{"id":41,"date":"2020-07-07T06:35:55","date_gmt":"2020-07-07T06:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/?p=41"},"modified":"2024-03-12T23:48:30","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T23:48:30","slug":"outcry-the-most-surprising-docuseries-of-the-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"Outcry, the most surprising docuseries of the summer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Greg Kelley, the subject of Outcry, which shows a surprising, thorny, hyper-local yet deeply concerning saga.&nbsp;Photograph: Jim Redman\/Courtesy of Showtime<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2013, Greg Kelley, a high school football star, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a four-year-old. But a new series reveals things are not as they seem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>As a legal term, \u201coutcry\u201d refers to the first admission by a victim of sexual assault, the testimony which launches a police investigation, a process more familiar to most Americans through television procedurals such as Law &amp; Order: SVU than personal experience. On the big and small screen, this would seem to be a straightforward process, especially if the person making the outcry is a child \u2013 log it, believe it, investigate, catch, prosecute. So it would seem in July 2013, when a four-year-old boy told his parents, who then informed police in Williamson county, a tony suburb north of Austin, Texas, of sexual assault by a high schooler he named as Greg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greg Kelley, then a 17-year-old rising senior and star of the Leander high school football team, was promptly arrested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It seemed like a clearcut case \u2013 Kelley was living with a friend\u2019s family to maintain residency in the district, at a house which also hosted the in-home daycare center attended by a four-year-old. Soon, police reported another outcry by another four-year-old daycare attendee. Kelley maintained his innocence but was convicted in 2014, aged 18, of two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, and sentenced to 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as documented in Showtime\u2019s five-part series Outcry, the case was hardly an open-and-shut deal. Following his conviction, hundreds of people, particularly fellow high schoolers, in Leander and neighboring Cedar Park rallied around Kelley\u2019s innocence \u2013 not the response you\u2019d necessarily expect for someone accused of sexually assaulting small children, no matter how high their profile in the quasi-religion that is Texas high school football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A counter-group rallied around the cause of believing testimonies of sexual assault. Believe the children versus believe the man proclaiming innocence and a railroaded conviction. As Outcry reveals, however, the case was far more twisted than a polarized small town; over the course of five episodes and three years of filming, the Greg Kelley story unfolds in real time \u2013 with some participants experiencing major twists and shocking news on camera \u2013 to reveal a surprising, thorny, hyper-local yet deeply concerning saga of prosecutorial misconduct and a botched investigation, a confusing conviction process and the misunderstood psychology of child confessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"OUTCRY (2020) Official Trailer | 5-Part Series | Premieres July 5th On SHOWTIME\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Nosh5cYI8Q8?start=5&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Outcry\u2019s director, Pat Kondelis, lives in Williamson county, but didn\u2019t hear about the Kelley case until a friend suggested he look into it while premiering another project, Disgraced, at South by Southwest in 2017. At first, \u201cI initially wasn\u2019t excited about doing it,\u201d he told the Guardian. \u201cThere was so much information that people were giving me, and I didn\u2019t know what I could believe, what I should believe. It was very different, from a developmental process, than anything else that we\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He met with Kelley\u2019s family, by then desperate for an outside look into the case. By the time Kondelis began filming in 2017, Kelley had spent three years in prison and \u201cwe had no idea where this story was going to go\u201d, said Kondelis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He did, however, know the law enforcement reputation of Williamson county, an area notorious for its unforgiving application of the law (the county&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statesman.com\/article\/20140827\/NEWS\/308279650\">drew national attention<\/a>&nbsp;in 2014 for charging a 19-year-old who made pot brownies with felony charges that threatened life in prison) and high-profile cases of miscarried justice (such as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2016\/08\/13\/michael-morton-murder-case-reverberates-across-tex\/\">Michael Morrison<\/a>, who served 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit after Williamson\u2019s prosecution withheld evidence. He was released and exonerated in 2013). At the time of Kelley\u2019s arrest, the \u201cthrow-the-book-at-people\u201d attitude was something Williamson county law enforcement wore \u201cas a badge of honor \u2013 you don\u2019t do it here. And if you do, you\u2019re going to pay,\u201d said Kondelis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the start of the series, however, a changeover in county officials allowed Kondelis, the new district attorney, Shawn Dick, and Kelley\u2019s replacement lawyer Keith Hampton to look into the case and a potential appeal. \u201cEvery interaction I had with Williamson county in the three years of making this was a positive one,\u201d Kondelis said. \u201cThey were open and transparent, and that\u2019s not what I was expecting.\u201d Without spoiling too much \u2013 the series unfolds as the film-makers experienced it, which according to Kondelis was \u201ca rollercoaster \u2026 one day you feel pretty strongly you know what happened, and then the next day something happens and it totally changes your mind\u201d \u2013 the re-examination of Kelley\u2019s conviction revealed startling incompetence, misconduct and general misunderstanding on the veracity and techniques of child trauma interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/8000-1024x576.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-48\" srcset=\"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/8000-1024x576.webp 1024w, https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/8000-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/8000-768x432.webp 768w, https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/8000-1536x864.webp 1536w, https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/8000.webp 1760w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>Photograph: Courtesy of SHOWTIME\/Courtesy of Showtime<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The officer tasked with investigating the four-year-old\u2019s outcry never even visited the scene of the alleged crime. Kelley\u2019s attorney, hired at the suggestion of the owner of the daycare center, was revealed to have troubling conflicts of interest. A potential alternative suspect went entirely un-investigated, among other disturbing revelations about the county\u2019s handling of the case. Prosecutors changed alleged timelines to meet alleged narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt was a constant back and forth,\u201d said Kondelis of the filming experience over three years. \u201cYou have to be open-minded and consider all possibilities, because you don\u2019t know all the information yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All the while, the case garnered significant and sustained local media attention, especially after Kelley was released on bond in 2017 pending the reopened case, and exacerbated by his status as a local football star \u2013 few things grab America\u2019s attention like the story of thwarted athletic potential on behalf of young men. Outcry also explores both sides of fervent support in the case \u2013 on behalf of the \u201cPray for GK\u201d group who believed (some based on personal connection, some based on popularity) in Kelley\u2019s innocence, most especially his mother, Rosa, and girlfriend, Gaebri Anderson; and the victims\u2019 rights advocates who understood that one discredited sexual assault claim could threaten the seriousness afforded all others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou had camps on both sides that were completely dug in and both believed that they were fighting a righteous fight,\u201d Kondelis said. \u201cEach side digging their heels in in their belief that they were protecting the innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, he noted, the specifics of Leander, of Williamson county, and of Texas football, warped the visibility of the case. \u201cIf Greg had not been the star high school football player from Leander high school, he wouldn\u2019t have gotten as much support as he did,\u201d Kondelis said. \u201cIf this also didn\u2019t happen in Williamson, where there\u2019s a long, storied history of wrongful conviction, he wouldn\u2019t have gotten the support that he did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ultimately, the critical and nuanced re-examination of Kelley\u2019s case, as well as evidence-based reappraisal of child outcry interviews \u2013 the high instances of suggestibility, the ease with which investigators can induce a false memory or fabricated confession \u2013 led to resolved justice for Kelley (the case\u2019s resolution is public information, but no spoilers here). Though the case, as any, is specific and messy in its particulars, \u201cthere\u2019s a lot to be learned there,\u201d said Kondelis, \u201cand I hope [people can] get a greater sense of how these investigations and these prosecutions actually work, because they\u2019re far different from what we\u2019ve been programmed to see in television and film.\u201d You assume competency; you assume easily delineated narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMost Americans believe if a serious crime were to happen to a member of their family, that the prosecutors and the police are going to drop everything and attack a case like that as if it were a member of their own family,\u201d said Kondelis. \u201cThat is absolutely not how it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s certainly not what happened in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Outcry is available on Showtime in the US every Sunday and in the UK at a later date. It is streaming in Australia on Stan<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/tv-and-radio\/2020\/jun\/24\/athlete-a-review-the-scandal-that-rocked-the-sporting-world\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greg Kelley, the subject of Outcry, which shows a surprising, thorny, hyper-local yet deeply concerning saga.&nbsp;Photograph: Jim Redman\/Courtesy of Showtime. In 2013, Greg Kelley, a high school football star, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a four-year-old. But a new series reveals things are not as they seem. As a legal term, \u201coutcry\u201d refers to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,27,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-false-rape-allegations","category-films-media","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/falseallegationshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}