Freeing Bernie Baran [aGLIFF Notes]

There are many highlights on the schedule of the 23rd annual Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival, but one of the biggest is the World Premiere of Daniel Alexander's documentary Freeing Bernie Baran.

We knew nothing about this case before watching this film, but found ourselves filled with rage at how easily this young man's life was turned upside down simply because he was gay. Baran's story is part of a wave of child sex-abuse panic that swept across this country in the early 1980's. Hundreds of innocent people were accused of horrific crimes in very high profile cases like those against the McMartin preschool in California.

Bernie Baran was 19 and working as a teacher's aide in a day care center in western Massachusetts when two homophobic parents with a history of drug problems brought the first abuse allegations against him. That began a landslide of terrifying claims, including one that he had raped a 3-year-old girl with a pair of scissors.

With no real evidence, except for edited videotaped testimony from the young children who had been manipulated by the District Attorney, a grand jury indicted Baran and he was sent to prison for three consecutive life sentences. Throughout it all, Baran maintained his innocence and refused to take any plea bargains offered to him. After 21 years in prison (where he survived over 150 attacks on his life and multiple suicide attempts), a new legal team finally began to unlock formerly suppressed evidence to prove his innocence.

This is a difficult film, but a very important one that deserves to be seen. Even though they have covered similar territory in Capturing The Friedmans, we would love to see an organization like HBO Documentary Films pick up this movie so that it can be seen by a wide audience. For now, the only place to see it is at aGLIFF and it should be one of your top picks this weekend.

Freeing Bernie Baran plays at the Alamo South Lamar Saturday at 1:30 with the director and Bernie Baran in attendance. Get more details here. Download the entire festival schedule at the AGLIFF’s site here.

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By Matt Shiverdecker in Arts & Entertainment on September 10, 2010 4:30 PM 0 Comments

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oaksong

After watching the film one has an almost immobilizing sense of rage at the person who made this happen, the DA in the case who had no evidence, no credible witnesses and hounded a naive young gay man into prison for no apparent reason other than his own self hatred, for I have come to learn that DA Ford is himself gay.

I learned this while speaking with Bernie's lawyer after the screening.

DA Dan Ford won a lifetime judgeship as a result of the Baran trial. There are now legal motions being put forward to strip him of his law license which would effectively remove him from the bench.

In some ways this is similar to the story of the Duke Lacrosse players who were hounded by a day for a supposed rape, which never took place. That DA lost his license and it was very clear that his motives were purely political as he had started to run for a state position when everything about the case fell apart.

One can only hope that Bernie is successful in collecting monetary damages from the law firms and lawyers who were supposed to be saving him from the law when in fact they only buried him deeper.

One of the interesting side lights was that the attempt by Bernie's legal team to acquire the tapes of the children's testimony were stymied for four years until the then current DA died suddenly from a heart attack and the tapes were found a month afterwords.