Central Park Five

[RivkahChaya]

This is the title of Ken Burns documentary on the five teenagers who were railroaded for the jogger rape-attempted murder case in 1989. April 19 is the anniversary of the crime, and my PBS station is running the 2-hr. doc several times in the next week. I DVR'd it last night. It's really interesting as a documentation on how false confessions are elicited.

The jogger herself survived grievous injuries, and later wrote a book about her recovery. Because of her head injuries, she has no memory of the event.

For people not familiar with the story, in 1989, when crime was high in New York City, a woman was attack and raped in Central Park. Her skull was fractured in two places, and she lost a large volume of blood, plus, by the time she was found, she was suffering from hypothermia. Central Park is a special place to New Yorkers, so apart from the enormity of the crime itself, Central Park had been violated. The pressure on police to solve the crime was huge. The victim wasn't expected to live, so homicide detectives were assigned to the case.

Police arrested a group of teenagers, held them for over a day, and wrung confessions out of them. The press made a horror show out of it, and took a lot of quotes out of context, managing to come up with headlines like "It was Fun" Say Rapists, and inventing the word "wilding," something attributed to the kids that they never actually said.

I don't know if there'll be any BBC interest, but the movie is probably available on DVD, and someone will probably post it on YouTube.

[Robert]

Is that the Ken Burns who made the American Civil War documentary featuring Shelby Foot?

[RivkahChaya]

Yes, among many other impressive documentaries.

[Robert]

Ah, thanks.The civil war one was a masterpiece.

[RivkahChaya]

I don't have much patience for Civil War stuff, but I loved Ken Burns baseball documentary. Central Park Five is not Burns' very best work, but it is still good. I don't know that Burns has made a bad film. It's a good picture of the young men, who had their lives nearly ruined, and they deserve to have their stories told. It's a time capsule for a very bad time in the history of New York City; it certainly stirred up my memories, and I didn't actually even live in Manhattan then, although I had before, and I did shortly after.

You understand from the film how the boys, teens, anyway, gave false confessions, but you don't really understand how it happened, other than it was business as usual for police to go with their gut in making an arrest, and then just hold someone until they confessed out of exhaustion.