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Advocacy accidentally became core my documentary film
(by Rebecca S. Rivas - June 04, 2008)
Rebecca Rivas, staff writer for the West End Word, is also a documentary maker. Here she reflects on the experience of making her latest film Knock Knock, America: A Story of Refugee Teens in St. Louis.
Junior Harry, age 17 and from Liberia, entered the courtroom in an orange prisoner jumpsuit with his hands chained behind his back.
I tried to be calm, but I admit that I started trembling. “He’s just a boy,” I thought.
I felt the lines of journalist, friend and concerned community member blur together in that moment.
I never expected to get so close to Junior, or to any of the refugee teens I followed in making the hour-long documentary Knock Knock, America: A Story of Refugee Teens in St. Louis.
But when you videotape someone for three years, your lives become undeniably connected.
I met Junior a few days after I arrived in St. Louis in April 2005, when I videotaped a performance for the International Playground, a performing-arts group for refugee teens. After shooting two more shows, I wanted to know what life was like for the teenagers outside of rehearsals.
I applied for — and received — a grant from University City’s Commission for Access of Local Original Programming to do a documentary on the IPG members’ lives and the making of their Big Tree performance.
In the course of making most documentaries, I think the main characters choose you. Junior was one of the quietest members in the first IPG shows, but he became one of the most vocal and confident in the Big Tree production.
I asked all of the IPG teens, who come from West Africa, Afghanistan and Colombia, to keep me updated on their lives, but Junior was the only one who really did.
Before I knew it, he was calling me when he got home from school. I’d go visit him, and he would unlock the door without saying hello. I’d position myself in the corner of the room with my camera on while he watched television, made up raps or held his baby son.
Junior and his girlfriend would hang out at home with friends and the baby after school. They seemed just like regular teenagers, but they were parents.
The Big Tree played on April 14, 2007 and was a great success. I gave a big high-five to Dan Huck, who shared the tasks of shooting, producing and editing the documentary.
And we thought that was the end of it.
Four days later, we heard through rumors that the police had arrested Junior at school. The Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma, the not-for-profit group that facilitates the IPG, would not give us information due to confidentiality. Junior’s family had moved, and I couldn’t find his friends. I looked up Junior’s name on Case.net, an online search engine for finding court cases in Missouri, and found that he was being held in the city of St. Louis Criminal Justice Center downtown.
He was arrested for the statutory rape of his son’s mother, who was pregnant with his second son. I wrote him a letter, and a few days later he wrote me back with a time and date to visit him.
The first time I saw Junior behind the glass, it felt like we were both acting. He was smiling, but his face looked at least 10 years older. I had never been inside a jail before and had no idea what to say.
In broken English, Junior explained that his family was trying to prove that Junior was 16 when the police arrested him. He said his grandma didn’t know how old he was when they came to the United States, so the government assigned him a birthday, making him 18.
In Missouri, a person commits statutory rape in the first degree if he/she has sexual intercourse with a person who is younger than 14. If his lawyer could prove that he was 16, his case would be heard in the juvenile courts within 72 hours. He would also be sent to a juvenile detention center, rather than the adult facility where he was currently being held.
Junior gave me phone numbers for the three people who became the tireless team that worked to prove his age and get him out of jail: his aunt, Darrlinggirl, and family friends Collette Williams and Myron Buchanan.
Buchanan contacted Liberian officials and found out that all birth records were destroyed in the country’s civil wars. He was able to get an affidavit from a hospital official that confirmed Junior’s real age, and Junior’s defense attorney presented it to the court on Jan. 17. Unconvinced, Circuit Court Judge David Mason set a counsel status hearing, which is a hearing that allows attorneys to give a judge updates, for March 17.
Junior called me every week to tell me about his assessment tests for the GED exam and about his cellmates who would come and go. Our monthly visits started feeling more like visits between members of the same family.
In March, his court date was cancelled and rescheduled for April. By this time, I couldn’t even enjoy a drink on an outdoor patio without feeling guilty, knowing that Junior couldn’t breathe the same fresh air. I began having nightmares of talking to him in jail years later, and still no one knew that he hadn’t had a trial yet.
When the final technical pieces of the documentary came in, Huck and I finished the movie in a hurry. After we had our first copy, I e-mailed many reporters and editors about Junior’s case and sent out DVDs.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Sylvester Brown and reporter Heather Radcliffe both called me back, expressing interest in Junior’s story. It was a huge relief when they both said they would contact Junior’s family and look into his approaching April hearing.
At that hearing, Judge Mason postponed the trial date for another month to give the prosecuting attorney Jennifer Joyce more time to “verify the documents.”
The thought of seeing this 17-year-old spend another month in an adult facility waiting for his trial made me take a more aggressive role in letting the community know about his situation.
Huck and I held a documentary screening of Knock, Knock America: A Story of Refugee Teens in St. Louis and asked the crowd of about 100 people to attend the May 14 hearing.
I believe the articles Sylvester Brown wrote and the 30 people who attended that hearing played a significant role in Junior’s release that day. Judge Mason accepted the documents finally, and the judge in juvenile court said no charges would be pursued.
Radcliffe, who covers the courts for the Post-Dispatch, said that Junior was not the only one to experience a long waiting period for a trial. Some people had been waiting for years, she said. But he was the one who just so happened to have someone documenting his life.
The night Junior was released, I watched him take his first bite of a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger with friends and family surrounding him. That weekend, I spent all day in the park soaking up the sun, knowing Junior was free to do the same.
As a journalist and a human being, I can get trapped in the anger and fear of injustice. But when I was about to fully lose it, I learned a breathing technique from Buddhist nun Pema Chodron that helped me get through the situation. You breathe in the injustice, anger and sadness — and breathe out peace and harmony.
By doing this, you can overcome the fear of anything you don’t know how to feel or face. Being aware and knowledgeable is more powerful than getting caught in the emotions of what’s right or wrong. Junior’s courage to keep studying in jail and his ability to remain positive showed me that.
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