The investigation into Arnold Friedman's life started in 1984, when the U.S. Postal Service intercepted a magazine of child pornography sent to him from the Netherlands. In 1987, investigators searched his home in Great Neck, New York, and found a collection of child pornography. Upon learning that Arnold taught computer classes for preteen boys in his home, authorities interviewed the students, some of whom alleged they had been subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Arnold and his youngest son, Jesse, a young adult who assisted Arnold with the classes. The two men were arrested and accused of committing hundreds of crimes, throwing the community into turmoil. They were eventually able to get out on bail and returned home to prepare for court, hanging their hopes for acquittal on the lack of physical evidence against them and reports of the coercive tactics and leading questions that had been used to question the students.
Around this time, David, Arnold's eldest son, got a camcorder, and he recorded hours of home videos during this period. The videos were not made with the intention of showing them to the public, but the film incorporates some of this footage, which consists of family dinners, conversations, and arguments. While Arnold's three sons (Seth, the middle son, chose to not participate in the documentary) believed Arnold and Jesse were innocent, Elaine, Arnold's wife and the mother of the boys, was unsure of her husband's innocence, and she encouraged Arnold to confess, hoping that would somehow help Jesse's case. Arnold did plead guilty to multiple charges of sodomy and sexual abuse and was sentenced to prison. Jesse later also pled guilty; his charges were not reduced after his father's plea, but he said his father had molested him as a child to try to get a less severe sentence (Jesse has since stated that this was just a legal ploy.)
After their pleas, both Arnold and Jesse said that no abuse had taken place during the computer classes, but they thought, given the media coverage of the case and the climate in Great Neck at the time, they would have been convicted and given harsher sentences if they had gone to trial. However, in a document Arnold wrote while under house arrest after he was bailed out of jail, he did claim that, when he was 13, he sexually abused his younger brother, Howard, who was eight years old at the time (Howard is interviewed in the film and says he does not remember being abused by his brother), and admitted to, as an adult, molesting two boys who were not his students (Jesse's lawyer, Peter Panaro, who visited Arnold in a Wisconsin federal prison, is interviewed in the film and says Arnold admitted this to him as well). Jesse, in a statement subsequent to the film, said his father also told him and his brothers that he sexually abused Howard.[4]
Arnold Friedman died in prison in 1995 after taking an overdose of antidepressants, leaving a $250,000 life insurance benefit to Jesse. Jesse Friedman was released from New York's Clinton Correctional Facility in 2001 after serving 13 years of his sentence. As of 2013, he was running an online book-selling business.[5]
