They captured the Friedmans — and they were right.
Jesse Friedman — who proclaimed his innocence in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Capturing the Friedmans” — “was not wrongfully convicted” in the notorious child-molestation case that sent him and his pedophile father to prison, according to an official report released today.
Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said a comprehensive review guided by a blue-ribbon panel of legal experts had affirmed Friedman’s 1988 guilty plea, which he now disavows.
The three-year probe was spurred by a federal appeals court ruling that upheld Friedman’s conviction on a technicality, but urged the Nassau DA to conduct a “complete review” of his claim that he was railroaded when cops used questionable tactics to obtain “recovered memories” from his accusers.
“We were fully prepared to exonerate Mr. Friedman if that’s where the facts led us,” Rice said.
“But the facts, under any objective analysis, led to a substantially different conclusion.”
“This exhaustive and impartial process has only strengthened the justice system’s confidence that Jesse Friedman was involved in the sexual abuse of children,” she added.
Friedman and his late father, Arnold, both pleaded guilty to shocking charges that they sexually abused more than a dozen underage boys who took computer classes inside the Friedman’s home in Great Neck, LI.
Arnold died in prison in 1995, and Jesse was paroled in 2001.
The 155-page report from a “Review Team” led by three senior Nassau prosecutors says that Jesse’s allegations regarding “aggressive” police interrogations of his accusers are “exaggerated,” and that the cops’ interview techniques were “appropriate.”
The report also says the claim that four of the accusers have since recanted “is simply not accurate,” and that “Capturing the Friedmans” used selectively edited interviews to suggest that Jesse was the victim of public hysteria, police misconduct and judicial bias.
“The Review Team committed itself to follow the facts wherever they might lead, and found that the whole truth diverged significantly from the edited version of events portrayed in the film,” the report concluded.
At an afternoon news conference outside the Nassau County courthouse, Jesse, 44, blasted the report and vowed to continue trying to clear his name.
“It was lies that put me in prison 25 years ago, and I believe there is nothing but lies in the report that was released today,” he said.
“I’m looking forward to an opportunity to have witnesses in court, with a judge, and a fair process — the trial that I was never afforded the opportunity to have when I was 19 years old.”
“Capturing the Friedmans” director Andrew Jarecki said: “It took them longer to produce this report than it did the Warren Commission to produce the report on the Kennedy assassination.”
“But at the end of the day, we as filmmakers have spoken to dozens of more witnesses than the district attorney,” he added.
Jesse’s lawyer, Ron Kuby, accused Rice of using “every technicality available to her to prevent Jesse Friedman from having his day in court.”
“She has repeatedly refused to present her evidence either to the defense or to a court and has obstructed and delayed the truth-finding process for close to a decade,” he said.
“We are preparing to go back into court with this vast body of new evidence we’ve been able to obtain over the past three years.”
bruce.golding@nypost.com