the whole thing so fucked up because in some of these cases it's not just the fact that the daycare workers or whoever else got sent to prison and then had their entire lives wrecked by these allegations is there a difference in a child's mind between actually having been sexually abused

or believing that they were sexually abused? Like, if they think that, it's going to fuck them up just as much as if it had happened. Yeah. Because they're going to have false memories planted in their head and still have the trauma of that thing having happened.

Yeah, false memory is a tricky area of child psychology and I don't know. It's terrifying. Yeah. Whatever the answer is. So when it came to McMartin, the FBI investigated the case for almost a decade, and they wrapped up the investigation with zero convictions. It was found that the children had been subjected to the same questioning techniques

as the children from Arnold Friedman's computer class. And by the time all of the charges were dropped from the McMartin case, it had already become the longest and most expensive series of criminal trials in American history. What a massive fucking waste of everybody's time and money. And lives. Oh yeah, ruined lives. But what sparked this mass hysteria? I think the background of this is really interesting because the beginnings of it, I think, were undoubtedly the fact that women were moving into the workforce en masse and out of their previous roles as stay-at-home mothers.

And for those who were mothers, they were for the first time needing to leave their children in the care of strangers while they were away for hours at a time. This change in the traditional of strangers while they were away for hours at a time. This change in the traditional structure of the nuclear family no doubt resulted in a growing level of anxiety about the safety of children in society. But the child care sex abuse panic, which led people to believe that their children were most at risk outside of their homes, is just not really based in any sort of reality at all. Most child abuse takes place

not in schools, not in daycare centres or in after-school computer classes. It happens in the privacy of that child's own home and it's usually at the hands of those closest to them, be it their own family or close family friends. But this hysteria over stranger danger is still ingrained in society today, especially in the US, but also abroad. There are a lot of perfectly normal men out there who would probably refuse to babysit their own friend's kid because of it. Have you watched The Hunt with Mads Mikkelsen? It's really good. I would highly recommend it.

It's, what is he, Danish? Yeah, it's all in Danish, but it's so, so good. It's about a teacher who basically gets accused by one of his students of having touched her and he lives in this small town in Denmark and it's how the whole community just turns against him and there is no evidence. There's no evidence. It's just this child saying it. So in the UK this hysteria is even affecting our architecture. If a tower block is built adjacent to a play park, there aren't allowed to be any windows on that side of the building. Like, there can't be any windows fitted above a certain height

looking over the park. And in some ways you could say that this is in a way pandering to the paedophilic mind. But there you have it. That is the case of the Freedmans. And a mild sidetrack into architecture and the preschool fuck-uppery that took place in the 80s and 90s. It is interesting though. It's an interesting point about the architecture because by doing that, you are accepting that it is an unsolvable problem. It's kind of the equivalent mindset of like, well, if you're a woman, don't walk home at night.

Like if we don't put the windows in the building, it not our fault but it's going to happen anyway and again it's pandering to that idea that it's all happening out in the wild because that's easier to deal with i think this is the thing whether you talk about women or whether you talk about kids you know we talked about this in the sarah everard case we tackle the problems that we think are easier to solve and that's why we shout about like oh it's happening these strangers are doing it stranger danger stranger danger but it's like it's because it's much harder to tackle the problems that are taking place behind closed doors so how you feel about the case of the freedmen's is up to you bringing us back to our story for today we did our best to explain the case as objectively as we possibly could

and honestly i don't really know what I think. I don't either. So we're going to leave this one up to you. And if you go check out the links in our episode description, there is a lot there where you can do your own reading and try and understand this story more. But I don't know.

I don't know. Me either. When I was watching the documentary, I went through flipping between Arnold definitely did it. And I still think Arnold definitely was a paedophile what else was going on I don't know because there is so little evidence yeah but we also do know that when people start looking at that kind of thing it's like said they they do

swiftly move they can swiftly move to being hands-on predators but there's no evidence yeah as for whether Jesse did anything or not I honestly honestly don't know. I have no clue. Absolutely none. Nope. So that's it, guys. That is the very, very confusing case of the Freedmans. Yeah.

Go have a shower. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs,

a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life.

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