MovieChat Forums > Stevie (2003) Discussion > Does anyone else think he might not have...

Does anyone else think he might not have done it


I mean the man conducted himself with class even when the documentarians wife
had made up her mind that he had done it before the trial and just went along treating stevie like crap and he husband going right along. I mean how manipulative and insensitive and deliberatly evil can a human be to another who does not even cry out hay did you invite me into your home to gang up on me and manipulate with fear and judgement a confetion for something which He has professed his inocence of from the begining. Just because he was molested and d does not mean that he did anything of a ual nature to that young
Yet those who gain their lively hood from the system and ganging up on anyone who has had a troubled past in order to keep themselves in authority and rightiousness in their own minds and as GODS of everything they deem as not as GOOD as them because they forgot to take a phyciatric or phycological course taught by a book and not
real life manipulations of starving desparet lonly people who will be real in the
eyes of God far after their souls have dryed and faded away regardless of their inperfections

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Lost ya at the gods and drying souls there bud...

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I think he did do it, although I don't think he did it out of bad intentions, but that doesn't excuse the act. He seemed to be severely emotionally delayed, however; he did know right from wrong and he was ashamed of himself. I don't think prison was the right answer for Stevie.... He needs help and he won't get it behind bars. Some sort of psychiatric prison would have been a more reasonable punishment.

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Really??! Just one period in that whole paragraph??!

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I, still, can't get over the spelling.

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He did it. Years ago I used to work with boys like Stevie.... before I realized you can't raise a family with the income you get from social work. The one line that led me to believe he did was something like, he wanted to teach her the way the world really was.

One of my favorite parts of the movie was when the one blond, Aryan redneck asks the film maker, if it was your daughter, wouldn't you want him dead? And Steve James sort of fumbles his words for a minute and says, yeah... but I'd like to think there was some kind of hope for him. So you end of feeling sorry for this socially inept, deviant, mentally disturbed, child molester and it's difficult to accept.... but he's guilty - he committed the crime.

I have to agree with you, I did not like Mrs. James' approach at all.

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One of the main problems is, I think, demonstrated in your question: Did he do "it". What is "it"? Having watched this I'm pretty confident that he did something that he knew was crossing a line and was without question wrong in a legal sense, but we want to say that he is or isn't a child molester; that he is or isn't "bad"; there are a lot of things that he could have done that may be illegal (and should be) but that might not have been so earth shattering as something we saw on "a very special episode of ER" or on a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie or something - things that might not have severely traumatized the victim at all. I wasn't convinced by the mother's dramatic appeal - that kind of dramatic embelishment is often the norm for people of this socio-economic profile (witness the Jerry Springer show, or the scenes in the church). I think everyone in the move wanted to either say he did "it" or didn't, and these are polar opposites, whereas human behavior occurs along a very wide and varied spectrum. Both he and the girl were victims of something.

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There's a scene in which they pan in on the typed confession. I had to pause it on the DVD long enough to be able to read it. But, yes, take it from someone who paid attention: "It" was pretty bad. I don't think the victim's mother is in any way inauthentic as you seem to suggest. I think she is just a mom who loves her daughter and is angry, but also understands enough about life to know that nobody is purely evil. I actually felt what she said later on ("Who will be there to pick up Stevie's pieces?") was incredibly eloquent and demonstrates quite a strength of character on her part.

And, you know, it's funny that the very people who so smugly shroud themselves in that thin mantle of self-satisfied superiority to better sneer at those " tragic socio-economic casualties" who appear on Jerry Springer are always the same ones who can recall Springer episodes with optimum capacity. The real clowns sit in the audience, my friend.

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You infer a real nastiness to my tone. You put "tragic...casualties" in the quote, which are words I did not use, and you say that I "sneer" at them. Would you rather I called them something demeaning like "rednecks" or "ignorant white trash"? I know too many of them and come to close to being one of them to have any such feelings. Why people of that "socio-economic profile" (I'll stick by my term) are in their situation is complicated.

As for you, think a little more before you type. I have never seen an entire episode of Jerry Springer in my life, I don't listen to ranting radio talk shows, I don't watch reality television - in fact I watch almost no television at all. I'm not crazy about getting into arguments in internet posting forums either, but I'm unemployed and have a lot of free time right now.

You might be right about the mom and the girl, but the movie is too vague about the charges for a viewer to "judge" anyone, in my opinion, though as I said, there may have been very serious transgressions. Indeed, the desire to judge is what makes shows like Jerry Springer so popular among the populace at large to begin with. It's a temptation that we should resist.

And you are right about the clowns that sit in the audience, but that's a different debate.

Your post just came across a little opinionated and angry, like you had an axe to grind and/or emotions that interfered with your reason. You could be right about the allegations and Stevie's "guilt", but it's hard to tell.

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Hey now, them are fightin' words! I was in the Jerry Springer audience once! My comment even made it to air!

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Are you serious?

Did you watch this?

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He should be drawn and quartered.

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LOL.PNG

he finger banged that kid.
for sheezie.

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Morgan, I know it probably looks that way, but I doubt Steve and Judy were
ganging up on Stevie, we only saw as small portion of the total
time they were together in Chicago. They were trying to get him to realize
what he had done and how serious this offence was..and how serious
the punishment was going to be. This is revealed later when we
learn the judge would have only given him 6 years instead of 10
if he had only shown remorse.

Also, I for one happen to believe just because a perosn was molested
does not mean they WILL molest others...but unfortunately, the studies
seem to show that the majority of those who do molest, have been molested themselves. It's a vicious cycle that really needs to be stopped...which
is why Stevie should have been sent to a mental health care facility instead of prison.


If you love Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it copy this and make it your signature!

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I think your take on it is purely based on emotional unwillingness to accept that he did do it. You have sympathy for him and his past and therefore refuse to believe he could have molested a little girl. If you take off your emotional need to believe him innocent and watch the movie again you will see there is plenty of hints that he did it.
There ARE physical evidence, such as hairs and the fact that the little girl seemed to be vaginally irritated. But even without the physical evidence there's a lot more to suggest he was guilty.

Yes, he denies it at, but only half-heartedly. He doesn't act like a person who is truly innocent, he more or less silently admits to what he has done, especially in that scene you are referring to. An innocent man would have angrily over and over again repeated that he was innocent. When Judy talks to him, he sort of just turns quiet and looks down, he is obviously ashamed. Too ashamed to deny it and too ashamed to admit to it. You see this in other scenes, such as the one where the racist rednecks were discussing if it it was THEIR daughter that had been molested he wouldn't even make it to prison. Meanwhile he just sits there without defending himself. Would an innocent man do that?

Finally, I definitely didn't see it as Judy and Steve ganging up on him. How were they doing that? They weren't insulting or scolding him. They were just trying to get him to open up to them and understand that he could trust them and that they are going to be there for him. She even said she wasn't asking for a confession, just that he knows that she KNEW he did it, but she still cared for him. If anything Judy and Steve were a lot more caring and open-minded than most people would be.

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What everyone should be asking is about the evidence. Steve James did not do a good job showing all the facts. One minute there was NO evidence then there was.
Also I find that Steve used Stevie. Steve hs done other movies and a couple documentaries. Look it up.
He went to see him hoping for a story and at the time didn't get anything.
So TWO years pass and then he is ALL up in their business and during the
Entire movie he is so emotionless. Like a zombie.
Quote from the movie "still I found reasons not to return for 2 years". Well yeah he didn't have a story until 2 years later. I've read many things by Brenda and family members that he didn't keep in touch with Stevie by phone for 2 years like he claimed.
From what I read in many articles, he and Judy found out that Stevie was arrested. Not just by a random phone call of wanting to talk to him.
He got what he wanted. And I can't stand Steve James.
I also don't stand by Stevie's side bc like I said "where is the actually physical evidence.?" why not show that in the movie.
Stevie is a lost soul with basically the mind of a child. Which doesn't make anything he did excusable.

If Steve James wants or even cares about Stevie he should do a follow up on where Stevie is now and how he is doing. I could go on about many other things in the film that
Makes Steve James seem like an ass but it's not worth my time.
He wanted a story and he got one. And he didn't follow through with it.

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[deleted]

Do a follow up on how he is doing? What, from Stevie's visitor's table? Stevie gets out of jail and ends up right back there in no time. Not much of a follow up to do.



If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure. - George W. Bush

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No, I definitely got the impression he'd 'done it.'

Also, his sister admitted she also had been sexually abused by him.

And, he just had really poor impulse control/decision making skills.

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