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Linda Fairstein, a former prosecutor who became a novelist, who has been the focus of public outrage since Netflix began streaming a series based on the Central Park Five case, has criticized the show in an op-ed as “so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication.”

Since the docuseries airing on Netflix, she has stepped down from several non-profit boards, was dropped by her publisher, and is currently facing a boycott of her books. If you haven’t seen the special on Netflix, Linda is the overseer on a case involving a runner being raped in the park. She pushes the conviction of 5 teenage boys ages 14-16, for the rape despite inconsistencies in their confessions. They were basically coerced. In the special, the cops interrogating the boys basically lie to each of them, telling them that the others gave their name as the rapist. One boy ends of lying, giving a whole fake story because he was told that the other boys told cops that he was the guilty one. Linda Fairstein was the head of the sex crimes unit in Manhattan in 1989. And she PUSHED for their conviction. 

In 2002, a man confessed to the crime, and DNA evidence confirmed him as the rapist. 

Linda recently gave a few words to the Wall Street Journal, telling them, “Ms. DuVernay’s film attempts to portray me as an overzealous prosecutor and a bigot, the police as incompetent or worse, and the five suspects as innocent of all charges against them. None of this is true.” 

Linda says the biggest lie was that the boys were held without food and that their parents were not always present during questioning. She says, “If that had been true, surely they would have brought those issues up and prevailed in pretrial hearings on the voluntariness of their statements, as well as in their lawsuit against the city. They didn’t, because it never happened.”

But the defendants did raise these issues in a pretrial hearing, they jus didnt prevail. 

These 5 men, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Antron McCray, served several years in prison. They were given $41 million in 2014 by the city of New York.

Director and writer of the series, Ava DuVernay responsed on Twitter saying, “expected and typical. Onward.”

Expected and typical. Onward… https://t.co/phJtFpvH0a

— Ava DuVernay (@ava) June 11, 2019

Source: New York Times