Is 'Frontline' episode righting a wrong?
Second look at child sexual abuse case filled with gaps in normally solid series

By Irv Letofsky (April 24, 2002)

Most of us watch TV documentaries with half an eye and part of an ear. But if you're attentive to the usually lauded "Frontline" on its episode Thursday night on PBS, you'll notice yawning gaps in its journalism. It's a reinspection of a massive child sexual abuse case with the tasty title "Did Daddy Do It?"

This is, of course, precisely the wrong time for imprecision in such difficult matters - the terrible turmoil in the Roman Catholic priesthood, the Supreme Court throwing out the ban on "virtual" child pornography, major pedophilia arrests and recurring news of child kidnappings and killings. In this chronicle from one of our few solid public-affairs series, "Frontline" casts severe aspersions on the prosecutors in the high-profile Country Walk case, named for the upscale Miami neighborhood where it all happened or maybe nothing at all happened in the early 1980s.

Accuracy and reporting aside, this is wonderful TV. It's an intriguing watch, beautifully edited, expertly unfolding, gripping, emotional, tears-in-the-eyes, lumps-in-the-throat drama, replete with curious characters.

Its major hostiles: Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno (later U.S. attorney general, now running for Florida governor) is portrayed as a fierce, menacing, child-crusader; in the other corner, two hapless victims, Cuban immigrant Frank Fuster, who had set up an interior decorating business in Country Walk, and his young bride from Honduras, Ileana Flores, who opened an unlicensed child care service in their home to help cover expenses.

Did Fuster suffer egregious injustice? The jury found him guilty of 14 counts involving 21 children - eight counts of capital sexual battery, five for lewd assault and one for aggravated assault. Fuster received a sentence of 165 years.

WGBH/Boston and Kirk Documentary Group, with Michael Kirk as producer-director and co-writer with correspondent Peter J. Boyer, say that they set about to conduct "an in-depth re-examination of the evidence."

They raise lots of suspicions: Was Reno too fanatic? Did she visit the then-Mrs. Fuster in her cell at night? Was Ileana kept naked in her cell and made to suffer cold-water showers and psychological intimidations to get her confession? Were those child psychologists brainwashing the young, supposed victims? What about that test that confirms that Fuster's 7-year-old son had gonorrhea of the throat? (Now an adult, the son asserts that there was no sex with his father.) How indifferent and how competent were Fuster's court-appointed attorneys?

The producers base much of their case on the now-divorced wife Ileana. During jury selection, she changed her plea to guilty. At one point in her subsequent testimony, Fuster leaped out of his chair and screamed at her. He had to be restrained. Years later, she recanted her confession, then later recanted her recantation. Then she supposedly contacted "Frontline" and, with the quiet-spoken Boyer asking about all the original charges, reversed herself again. She says nothing untoward ever happened at Country Walk.

In launching his scenario, Boyer relates warmly that "some say it all started as a love story." But Flores says for the camera that she was 14 or 15 and a virgin when she had sex with Fuster, who was 34. This would seem to be a case of statutory rape, but in the program, this isn't addressed.

There were press reports that Fuster had killed a man and had been convicted of child molesting. Boyer simply paraphrases Fuster as saying that the killing was an accident and the molesting involved "a troubled family friend." Boyer leaves it at that, without citing details.

Police reports say that the killing took place in 1969 in The Bronx, N.Y. It was a road-rage confrontation witnessed by an off-duty patrolman. Fuster fired a carbine twice and killed the other driver as he was walking toward Fuster's station wagon. Fuster was indicted for first-degree murder and the case was pleaded down to manslaughter. He served about four years of a 10-year sentence.

In the most recent Fuster pleading, a "lewd assault" case in Miami in 1982 involved "a teen-age girl." But she was a 9-year-old girl. After a trial, Fuster was given two years' probation. (Because of the Country Walk incidents, the probation was revoked and 15 years were added to the 150 years in the trial sentence of six life terms.)

Also absent (unless there are air-time changes to the review tape version) is mention of the latest rejected appeal, this one last month by Magistrate Judge Charlene Sorrentino, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida.

She took three years to sift through the 10,000 pages of trial testimony and pleadings and issued a 124-page rejection. She was frequently stinging in her descriptions of the Fuster appeal attorneys' arguments, with terms like "embellishments," "exaggerations," "sweeping, sometimes outlandish assertions" and "hyperbolic statements unworthy of credence."

The producers of "Did Daddy Do It?" also visited Reno in 1995 with "Waco: The Inside Story," on the Branch Dividian disaster. Correspondent Boyer also wrote at least two articles on the Waco calamity for The New Yorker magazine, both unfriendly portraits of Reno. Fuster's lead appeal attorney, Robert Rosenthal, did a critical article on Reno in Penthouse magazine in 1996.

This suggests an agenda.

Since 1983, "Frontline" has built a fine reputation - and "fine" doesn't do it full justice. Its apparent purpose here is to, as it sees it, right a wrong. It's not easy to get both sides of a contentious issue in front of your cameras, but we'd expect more diligence from "Frontline."

NOTE: Irv Letofsky, former editor of the Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar magazine, reviews TV for The Hollywood Reporter. When Boyer worked for the Times, Letofsky was his Sunday editor.