Famed Sex Crimes Prosecutor Linda Fairstein Being Purged After Netflix Program About ‘Central Park Five’
Pressured to resign from numerous charitable boards, including Vassar College, and efforts underway to remove her books from stores. If there were no Trump connection to the Central Park Five case, would the fury against her be the same?
Linda Fairstein was the sex crimes prosecutor in New York City in 1989 when a young woman was attacked and raped in Central Park. The case drew national attention and a group of minority teens who were allegedly “wilding” in the park were convicted.
Years later, another man claimed he committed the crime and the “Central Park Five,” as they had become known, were released from prison and sued the city resulting in a large settlement.
A new Netflix series called “When They See Us” debuted this weekend and paints Fairstein in a very negative light. Now she is being purged at various charities and institutions, and there are attempts to remove her books from stores.
She is a graduate of Vassar College and has just resigned from its board of trustees after a Change.org Petition gained over 15,000 signatures. The office of Vassar College President Elizabeth Bradley released this statement:
Announcement Regarding Trustee Resignation
Dear All,
I am writing to update the Vassar community. I have just learned from the Chair of the Board of Trustees that Linda Fairstein has resigned from the Board, as of today. I am told that Ms. Fairstein felt that, given the recent widespread debate over her role in the Central Park case, she believed that her continuing as a Board member would be harmful to Vassar.
The events of the last few days have underscored how the history of racial and ethnic tensions in this country continue to deeply influence us today, and in ways that change over time. As I have received many emails and phone calls from people who have expressed a broad range of views on this issue, I am reminded of William Faulkner’s quote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
It’s not just Vassar. The New York Post reports:
‘Central Park Five’ prosecutor resigns from charity boards over Netflix show backlash
Former Manhattan sex-crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein resigned Tuesday from several nonprofit boards in the wake of a controversy triggered by a new Netflix series about the infamous Central Park Five case, The Post has learned.
In a letter to the chairman of the Safe Horizon victims-services agency, Fairstein said she wanted to spare it further grief through association with her.
“I do not want to become a lightning rod to inflict damage on this organization, because of those now attacking my record of fighting for social justice for more than 45 years,” Fairstein wrote.
There even is a Petition to remove her books from stores. The Petition has over 80,000 signatures.
Fairstein claims that the show distorts her and her role in the investigation.
Lloyd Grove writes at the Daily Beast:
Central Park Five Prosecutor Takes Fire Over Ava DuVernay Netflix Series, Calls It ‘Basket of Lies’
Linda Fairstein is feeling the heat from prize-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s new Netflix miniseries, When They See Us, which portrays the retired New York sex-crimes prosecutor as a purveyor of injustice who racially profiled and railroaded the so-called Central Park Five three decades ago.
A #cancellindafairstein hashtag has been trending on Twitter in recent days. A petition demanding retailers and publishers pull her crime novels drew more than 40,000 signatures in a day. She was called corrupt, racist, and “the face of evil” on social media after the show premiered.
“It’s a basket of lies,” Fairstein, 72, told The Daily Beast as the furor spread this week.
This is a woman who was a much-praised pioneer in prosecuting sex crimes cases. From the New York Times in 2001:
Fairstein Is to Retire As Prosecutor Of Sex Crimes
Linda A. Fairstein, who became the nation’s best-known prosecutor of sex crimes in a 30-year career of major cases, legislative reforms and best-selling books that explored the legal and emotional realities of rape, will retire next year as chief of the Manhattan district attorney’s sex crimes unit.
The 54-year-old prosecutor, a pioneer in using DNA evidence to identify sex offenders and a forceful advocate of laws to prosecute date rape and drug-related rapes and to spare victims from having their sexual histories examined in court, said she would step down on Feb. 1 to write, lecture and serve as a consultant on sex crimes to the police and prosecutors in New York and elsewhere.
”I intend to stay very active on the issues of violence against women that have been closely associated with my career since 1972,” said Ms. Fairstein, who has been portrayed on television programs as a hard-driving prosecutor. She spoke in a telephone interview yesterday after telling colleagues of her decision.
There is another angle to this story which seems relevant. Like all things Hollywood, there is an anti-Trump aspect to the Netflix series. Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker and Democrat activist, is known for his disdain of Trump and is also a director on the show.
Trump’s connection to the famous case and the series it’s based on hardly seems like a coincidence.
Patrick Ryan reports at USA Today:
Ava DuVernay lets Trump ‘speak for himself’ in Central Park Five series ‘When They See Us’
Despite its 1980s setting, the specter of current politics hangs over Netflix’s Central Park Five miniseries “When They See Us.”
“They need to keep that bigot off TV, that’s what they need to do,” mother Sharon Salaam (Aunjanue Ellis) says while watching an interview with future president Donald Trump, in which he tells NBC’s Bryant Gumbel that he would “love to be a well-educated black.”
“Don’t worry about it,” her friend responds. “His 15 minutes (are) almost up.”
It’s an eerily prescient exchange that’s sure to spark conversation among viewers of Ava DuVernay’s new four-part drama, now streaming, which follows a group of black and Hispanic teenagers who were convicted (and later exonerated) in connection with the 1989 rape of jogger Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white investment banker.
At the time of the brutal assault, Trump was a high-powered New York real-estate mogul adamant about cracking down on crime. Although no DNA evidence connected the boys, aged 14 to 16, to the attack, that didn’t stop Trump from spending $85,000 on full-page ads in four city newspapers, calling for their executions.
This is the ad Trump ran at the time:
This is the full-page advertisement Donald Trump took out calling for the execution of the Central Park Five.
They were later exonerated by DNA evidence, although President Trump maintains that they are guilty. pic.twitter.com/vspZemnW93
— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) February 10, 2018
At a time when Democrats are worried about losing black voters to Trump, this could be the Hollywood left’s way of trying to “help” their party.
Was Linda Fairstein just collateral damage? We saw the left sacrifice some of their own during the early days of the #MeToo movement. If there were no Trump connection to the story, would the reaction have been different?
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Well, it was before Twitter l
“Netflix”
yeah, they are right there at the top of my list of unbiased sources for information…
not.
Libel defamation and tortious interference? Perhaps she should sue Netflix and Ava DuVernay.
Ms. Duvernay was interviewed about this film/documentary/whatever, and she made a comment about not judging people before the information is in that reminded me of every incident that has gotten Black Lives Matters’ panties in a wad. She’s dishonest at best.
As a public figure she’d have to prove they knowingly told objective falsehoods. Which specific alleged facts does she claim are not true, and that they knew or should have known they were not true?
Yeah…I’m fairly new to Netflix and there’s a lot of good stuff there…but these obviously forced “message” shows seem to be fairly recent and the previews alone are enough to make me run for the hills.
I recall when this rape and beating first became public knowledge some on the Left claimed she was actually assaulted by a white boyfriend, after which (for some bizarre reason) the victim colluded with her attacker to frame some black youths. I have not seen the Netflix series, so I am curious if they are using it to trying to revive that wackadoodle theory.
The claim is that the 5 were “wrongly convicted” because they were grilled too long by the cops, and also because another black man, whose semen was recovered from the victim, later claimed (after the statute of limitations had expired, and he had nothing to lose — and a lot to gain) that he had been the sole attacker.
In fact, there was a considerable amount of independent evidence that the 5 were the people who attacked and viciously beat the jogger. The cops knew from the start that there were only two biological samples recovered from the jogger that were big enough to test for DNA (remember, this happened in the ’80’s, when DNA testing was very new, and you needed a lot of biological material to do DNA tests).
Two “diverse” juries heard all the evidence, including the fact that DNA from only one man was recovered, and they convicted the 5. They did this because it was clear the 5 were actually guilty of assaulting the woman.
The PC myth that the 5 were actually innocent is total bullshit, as the juries and anybody else who has reviewed the evidence can tell you. The “exoneration” — and the rushed settlement to pay the 5 over $40 million in tax dollars for their “wrongful convictions” was a gross miscarriage of justice.
I lived in New York at the time. Of course they were guilty as hell and yes these vermin had plenty of spokesvermin accusing the lady’s boyfriend of doing this. . Crime pays bigtime in NY. Morgenthau and Cy Vance Jr. are criminal’s best friends.
So, here we have someone who could have done #metoo the right way through the justice system and we have people blowing up about it because racism.
The justice system did not succeed in finding the real culprits in this case, but that’s a small fraction compared to the success of the system. We are told by #metoo SJWs that there is only a small fraction of women that make false rape accusations, so we should just trust them all and ignore due process until after the testimony has been fabricated and tampered with. Who sounds like the crazy one?
Actually, the justice system did indeed find, and convict, the real culprits. Or most of them, at least.
It was the “social justice” system that failed. It was “social justice” that allowed the 5 guilty thugs to be released from prison, after the 6th attacker made a patently self-interested, bogus confession that he was the sole attacker. It was “social justice” that caused these 5 vicious thugs to be celebrated as innocent martyrs, and paid over $40 million of taxpayers’ money for their “wrongful” convictions.
It is “social justice” that is the problem here, not real justice.
You are correct. If you ever are asked for a citation, Ann Coulter wrote about this in one of her books and in a column.
Cultural Revolution 2.0… right on schedule.
For comparison: http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2018-07-25.html.
Coulter swings it like a 9 lb hammer.
idgi, what am I supposed to be outraged about this week? Liberals confuse me.
because of those now attacking my record of fighting for social justice for more than 45 years,” Fairstein wrote.
Social justice? I’d find the whole thing a lot more convincing if words like “law” or even “order” were in there. A “social justice” badge should not be a license to wade in to destroy anyone a SJW happens to think needs a bit of destroying.
Used to really like Netflix when they mailed DVDs and streamed already produced movies and documentaries. Now that’s it’s mostly their own content/propoganda I think I’m about to cut the cable (so to speak).
Yeah. I got Netflix when it mailed DVDs. I kept it when it started streaming. When it started charging for them separately, I dumped the mail service.
Now, I’m having trouble justifying the expense. It seems like 90% of the new material is trash, propaganda, or both.
There are other services in the sea.
Where are Linda Fairstein’s friends and colleagues? Are they standing up for her on twitter and on media platforms like NYC public radio? Why aren’t they rallying to her banner? If not now, then when?
She’s got all the requisite CV items checked off. She’s a lifelong democratic party member in good standing. She collects charity board chairs because that’s what well connected power elite cosmopolitans do. It’s part of thier social pecking order.
And now that all of it has failed her? And the village pitchfork mob are beating on her castle doors? So conservatives should now take up her banner? Because that’s what Heroes do? We’re the cavalry come hell or high water? Booted and spurred? This same scenario happens time and again. For example. Years ago we stood up for Bush when democrats were calling him Chimpy McBushitler and Dick Cheney a Sith Lord etc. And the same neocons we defended all those years ago? They turn around and call Trump a Franco or Mussolini styled populist fascists during NPR and BBC interviews. Bill Kristol hired a team of media mercenaries to ruin US.
And here we are. Again. White Knighting. Because of the well worn trope? When the nazi came for …. I said nothing? When they came for….again, I said nothing?
Bull-s. Horseflop. Not doing it again.
Bill Kristol is the kind of “conservative” that gave the left all its ammunition against conservatives. There’s a reason his magazine failed.
Two reasons for defending her, one what is going on is injustice, and two this is another opportunity to to convince more Dems that they should no longer support the party.
Remember that Zimmerman was a Dem, and now he is not.
I was never convinced the 5 were innocent. There was too much evidence of quilt.
I have no opinion on whether those 5 committed rapes that day.
But when people in the justice system are instrumental in diluting due process, and so they risk leaving enough doubt of guilt that these reversals are more likely to occur, it’s their fault.
Since Fairstein is an enemy of due process, I want her legacy reversed.
Rape? Maybe, maybe not. Assault? Yep.
Didn’t the USSR and it’s satellite countries always do this?
And doesn’t China do it even today?
Seems the US is becoming more and more like the Soviets and less and less like a free country where ppl can decide for themselves what they learn about and hold their own opinions.
I see more and more of this and if it’s not stopped our entire country will dissolve because revenge is not a basis for government.
There’s no mention at all about the “central park five” in that ad. Who TF made that connection?
I covered the Central Park case and trial as a reporter in 1990. This “film” is slanted propaganda. The confessions weren’t coerced.
I interviewed a man who was assaulted by the Central Park teens that night. They were going around punching people in the face
There’s a reason the DA never declared them to be innocent