Case Documents

Case Documents

These are a few exhibits from my appeal motion.

This is an abstract from a conference organized by The Center For Child Protection devoted to Health Science Response to Child Maltreatment 1990. Sandra Kaplan, M.D.; David Pelcovitz, Ph.D.; Carol Samit, C.S.W. discussed their group therapy sessions with the complainants involved in this case. The document outlines how many of the children professed no recollection of ever having been abused, and the techniques of hypnosis used in order to help the children "remember." This is the same document available on the Capturing the Friedmans DVD.

This is a partial transcript of two detectives and their interrogation of a child who was in the computer classes. His mother secretly put her Betamax camera into the closet of the room before the police arrived and recorded just the audio portion of the interview. She permitted Peter Panaro to listen to this tape and he transcribed the conversation. He reads a portion of this on disk two of the Capturing the Friedmans DVD.

Newsday February 8, 1989: "Nassau police have traveled around the region to view child pornography seized in other jurisdictions" looking for anything which appeared to have been produced in my house. Detective Galasso loved to give vibrant quotes to the press such as, "Virtually every child who gave a statement said they were extensively photographed and videotaped during these sexual acts. Just about every class was videotaped." Even though my house was searched twice by authorities, and they did find my father's magazines, not one piece of home-made pornography was ever unearthed by detectives.

I was denied parole four times and lost part of my "good time" as well because it is NYS Department of Correctional Services policy to withhold good time for "… lack of proper participation in recommended assignments and programs." This meant I had to successfully participate in a sex-offender therapy program in order to be released on Parole. (Who defines what "successfully" means?) I was not permitted to enroll in the treatment program because I said, "I didn’t do it," and was therefore considered still in denial. This is an article from the NYS Dep. of Corrections "magazine" DOCS Today October 1999 explaining the policy.

I was kept waiting the afternoon I was supposed to plead guilty because the parents of the complainants had stormed the D.A.’s office demanding that I be given a bargain of thirty years, not 18 years. The families were insistent on there being a trial. On January 25, 1989 Newsday quoted the group of parents as saying they wanted to “ferret out the truth” during a trial. I argue that the implication there is as follows: Individual parents knew, or had a real good suspicion, that their own son’s victimization stories were false, but that the other children were probably actually hurt. Each family wanted to hear what the other children had to say.