Children of Darkness is an Oscar nominated 1983 documentary film produced and written by Richard Kotuk and Ara Chekmayan. It explored the topic of juvenile psychiatry – an acute lack of mental health care in America for seriously emotionally disturbed youth.

Many children in these institutions were simply warehoused and the common basic form of therapy was drugs, which didn’t really help the kids but merely controlled them. The film not only uncovered the mistreatments in mental institutions but it also captured the cold realization that mental illness can happen to anyone. Public mental institutions were not just for the poor. Children from middle class families and upper middle class families often ended up there due to inadequate insurance money and dwindled savings.

Racial tensions soared as the Spencers, a middle-class black family moved into Rosedale, a Queens white working-class neighborhood. A human study of the fear, hatred and courage generated as the “have-nots” of our society battle for a tiny piece of the “good life”.

Produced by Richard Kotuk
Broadcast date: January 18, 1976

Richard Kotuk spent one week with an undercover anti-crime unit in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood; a mostly white anti-crime unit assigned to an African American and Puerto Rican neighborhood. While officials praised these anti-crime units as being effective, some civil rights leaders criticize them for being “trigger happy”. This report invites audience not only to witness the officers’ daily duties but also what they think, what they feel and who they are as human beings. COPS won four Emmy awards (the 18th Annual New York Emmy Awards) including Best Informational Feature Reporting and a nationwide Special on the Public Broadcasting Service.

Produced and reported by Richard Kotuk

Award: 18th Annual New York Emmy award for Outstanding Achievement in Informational Feature Reporting Within a Regularly Scheduled News Program

A 1973 ‘Help!’ episode about an exposé of illegal job promises and worthless training offered by schools professing to train individuals to become tractor-trailer drivers, nurse’s aides and airline stewardesses.

Produced by Richard Kotuk

One interminable night spent at Kings County Hospital. It depicts the long wait, the pain and the struggle to save lives. It is a realistic, human portrait of life and death in an enormous municipal Brooklyn hospital. The Emergency Room won first prize for the Associated Press Broadcasters Award as well as an Emmy award for Outstanding Documentary.

Produced by Richard Kotuk
Broadcast year: 1974

A depiction of the increasing problem of child abuse and neglect in the United States. When parents abuse and batter their children, the battered children become abusive parents themselves. New, innovative programs are being put in place to stop this cycle of violence. The Battered Children won the 19th Annual New York Emmy Awards for Outstanding Documentary Program and the Broadcast Media Award.

Produced by Richard Kotuk.
Broadcast date: April 27, 1975

A homeless shelter for men located  in Orange County, New York. For many, it has become a place to live and die in despite inadequate facilities.

Reported by Richard Kotuk

Long settled working class Irish and Jews felt that their neighborhood is “dying” when welfare African Americans and Puerto Ricans begin to move in.

Produced and reported by Richard Kotuk

Vietnam veterans who are physically and psychologically wounded receive no hero’s welcome because of their drug addictions. GI Bill, educational benefits as well as medical benefits are not available to them. All they come back home to are heroin and methadone on the streets of New York.

East Hampton, Southhampton and Bridgehampton are well known upscale Long Island areas where the elite and affluent spend their summers. Meanwhile, just “across the tracks”, live impoverished immigrants who work in the potato fields. This is a portrait of the ‘invisible’ Hamptons residents.

Reported by Richard Kotuk