Ofra Bikel, whose films freed the wrongly convicted, dies at 94

Documentaries she produced for PBS’s “Frontline” series were credited with helping free 13 people, including seven in a child sex abuse case in North Carolina.


Documentary filmmaker Ofra Bikel in an undated family photo. (Family photo)

By Harrison Smith
August 27, 2024 at 7:50 p.m. EDT

Ofra Bikel, a documentary filmmaker whose work for PBS’s “Frontline” investigative series exposed frailties in the U.S. criminal justice system — the coercive use of plea bargains, the failure to consider DNA evidence, the reliance on informants to prosecute drug cases — and helped free 13 people who had been wrongly charged or convicted, died Aug. 11 at her home in Tel Aviv. She was 94. … Her niece and caretaker, Tamar Ichilov, confirmed the death but did not give a specific cause.

As a writer and producer, Ms. Bikel (pronounced bih-KELL) made films that she described as cinematic essays. … Her work came with a point of view, a lesson or argument about public policy or current affairs. But she sought to anchor her films in the stories of individual people — prosecutors, social workers, criminal defendants — and to surprise viewers with an unexpected angle, such as when she chronicled the impact of the late 2000s recession by interviewing clients at an Upper East Side hair salon in Manhattan.

{snip}


Ms. Bikel made documentaries about foreign leaders, including Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Ehud Olmert of Israel, in addition to her programs on criminal justice and current affairs. (Family photo)

Although she was best known for her work on criminal justice, Ms. Bikel started out on “Frontline” making documentaries about foreign affairs, including the transition from communism to capitalism in Poland and the difficulties that Soviet émigrés faced in adjusting to life in the United States. Eventually, she concluded that those programs had a limited appeal. … “Americans,” she said, “aren’t very interested in what happens abroad.”

In search of subjects that were closer to home, she traveled to Edenton, N.C., population 5,000. Located on Albemarle Sound, the seaside community had a blissful name and an idyllic reputation. Ms. Bikel recalled reading a guidebook that cited it as a classic example of a charming Southern town. … But by the time she arrived in 1990, the community had been roiled by accusations of child sex abuse at a day-care center called Little Rascals. Ms. Bikel would spend the next seven years making documentaries about the abuse case, which grew to encompass seven defendants, 429 criminal counts and dozens of alleged victims.

{snip}

By Harrison Smith
Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago. Twitter