National Center for Reason and Justice (NCRJ) board member Emily Horowitz and I attended the New York City trial earlier this month of an immigrant woman who supposedly confessed to raping a preschooler. Shades of the old McMartin panic of the 1980s…with the issue of coerced confessions thrown in the mix. We wrote this op-ed piece, which was published yesterday in the City section of the New York Times. We’ll be writing more, and letting readers know when we’re published at greater length, with deeper analysis.

New York Times
June 24, 2007

New York City Section

OPINION

Watching the Detectives

By DEBBIE NATHAN and EMILY HOROWITZ

THIS month, a jury convicted Khemwatie Bedessie, a 38-year-old day care worker, of raping and sexually abusing a 4-year-old boy she had been babysitting - crimes she confessed to committing. She faces 25 years in prison.

But the basis for her conviction, a videotaped confession, is highly dubious. Indeed the Bedessie case, like so many others before it, points out the need for legislation that would prevent confessions from being the sole reason for a conviction and that would require the police to videotape all parts of an interrogation, including the lead-up to a confession that could have been obtained by coercion.

The chilling charges against Ms. Bedessie have a suspect origin. In the Queens courtroom, the boy’s mother testified that after she enrolled her son at Veda’s Learning Center - where Ms. Bedessie worked - when he was 2, she frequently asked him, “at random,” if anyone was sexually abusing him.

Last year, he developed a rash on his buttocks. Again the mother asked if he’d been abused at Veda’s. This time he said yes and named Ms. Bedessie as the perpetrator, even though when he was later examined at a hospital, no connection was found between the rash and sexual abuse. The child said nothing about Ms. Bedessie when questioned by the police. Still, Ms. Bedessie was arrested.

Aside from the fact that she does not fit the profile of someone who would sexually abuse children - most offenders are men; and female offenders are almost all teenagers, women who were egged on by men, drug and alcohol abusers, or young teachers dallying with adolescent students - there was no physical evidence of abuse and no direct accusation by the boy.

It makes far more sense to attribute the boy’s accusations to suggestive questioning and false memory than to an actual crime. The case against Ms. Bedessie was weak since the police had no physical evidence of abuse. Indeed, it would probably have gone nowhere if she’d insisted on her innocence.

Instead, she confessed, after three hours in custody. On videotape she’s calm and gives details like how the child touched her on her breast; how she took him to a bathroom; and that the sex she had with him lasted seven minutes.

But shortly after videotaping the confession, Ms. Bedessie said she’d been coerced into making it. Is this claim believable, given the graphic and convincing nature of her statement admitting to the crime? Yes, just look at the false confession videos recorded in the Central Park jogger case almost two decades ago.

The jogger tapes, too, are jaw-droppingly credible. The teenage boys, who were convicted and imprisoned before a single assailant came forward 13 years later and his DNA corroborated the claim, don’t just say they committed rape in their taped confessions. They describe the color and texture of the victim’s clothing. They quote insults they uttered while attacking her. They list who raped her first, and who went second and third. Meanwhile they calmly sip soda.

Who could imagine they weren’t telling the truth? But, as experts point out, false confessions can appear very real. And the techniques used to produce them don’t have to take much time. “I’ve seen interrogations that led to false confessions which lasted less than one hour,” says a Northwestern University law professor, Steven Drizin. In such a situation, he says, the defendant tends to be “highly vulnerable or suggestible.”

Ms. Bedessie fits the bill. An immigrant from Guyana, she’s been in the United States for only six years, and she has only a fifth-grade education. Her language is Guyanese creole, and she struggles with American English. The police detective, she said, told her he had a tape of her assaulting the child. He told her she could go free if she confessed, but if she didn’t, she would be brutalized at Rikers.

“I will do anything he want so he will send me home,” Ms. Bedessie testified, recalling the interrogation.

The detective, in fact, did not have a tape of her assaulting the child. Unfortunately, jurors take confessions at face value. They simply cannot fathom that someone would say they committed a heinous crime if they didn’t.

Ms. Bedessie’s conviction will probably be appealed. But however her case is ultimately resolved in the courts, we’ll likely never know whether or not she was coerced.

There’s a clear way to avoid confusion in the future: start videotaping as soon as police questioning begins. The New York County Lawyers’ Association and the American Bar Association Section of Criminal Justice recommends it. This is policy in many European countries and the law in Illinois, Maine, New Mexico, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia, and has been voluntarily adopted in 500 jurisdictions. But not in New York.

Albany is considering a bill to mandate videotaping of interrogations. The Assembly has passed it; the Senate should as well. Why? Because false confessions are real and innocent people are jailed as a result. The evidence is overwhelming.

–Debbie Nathan and Emily Horowitz are members of the board of the National
Center for Reason and Justice.

McAllen Chamber president calls for wall around nation’s capital

James Osborne

June 19, 2007 - 4:56PM

McALLEN — What do you do when the federal government announces it’s going to build a large, metal fence through your community and there’s nothing you can do to stop it?

Write your members of Congress, complain on talk radio … suggest a wall be built around Washington, D.C., and e-mail everyone you can think of to make it happen.

Steve Ahlenius, president of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce, sent out an e-mail to 140 media outlets nationwide Tuesday morning with the subject line: “McAllen, Texas calls for wall around Washington D.C.”

“We feel the need to protect ourselves from bad legislation, bad ideas and a waste of tax money,” Ahlenius wrote.

“A wall around their homes and businesses will give the legislators and Washington bureaucrats a better understanding of what kind of message this action will send.

“Let’s see if they decide to climb over it, tunnel under it, or walk over it.”

Ahlenius’ grab for the news spotlight comes six weeks after a confidential U.S. Department of Homeland Security map was leaked to the media, detailing the location of 370 miles of security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Federal officials have since called the map “preliminary,” but the document set off a firestorm of protest up and down the Texas border with Mexico.

Ahlenius, who has been vocal about the negative impact the fence could have on McAllen’s burgeoning retail sector, said he wrote the e-mail to try to garner more attention for the issue.

“It’s really a tongue-in-cheek thing to bring some focus in on how silly their proposal is,” he said.

“In Washington (D.C.) they don’t speak the language and understand the culture down here.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, Ahlenius said he had only received a couple of media phone calls, one from an Univision outlet in Miami that conducted a quick interview.

Still, McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez — who had yet to read the e-mail when contacted Tuesday afternoon — dropped high praise on Ahlenius for his efforts.

“I’m glad he’s taking a proactive role in bringing attention to this issue,” the mayor said. “There has not been a proper debate on the issue of the border fence and immigration yet.”

As for Ahlenius, while Congress probably won’t be approving his plans for a wall around Washington, D.C., anytime soon, he remains hopeful plans for the fence here will be scaled back.

“Like us putting a wall around Washington (D.C.), how silly is that for us to talk about? That’s how we feel about what they’re doing,” Ahlenius said.

“We’re trying to put to people — what would you do if they decided to build a fence around your town?”
____

James Osborne covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4428.

So Susie Bright was planning to visit NYC from the West Coast, and she asked me to come to a recording studio in Chelsea to be interviewed for her show. OMG, thrill! Bright is one of the smartest — and certainly most accessible and entertaining, ergo serious – sex radical feminist writers in the country. She’s my (as Sarah Silverman might say) Black God.

(And another endearing feature: She must have gotten to a certain age, as I did, when she thought, “Everyone else is taking the diminuitive “-ie” ending off their name and changing to the birth certificate version to get…serious. About their career and such. Hmmm. Maybe I should go from Debbie/Susie to Deborah/Debra/Susan/Susannah etc. et cetera and not etcie.” But we didn’t.)

Check out Bright’s blog, stroll through her archives, and hear the two segments she did with me: June 11 and June 18. Please think seriously of subscribing to her Audible.com program, and do pick up her wonderful books.

***

So I had one of those New York moments when I was walking into that sound studio — the kind people write about for the Monday cutesy-pie page of the Times, all the funny things that happen to them on the street or the Crosstown bus. This one probably wouldn’t make it to the Metro section, though:

As I approached the studio, on a street normally populated with a few youngish hipsters and some people en route to the nearby Bed Bath & Beyond, I spied a retinue who didn’t fit. The centerpiece was a slightly Vegas-y guy in early but very well-preserved AARP age. He had the unbuttoned shirt look, the Wow! He Still Has His Hair! vibe, the “Gee, didn’t I see him in an old porn flick?” thing.

Sure enough.

Upstairs, Bright told me she’d just interviewed 1970 Columbia U grad Jamey Ira Gurman, aka Jamie Gillis. He is a major star of porn’s classic, “Golden Age” (the pre-VCR 1970s, when films had scripts, were shot in 35mm, and ran in theaters). Much of this material was produced in New York City, where — as opposed to LA and San Francisco — porn had a rep for portraying “ugly girls” but edgy sex.

Update from February 2008: I just got a polite and gracious but obviously annoyed email from Gillis, taking me to task for assuming that the guy I saw was him; he says he does not look “vaguely Vegas-y” and was not “with a retinue” (which I assume means he was by himself, or at least not with whatever a retinue is). He feels I jumped to cliche and false conclusions, parroting popular prejudices about people in the porn industry rather than challenging them. So now I don’t know whether the man I saw was him or not — I don’t have the image in my head anymore to compare with Gillis’  current pictures. I do know I’d seen an old film he starred in, “The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann,” shortly before meeting with Susie, so maybe I had him in my consciousness. Then, maybe I saw him but went into some kind of hysterical reverie and imagined the Vegas-y details and companions. People are unconsciously infected with sexism, racism…and who  knows, probably pornism as well. Gillis gets the benefit of the doubt here. Mea culpa!

Currently I’m in the beginning stages of organizing a retrospective of classic XXX made in NYC. I’m fascinated not just by the “ugly girls” but also the “ugly” streets and interiors shown in these films. It’s all about 1970s New York in fiscal crisis and political-cultural ferment. The porn camera captures social unkemptness: anarchic streets and bohemian rebellion (after all, performers then were hippies, acting students and artists, many of who saw their sexual movie making as transgressive). Not to mention a lot of pubic hair and no breast implants (this is in the days before Pilates; women performers even have touches of cellulite).

I didn’t see these films the first time around. In 1974, a young woman couldn’t just stroll into the Pussycat Theater by herself to watch porn — you had to be with your boyfriend, and he had a different agenda. The whole experience of being shepherded and protected by a man in these places, of being the only woman there, of feeling like the BF was more turned on by the chick on the screen than by you: It was not pleasant, or conducive to critical/sexual thinking.

Now we’re all grown up, we’ve got our own computers, we can watch without chaperones, and we can think that way, too. The porn viewing experience for women is quite different than 30 years ago. That in itself is fascinating.

So I’m making a list of exemplary New York-made films. Drop a line if you have favorites you think would play well at the festival.

Last week I was lucky to be doing some business in Chicago during the city’s annual blues festival. At a Jazz Record Mart party on Sunday morning – where bands played inside the store – I spotted what appears to be a new trend: old blues musicians dressed as Texans. Or, more precisely, Texicans.

“What’s with the Dubya look?” I asked a fellow white audience member as Chicago guitarist James Wheeler did a set. He played gutbucket Mississippi while sporting black boots and a black Stetson. Did he hail from Texas?

“I doubt it,” said my audience friend. “He’s lived here 30 years at least, and his playing sure doesn’t sound Texas.”

I corralled Wheeler later and asked about the duds and his origins. “Nope, not Texas,” he said. “This is just my style.”

Minutes later I spotted James Yancy Jones, aka Tail Dragger, outside the store. His musical signature is a Howlin’ Wolf-like growl. Wolf, of course was from the Mississippi Delta. But there were the boots again, and the Stetson. Again I asked. “I got a right to dress like this,” Jones said. “I was raised in Dallas.”

“Oh yeah? What part?”

“Oak Cliff.”

“Whoa! I’ve been there a lot lately. Everyone in Oak Cliff now is Mexican!”

“Yeah!” he said, and went on to note that he buys his accessories at a vaquero store “out that way” (he wagged his finger in the geographic and existential direction of Kedzie).

“They speak enough English so I can get by. I got these boots there — you can tell, by the heel cut on the slant, that they Mexican.

“I’ve had them 15 years. And look. They as good as the day I bought them.”

“The Stetson, too.” He doffed it to show me the quality sweatband and other fine interior detail.

And there she was, shining like a milagro. “Hey!’ I said. “That’s the Virgin of Guadalupe!”

“Oh yeah?”

He wasn’t Catholic, or at least not Mexican. Still, he was tejano enough.

Updated October 21, 2007

On August 24, 2006, Salon.com posted an opinion piece I wrote titled “Why I Need to See Child Porn.” Almost immediately afterward, New York Times lawyers, a personal lawyer of Eichenwald, and Eichenwald himself contacted Salon. Eichenwald said he had not looked at any material illegally, although my op-ed assumed he had, based on clear implications in an article he’d recently written. Eichenwald threatened to sue me and Salon if Salon didn’t remove my article from its site and issue corrections. Salon complied, and also removed dozens of reader letters responding to the article the day it was posted. Two corrections were run. Readers were not allowed to directly respond to the second one.

A few weeks later, Counterpunch published a statement I wrote, noting that Eichwenwald had threatened to sue, and complaining about how Salon responded. Eichenwald then sent me a private message stating his intention to sue me as an individual.

In March 2007, the New York Times revealed that Eichenwald had given $2,000 to Justin Berry, a teenager who then became the main source for an article Eichenwald wrote in late 2005 about child pornography. Eichenwald, who had since quit the Times, was censured by Times Public Editor Byron Calame.

(Update and amendment, posted October 21, 2007): Eichenwald publicly announced in March 2007 that he was suing me for $10 million. He has not done so as of this writing. He quit his new job at Portfolio in August, after a courtroom hearing revealed he had paid more money to Justin Berry besides the $2,000 revealed earlier.

In September 2007, documents filed in a federal criminal case in Nashville, TN were unsealed after Eichenwald lost a legal battle to keep them from becoming public. The documents reveal that he gave Justin Berry an additional $1,100 in Paypal payments, which were made to buy online images of Berry. Those documents also show that Eichenwald offered Berry and his business partner ideas for how to make more money. In addition, they reveal that, under a pseudonym, Eichenwald was a member of Berry’s porn website, which contained illegal images of at least one minor (a 14 year old). And they show that Eichenwald had administrative privileges to the illegal site, which he used many times to sign on to it. (For more, click here. The documents are publicly available at the federal government’s PACER administrative online website: see filings from June to September 2007 for defendant Timothy Ryan Richards.)

For more on all this, including links to background material, see:

Counterpunch, September 14, 2007: “New York Times Reporter was Member of an Illegal, Underage Porn Site…” by Debbie Nathan

The Child Porn Hoax, by Susie Bright. October 2, 2007 (Alternet)

“More Secret Payments by Former New York Times Reporter to Web Porn Star Surface in Nashville Courtroom,”
Counterpunch July 31, 2007.

Hottype, Chicago Reader, March 12, 2007

Susie Bright’s Blog, June 11, 2007

“I was Disappeared by Salon,” by Debbie Nathan, in Counterpunch

“Perilous Reporting,” by Jessica Wakeman, in Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR)

Also, see my counterpunch-april-20072.pdf article, “The New York Times: Kurt Eichenwald, and the World of Justin Berry: Hysteria, Exploitation and Witch Hunting in the Age of Internet Sex.”

The piece analyzes gross misinformation and mischaracterizations in Eichenwald’s blockbuster, December 2005 article Times about Justin Berry, who became a webcam child porn producer and entrepreneur when he was still a minor.