Exonerating the Friedmans

Hypnosis Rigged Sex Case Against Him, Says Jesse Friedman
By COREY KILGANNON, New York Times

The 2003 documentary “Capturing the Friedmans” raised questions about the prosecution of Jesse Friedman, who in 1988 pleaded guilty as a teenager to 243 counts of sex crimes against children he and his father taught in computer classes in their Long Island home.

Mr. Friedman, who served 13 years in prison, has sought to overturn his case and clear the family name, an effort that seemed bolstered by the documentary, which featured a 24-year-old man who said he remembered being abused as a child at the Friedman home in Great Neck only after being hypnotized. ...

“You have a group of kids who initially said they were not abused, wrangled by a group of therapists who utilized highly suggestive methods like hypnosis until the kids emerged from the sessions with the most lurid and highly unbelievable examples of sexual abuse and going directly to the grand jury,” he said. “There is no more inherently unreliable form of testimony than that.” full story