"EYE" DOCTOR

By Lawrence Ferber

Director Nonny de la Peña confronts homophobia and child Abuse in her film "The Jaundiced Eye." Produced by the Emmy winning and Oscar nominated Dan Gifford

Being convicted for child molestation is no joke. But in the case of Stephen Matthews, a gay man, and his heterosexual father, Melvin, both sentenced to 55 years in prison for sexually abusing Stephen's 5-year-old son, it was. Investigative journalist Nonny de Ia Peña, for one, isn't laughing. "Our legal system is supposed to be about giving the stranger the benefit of the doubt," she emphasizes. "But we usually don't. So the only way you can fight that is by taking the stranger component out of it and personalizing their situation. That's what my fight is, and what motivates me in life - to take cases where I feel grievous injustice has been done which is indicative of larger issues and tell that story."

De la Peña's story to tell in this instance is "The Jaundiced Eye," a documentary that chronicles how homophobia, public hysteria, ersatz evidence, and ill-advised, manipulative "abuse experts" shattered the Matthews' lives. "The more I investigated into it, the more astonished and incredulous I became," recalls the former Newsweek correspondent who first heard of Stephen's case through a friend of a friend. "And I have to say that this film has certainly changed me personally in that I really am very cautious about passing judgment on any situation."

Having become a father as a (then-closeted) teen-agér, Stephen's troubles ultimately began when his ex-girlfriend, Danette - mother of his son - shacked up with Doug, an admitted homophobe who gave the child a black eye. Melvin angrily confronted Doug over the matter, and soon thereafter the child accused Stephen, Melvin, and even Melvin's wife, of over-the-top, completely unlikely sexual abuse.

"Know that he was living with his stepfather, an incredible homophobe, and you can imagine the things which are being said and how it would influence Stephen's child," de la Peña remarks. "Doug even thinks [the child's grandparents] are freaks just because they have a gay kid."

In 1989, after facing a pittance of dubious "evidence" and the child's admittedly emotional courtroom testimony, Stephen and Melvin were sentenced to 35 years in prison by a jury. During the four years they actually spent behind bars. Stephen was raped by a series of inmates, including a convicted murderer who broke his jaw. And although the evidence has since been deemed balderdash, the child's testimony declared a result of inappropriate psychological techniques (which have led to hundreds of hysteria-driven, undeserved convictions including the famed McMartin and Little Rascals Day Care cases), and the charges dropped, the Matthew's lives have been permanently scarred.

In making "The Jaundiced Eye," de la Peña strove to examine many issues, not the least of which involved the way Stephen's child was coached into testifying he had been abused. Not only that, but convinced he had been abused even into the present. During one sequence, a tape is played in which the boy claims his father had peed on him, while a cop attempts to steer the testimony to indicate ejaculation.