Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Sean Penn (Voice)
John Stoll
Scott Kniffen
Brenda Kniffen
Directed By:
Don Hardy Jr.
Dana Nachman
I should have known that Sean Penn doesn't lend his voice (even less his money) to easy, money-oriented projects. Witch Hunt is difficult, horrifying and extremely sad, but it's one mind-blowing piece of a documentary. During the Reagan years, America was swept by a huge wave of fear. Invisible enemies, faceless foreigners and friendly neighborhood weirdos were on the mind of every respectable conservative citizens. In Kern County, a young, aggressive and ambitious District Attorney named Ed Jagels decided to feed off this craze and make a name for himself. He started a spectacular string of arrest of a alleged child molesters. As Penn put it in his amazing narration, it's like somebody finally shook up the tree and all the perverts fell down. The only problem in Jagels' logic is that no one was abusing kids in Kern County. At least, none of those he got arrested.
How is that possible? I'm sure you're asking yourself the question with great horror. Somehow, Jagels and his pawns of the Kern County judiciary system came in court with testimonies from many neighborhood children that they were indeed abused and brought to sex parties where their parents gave them to strangers to abuse. Since the whole country was swept with a brutal fear, there was nothing these poor folks could do to defend themselves. They got exemplary sentences for child molesters. The Kniffen were condemned to over two hundred years of imprisonment each, Rick Pitts and his wife were condemned for more than three hundred years and John Stoll, the "lucky" convict got forty years. A nightmare situation. Don Hardy and Dana Nachman interviewed the grown up kids who testified and they are unanimous. They were coerced into testifying words have been placed in their mouth and authority figures intimidated them. They were five or six years old.
How did that ended? Ed Jagels stretched his luck really thin when he started a new witch hunt against friendly neighborhood satanists. He accused again random families of having black masses and ritual sacrifices in their backyard. That was a bit too much for the Attorney General who decided to get involved and dig into the incredible string of Jagles' convictions. Things started getting better from then, but the damage was done. Life was ruined, for what? A false feeling of security. This is exactly what his role calls for. Making people sleep soundly at night. His aggressive approach on crime (I heard he got a man imprisoned for twenty-five years for stealing doughnuts, because the man has prior convictions) got him re-elected six times in Kern County. Even after almost all of his child molesting convictions got overturned, he went on to have a successful tenure of more than twenty years. People of the county loved him.
Witch Hunt is a terrific look on the gap that separates law and justice. One ambitious man, thirsty for power and recognition threw the life of happy parents and unsuspecting children in the gutter, in the name of public good. The interviews of Victor, Eddie and Allen, three children that testified at John Stoll's trial were gut-wrenching and made me wonder who were the biggest victims in that? Stoll and all the other convicts but two were freed and had their name cleared, but these kids have to live with the ghost of what they did. They are all deeply marked by what they did, even if it's not their fault. Don Hardy and Dana Nachman play a taped interrogation of one of the kids. It's evident that they were terrified and conned into doing this. But still, they live with the ghost of what happened, while Ed Jagels was still out there and kept assuming he did the right thing by enforcing law with demented aggression. He chose not to participate to the movie due to a pending lawsuit, but it's his lost. Witch Hunt is bone chilling. A haunting documentary.
SCORE: 90%