Since the release of Ava Duvernay’s ‘When They See Us’, author and former prosecutor Linda Fairstein has become the next target on the ‘cancelled’ list. Linda has deleted all of her social media accounts, but she took to the Wall Street Journal to voice how she really feels about the CP5 series.
In her opinion piece, Linda addresses many parts of the series, mainly to make the point that Ava did not do her due diligence when telling the story. Linda claims Ava DuVernay has taken the same route as other reporters and filmmakers, and pants her as an ‘evil mastermind’.
“Each has missed a larger picture of that terrible night: a riot in the dark that resulted in the apprehension of more than 15 teenagers,” Linda says. “So it is with filmmaker Ava DuVernay in ‘When They See Us,” a series so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication.”
Linda recalls the story to go like this: police were called to the Central Park area due to complaints of a group of teenagers attacking innocent people. She says in the midst of the arrests made, the young men known as the Central Park 5 were also taken into custody.
She says Matias Reyes, who she refers to as a sociopath, then confessed to the rape of Trisha Meili in 2002, which led the district attorney to drop the charges against the young men after they had already served their sentences.
Linda points out various examples of information she says Ava DuVernay depicted incorrectly including: the time Linda arrived at the precinct, the place Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise were arrested, and the idea that there was no evidence against the young men.
“In the first episode, the film portrays me at the precinct station house before dawn on April 20,” Linda says. “In reality, I did not arrive until 8 p.m., 22 hours after the police investigation began, did not run the investigation, and never made any of the comments the screenwriter attributes to me.”
Although Linda has chosen the Wall Street Journal to voice her side of the story, it is clear that many people are already convinced she played a large role in the conviction of the Central Park 5.
As we previously reported, Linda has been dropped from her publisher and from various trustee boards amid revelations that she coerced the young men into confessing to a crime they did not commit.
