I never considered the child molestation charge against Woody Allen to have any merit, and I think Mr. Allen makes a compelling defense of himself in today’s New York Times. I can’t say that I approve of his decision to begin a romantic relationship with one of Mia Farrow’s adopted children, but it didn’t warrant the nuclear war that Farrow launched in response.
I think the bigger issue here is the prospect that Mia had a child with Frank Sinatra and allowed Allen to think it was his own, and to have him pay child support for the child.
I concur.
I don’t see why you find it necessary to take a position on this issue. And i’m disappointed that you decide to take the easy position of “the women are lying”.
Reactions like this are why sexual assaults don’t get reported. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/07/1274640/-See-This-is-Why-We-Don-t-Talk-About-Sex-Abuse
I looked at the facts and weighed the credibility of all of the actors. I don’t find Farrow credible.
I’m a divorce attorney and mediator. I’ve seen allegations like this many times. Personally, I think it’s impossible to know what happened in this instance. There are vindictive women who turn children against their fathers without concern to the impact on the child. There are narcissistic fathers who abuse children and then, with charm and seeming authenticity, lie about it.
Were I able to sit down with Woody or Mia, particularly back then, it might have been possible to learn more. But it’s too late now.
Back then, I’d want to get a sense of how Woody viewed Dylan. Was she a thing, an object that he thought he loved but without any real insight into her needs? I’d ask what school she goes to, who her teacher is, about her friends, her favorite foods and television shows and colors. I’d be trying to get a sense of whether he was engaged with her, the real child in front of him, or some projection of himself.
With Mia, I’d be probing to find out what evidence she has regarding the molestation and what evidence she has regarding other assertions of betrayal. Was she open to seeing points of view other than her own? Did she see this as a tragic thing, cutting off a child from her only father, or an opportunity to reclaim the entirety of the child for herself. So once again I’d be trying to get a sense of whether she was holding Dylan as an independent person or as an extension of herself.
Sometimes children have two narcissistic parents. If that’s the case, CPS should be called. That’s a possibility here, since there was an investigation that found no molestation and a judge who felt he could see right through Allen. To hook up with one’s girlfriend’s 19 year old daughter, particularly when a man is in his 50s, has to raise red flags.
At age 31, I met a very mature 19 year old, whom I later dated and married. I loved her very much. But I was rather immature — really more like 25 than 31 — and she was unusually mature. Now, at age 50, I cannot imagine being with a 19 year old. A woman that young would feel like a child; not a partner. How could we relate to each other as equals? The only way I could be with her would be as a mentor, and I’d be using her in some way — for her beauty, for the sex, to prop up my ego.
I don’t know that this applies to Woody. Perhaps at 53 he was still immature enough to connect at a heart level with a 19 year old. That he later married her and that they remain married would seem to point in that direction. Truly, only God knows.
Just ran across this, from a New York Times article published on June 8, 1993:
“Justice Wilk portrayed Mr. Allen as devious, hurtful and unreliable, a father who did not know the names of his son’s teachers — or even which children shared which bedrooms in Ms. Farrow’s apartment.”
The judge was looking at the kind of stuff I would have been concerned about. Doesn’t necessarily mean he got it right, but his focus was correct.
The discrepancies and falsehoods I found in Allen’s behavior and the evidence presented at the trial can be found in Daryl Farrow’s response to Allen’s NYT letter.
○ Dylan Farrow Responds to Woody Allen: ‘Distortions and Outright Lies’
These and other misrepresentations have been rebutted in more detail by independent, highly respected journalists, including this most recent article here: Vanity Fair: 10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation.
But of course, it’s Dylan’s ghost writer Mia …
Exactly! Mr. Allen was obsessive and exercised coercive control on adopted daughter Dylan. I recognize the behavior of Mr. Allen as extremely narcissistic, evasive and willing to destruct the lives of persons who loved him. See my comment below, he tried to destruct the police investigation. Read also how he manipulated the outcome of the Yale-New Haven inquiry with its director Leventhal and the psychologists.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/02/23/reviews/farrow-doctor.html
+++
Dr. Coates was questioned by Mr. Allen’s lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz. Dr. Coates — one of several psychologists and psychiatrists whom various members of the couple’s family had seen over the years — portrayed Ms. Farrow as filled with escalating rage after discovering Mr. Allen’s affair with Ms. Previn in January 1992.
The psychologist said that Ms. Farrow’s actions in the following months, which included angry phone calls and a gift to Mr. Allen of a Valentine with skewers through the hearts of her children, had convinced her that Ms. Farrow might harm herself or Mr. Allen.
“I understood from Mr. Allen that Miss Farrow had repeatedly called him and said that she thought he should be dead, that she wanted to kill him,” Dr. Coates testified.
“I felt it was a really dangerous situation,” she said, explaining she told Mr. Allen that he should not visit Ms. Farrow and her children at their country home because Ms. Farrow remained so distraught. “In my clinical evaluation, this was a place where protection was needed.”
Earlier in the day, Ms. Farrow, concluding her three days on the witness stand, explained why she had sent the Valentine with the skewers and the steak knife through the picture of herself.
“It was not a threat, it was an attempt to depict to a man who didn’t know or didn’t care what he had done,” she said. “He seemed to have no concept. The morality of the situation seemed to have totally eluded him. I wanted to depict the degree of pain he had inflicted on me and my entire family.”
Dr. Coates characterized Ms. Farrow’s behavior as increasingly erratic as the months progressed. Dr. Coates testified that on Aug. 1 of last year Ms. Farrow called her after having learned that the affair with Ms. Previn was continuing. Ms. Farrow described Mr. Allen as “satanic and evil,” Dr. Coates said, adding that Ms. Farrow pleaded with her to “find a way to stop him.”
Dr. Coates testified she was taken aback after Ms. Farrow mentioned at another point in the conversation that she and Mr. Allen had the week before been discussing the possibility of getting married.
“Do you think I should marry him?’ ” said Dr. Coates, reading from the notes she took at the time and quoting Ms. Farrow.
“I said, ‘Are you serious?’ ” Dr. Coates said. “She heard my reaction to it, and realized there was something absurd about it.”
Four days after that conversation, the psychologist testified, Ms. Farrow phoned again, saying that Dylan had begun complaining that Mr. Allen had abused her. Dr. Coates characterized Ms. Farrow as having been extremely calm during the call, in contrast to her agitated state in other calls.
“I was puzzled, because in that conversation she was very calm,” Dr. Coates said. “I did not understand her calm.”
.
Why quote a book review when the proceedings are available …
Gee, I don’t see anything in what you reproduced that addresses the testimony of Dr. Coates. Did you even read the article?
Also, there is the question of Ms. Farrow’s family. Right now her older brother is serving time in Maryland for child molestation. I have wondered about Farrow’s lifelong attraction to men the age of her father. Child molestation is often passed from generation to generation. Was Mia’s brother, or Mia herself, molested as a child?
The other thing to consider is Allen’s movie “Blue Jasmine”. The story is about a middle-aged woman who becomes unhinged and alienated from her son. Mia is certainly alienated from Moses, who was 15 at the time of the alleged molestation, who says it never happened and that Ms. Farrow brainwashed her other kids to hate Allen.
Your comments are wise. Few can know exactly what happened here, but, since it’s playing out in public, many want to share their opinions – some with absolute certainty. I don’t know who’s telling the truth, but the fact that these accusations surfaced in the middle of a custody battle and acrimonious separation make me suspicious. And that the event supposedly took place during the battle in a house with several people present.
Thanks. We can’t know what happened. If I had to guess, I’d say Woody’s probably a complete narcissist who sees the children as an extension of himself but he probably didn’t molest Dylan. Mia is probably a narcissist too.
What’s ironic is, in their own ways, they may love their children (as much as they’re capable of). A narcissist is really in love with a projection of himself. But it’s not one’s fault when one is nuts. Woody had parents. Mia had parents. Should it surprise anyone if two really damaged people come together? Should it surprise anyone if the relationship later gets blown apart.
If these people didn’t have practically unlimited money, perhaps CPS would have been on their doorstep long ago. Instead, they dress themselves up and are allowed to adopt over and over again.
You’re a brave man. I felt that way reading Allen’s response this morning but wasn’t sure I was ready to say so.
I can’t speak for Booman, but I have direct experience with a situation where a mother deliberately made up sexual abuse allegations about the father and coached the preschool-age daughter to say as much. All of the authorities found the charges to be completely baseless, and the mother to be completely not credible, but the mother successfully alienated the daughter from the father to the point where she can’t even be in the same room as him anymore. Then the mother tried to do something similar with their son with less success.
False molestation accusations DO happen, and they do far more damage than many people seem to appreciate. I can’t claim to know exactly what happened, but I do think there are far too many parallels in the Allen case to the case I described above. “The women are lying” may be the easy position in your eyes, but what about when it’s true?
And I don’t think Booman or anyone else believes Dylan is making it up. She probably believes it did happen, if only because she’s been raised to believe it from a very young age.
It’s also the case that such accusations did happen during a decade-long panic that was at its height at the time of these events, when preschoolers with implanted false memories were used to hound innocent people in 18 separate cases of “Satanic” ritual sex abuse. I note that the star of Roman Polansky’s “Rosemary’s Baby” applies the word “Satanic” to the director of “Broadway Danny Rose”.
Thank you for the link! A thoughtful and excellent diary, haven’t seen many of these.
I was inclined in the other direction, based mainly on the statistical likelihood of such accusations being true. That was before I realized (or maybe was reminded) that the alleged abuse happened during the custody fight. Which tells me you have a strong motivation for Mia to coerce lying and little motivation for Allen (if he is a pedophile) to begin abuse. He had also been in a relationship with Soon-Yi for about a year. If people say that shows a pattern of going after young women, well, then, he had one already. One he has been with in the 21 years since. Predatory child abusers look for a compliant parent. Mia Farrow? Custody hearing? No exactly compliant.
Again: most abuse accusations are true. But: motivated parent, no pattern of prior or subsequent abuse, no pattern that fits what we know about predators. I don’t think he did it.
If this were at all funny, here would be the punchline: Mia named two of her subsequently adopted kids after the custody judge, whose opinion reads like an internet comment blasting Allen and disregarding expert opinion.
I write a pretty ling response and then deleted it.
Both Mia and Woody seem like royal fucking assholes, who have carried out their endless squabble IN THE PRESS for god knows how long.
I feel sorry for their kids.
The discrepancies and falsehoods I found in Allen’s behavior and the evidence presented at the trial can be found in Daryl Farrow’s response to Allen’s NYT letter.
○ Dylan Farrow Responds to Woody Allen: ‘Distortions and Outright Lies’
[Dylan Farrow] “These and other misrepresentations have been rebutted in more detail by independent, highly respected journalists, including this most recent article here:”
○ Vanity Fair: 10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation.
But of course, it’s Dylan’s ghost writer Mia …
It’d be a lot easier to believe Woody Allen if he hadn’t had sexual relations with extremely young women. Soon-Yi Previn is well known, but there was also Stacey Nelkin. Allen and Nelkin had an affair when Nelkin was 17 and a high school junior. Allen is almost 24 years older than Nelkin.
There’s a huge difference between sex with a young woman, even a 17-year old woman, and sex with a 7-year old child. I find Woody Allen’s personal life creepy, but you can’t just jump from that to child molester.
There’s also a huge difference between consent and lack of consent, and between rape and a relationship.
“TWENTY-ONE years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn’t give it a second thought. We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn’t even hire a lawyer to defend myself.”
Farrow and Allen were unmaried and lived separated. On Dec. 17, 1991 Allen became legal parent of three children: Ronan, Dylan and Moses [aged 4,7 and 14 years]. It was Allen who was already sexually involved in another adopted child Soon-Yi Previn aged 19. In January 1992 Farrow found the six nude photos of daughter Soon-Yi in pornographic pose. Farrow had 3 children by birth and another 4 adopted children. Mia was not simply a “single parent” but had a male partner and nanny’s for her children and the household. She earned her own living and had sufficient funds.
Allen found the idea so ludicrous when he heard of the police investigation into child abuse, his lawyer filed a custody lawsuit within days – August 1992!
Allen filed a petition Aug. 13 seeking custody of the two adopted children he has with Farrow–Moses, 14, and Dylan, 7–as well as their biological son, Satchel, 4. Allen sued for custody five days after learning that Connecticut State Police were investigating Farrow’s allegations that he had molested Dylan at Farrow’s country estate in Connecticut.
Allen lost the custody lawsuit in first decision and later on appeal.
After hearing arguments for more than an hour, State Supreme Court Judge Elliott Wilk ruled on a number of motions. The judge permitted Allen to send holiday gifts to the children and a birthday present to Satchel, who will be 5 next week. But he prohibited Allen from going to Dylan’s school and from seeking to have Dylan receive psychiatric help – Court ruling December 1992].
○ Video: Interview Woody Allen tells his side of the story (1992)
Allen hired up to 10 PI’s to put pressure on the police investigation to collect dirt on the Lichfield CT officials and filed a complaint in October 1992 targeting State Attorney Frank S. Maco. The Yale-New Haven study of the child abuse was colored due to interference by Allen [et al] and the judge in the Court of Appeal stated such in his opinion – [Source NY Times: Allen Loses to Farrow in Bitter Custody Battle – June 1993].
The complaint against Maco and further litigation lasted 5 years, he was exonorated.
No. we will never find the truth about the matter and hopefully these poison pen pieces between parties will now end.
PS Living outside the states, I had no knowledge of the custody battle as it played out in 1992-1993. I knew of Mia Farrow from her early acting role in Peyton Place and Woody Allen of his roles during the sixties. I’m not a Hollywood moviegoer so I have no opinion about his films or Farrow’s further acting career. The litigation intrigued me and also the mindset of both parents towards each other.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/02/23/reviews/farrow-doctor.html
The steak-knife-in-the-valentine part is particularly good. Considering Farrow was making death threats against Allen and the family therapist felt she was a danger to herself and Allen, and she warned Allen not to visit his children at the Farrow estate without protection, it stretches credulity that that was the precise moment that Allen would decide to start molesting Dylan.
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My reservations and analysis about the case was spot on. The discrepancies and falsehoods I found in Allen’s behavior and the evidence presented at the trial can be found in Daryl Farrow’s response to Allen’s NYT letter.
Bon voyage on life’s journey.
I honestly haven’t paid attention to this. The events are so old and a repetition of this acrimony in the media doesn’t interest me.
On the other hand, although Mia and Woody both have issues, I will not give Woody benefit of doubt because of his relationship to Soon-Yi.
BooMan, forget the he-said, she-said from all the adults. Did you read the actual letter that the daughter published in the NTY? Not articles or comments about the letter, but the letter itself.
I just do not see how anyone can read that letter and come away believing this did not happen. The details supplied in the letter are so creepy that I do not see that as a story a mother would give a daughter. “Daddy used to come down the hall to my room..” – maybe, but this, I can’t see it at all.
I’m really disappointed to see that the starting point on something like this is an even playing field where it’s just as likely that someone is lying as they are telling the truth. Maybe we haven’t come that far from assuming there’s a good chance that any rape victim is lying.
Do you read any fiction — not the fantasy/sci-fi sort — the kind that reads as real and true?
Dylan’s letter had to stick to the original allegation of a brief encounter in the attic and vague recollections from earlier of something inappropriate. The rest of it could easily have been lifted from any internet sexual abuse survivors website.
Why Mia and two of her children chose last year to begin throwing this back out into the public sphere twenty-one years after the alleged event took place is most odd to me. And, no, I don’t think the timing is unimportant and unrelated to the statute of limitations.
If I’m not mistaken the statute of limitations was up in 1997.
It was 2006 for criminal charges
Unbelievable. It is really sad that these pathetic people have chosen to drag the rest of us into their sordid lives. Shame on the NY Times for enabling this nonsense.
I read part of Woody Allen’s response and then skimmed the rest. What he wrote seems too self-serving and far too simplistic; it didn’t ring true to me at all.
It’s like two kids fighting and you ask what happened. “I was just sitting here minding my own business when Johnny came out of nowhere and kicked me”. RIGHT. And then you find out that kid #2 had bitten Johnny right before Johnny kicked him. (or whatever)
What I read from Woody Allen felt like that to me. I didn’t find it even remotely believable; it was way too one-sided and filled with false innocence.
Exactly. Not to mention it is filled with half truths (I passed the lie detector test – except it was the one his lawyers set up – he refused to take the DA’s test); Mia Farrow refused to take a test (she wasn’t asked to take one); he was under treatment by a psychologist for grossly inappropriate behavior with Dylan etc. One thing that’s being overlooked in this discussion is that Allen is a very gifted writer as well as a very good actor. And his movie scripts are filled with self serving justifications for his bad behavior. Dylan doesn’t have that background. Her letter just had what I felt was the simple authenticity of truth.
Why on earth would you feel the need to make a personal judgment in this case, much less to publish it? You can’t possibly know.
You’re right. Booman has no right to have an opinion, much less publish it.
That was snark.
But I asked about his feelings. 🙂
You apparently felt the need to express you feelings about why Booman felt the need to comment on this subject.
i don’t feel the need to have a belief one way or the other.
Ariansa, please unconditionally end BooMan’s hostage and torture. We know that he’s being kept under house arrest somewhere near Hollywood. The denizens of the Frog Pond are holding you uniquely responsible for his safe return to political commentary and analysis.
I liked her mother. Hard to not enjoy a good Tarzan movie. Mia, well the doe eyes just really miss the mark on the inner spirit.
You think the larger issue is that Woody Allen paid child support for a child that wasn’t his biological child? Wow!. I think the larger issue is that he had an affair with his teenaged step-daughter and then married her. I think the behavior we all agree happened was so egregious and disgusting that I am constantly amazed he isn’t shunned by people with any kind of standards at all.
I have no idea what happened with the younger children but what I do know is enough for me. ‘Woody’ as you call him, is a creep and I haven’t watched his movies since I learned that he fvcked his wife’s daughter.
“an affair with his teenaged step-daughter”
She was not his step-daughter, she was the adopted daughter of André Previn. Allen and Farrow were not married, they did not even live in the same house.
And she was probably 21.
Mia Farrow and Woody Allen had children together and lived as a family even if Woody Allen maintained his own residence. Soon Yi, who was 19 when the relationship was admitted, was the sister of his children. If that doesn’t make her a step-daughter, it certainly does make their relationship functionally equivalent to a step-father/step-daughter relationship.
What’s the criminal statute for marrying your ex-girlfriend’s daughter?
of no interest to me in any way one way or the other. The last Woody Allen movie I saw was “What’s up Tiger Lilly”. I doubt I will see another.
SO molesting a child is not as bad as a woman claiming false paternity?
really?
really?
ARE YOU SERIOUS?
I didn’t say that.
I said that I do not believe that Woody Allen molested anyone, and that I think that his relationship with Soon-Yi was inappropriate and unacceptable, and that Mia Farrow may have committed the bigger crime by having a child with Sinatra and passing it off to Allen as his own.
“Mia Farrow may have committed the bigger crime”
So a woman lying about her sex partners, or even potential paternity, is worse than a man molesting his daughter? Is worse than a man who goes for his girlfriend’s daughter? Really?
I’m disappointed you dived into this trainwreck. No good can come from it and anything you say can be misconstrued.
`
I know that this is an emotional issue, but you are the second person to allege that I said that cuckolding your husband is worse than rape. I didn’t say that.
I said that I do not believe Mia Farrow, so I do not believe that Allen committed any crime in the legal sense.
His behavior with Soon-Yi was a crime against his “family,” however you might choose to define it.
What I believe is that Farrow went on the warpath in a custody battle and won. Allen deserved to lose. But I don’t think he molested anyone.
Of course, the facts allow that I could be wrong. But weighing the totality of the available facts, I think the story was concocted and used to keep Allen away from the kids.
If Allen did indeed molest anyone, that would obviously be worse than anything Farrow has done to Allen.
You really just can’t ever win when commenting on events like this.
One thing that I have learned in fifty years of reading da noospapers is that you can not rely on them to get the details correct; most of the time you can’t even rely on them to get the broad outlines correct.
So when it comes to an ugly family breakout that is being litigated in the press, I think it best to say “I don’t know and it’s none of my business anyway.”
That said, the comments made by my internet buddies can be quite interesting.
I spent 15 years as a criminal defense attorney, during the last 10 of which my caseload consisted mostly of child sex cases. I learned many things from that, including how happy I am that my head is not wired in such a way where I find children sexually attractive. I know from experience that children can be manipulated and are sometimes used as pawns in criminal and civil cases, and that this isn’t as unusual as we’d like to think (google “Wenatchee sex ring” if you want to see how a town can be virtually destroyed by sex abuse allegations).
That being said, while Dylan Farrow’s allegations (then and now) likely wouldn’t stand up to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard necessary to gain a criminal conviction, my own take is that it’s obvious something happened. Allen was already seeing a psychologist due to “inappropriate behavior” towards Dylan when this allegation was made, but more damning than that (in my mind) are Allen’s own statements. They could have been written by one of my own clients, and I found Dylan’s take on his recent “defense” to be spot on.
Finally, I don’t see how anyone can read his interviews or (especially) the dialogue in his movies and not be completely creeped out. And not just the obvious parallels drawn in “Manhattan”, but in “Stardust Memories,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors”, and “Honeymoon Motel.” They read like a confessional. Is that proof he did it? No, but we’re speculating rather than conducting a trial. As the saying goes, if it walks like a duck, etc. Woody Allen should be the Oregon mascot.
As an Oregon alum, I just threw up in the back of my mouth a little.
I don’t know or care what happened between Allen and Farrow’s (younger) daughter, but even at the time I could not wrap my brain around how a relationship between a wealthy 53-year-old global celebrity and a teenaged woman could possibly be anything other than narcissistic, creepy, and a truly toxic power differential. Now that I’m 54 myself, I also find the idea of having such a relationship unfathomably pathetic.
On that basis alone, I’d rather U of O stick with the cheap knock-off of a character invented by a fascist and owned by one of the most predatory companies in the world. Even that’s better. Kthxbai.
An Arizona fan here. Good game the other night. Right down to the wire. That’s the Oregon I expected to see this year. Not looking forward to the trip to Eugene.
LOL (the Oregon Duck comment). If you were a prosecutor, I’d say you’re just typical of your breed. Those guys go around wondering their mother has done that ought to be prosecuted. But since you’re a criminal defense attorney, I’ll give some credence to your instinct.
I don’t pretend to know what happened. But Allen certainly seems rather troubled. Then there’s the fact that half of the celebrity world has rules around sexuality that most of the rest of the world would consider pretty far out there. Imagine being a guy who has young, beautiful women throwing themselves at him all the time. How could one not develop an inflated ego and come to think he’s beyond social norms. Social norms? How quaint. How charming of you to mention them.
Does not surprise me at all that Mia was sleeping with her ex. My guess is they had an explicit or tacit understanding. Perhaps they were monogomisch (the term coined by Dan Savage). Of course I don’t know; just speculating. But it’s a guess based on knowledge that people who have everything often come to believe they’re entitled to write their own rules.
I did just google “Wenatchee sex ring”. Chilling. Arthur Miller’s “Crucible” discussed this of course. The sex abuse allegations in many of these stories are simply appalling, in that they simply are beyond comprehension.
And what is the big deal with kids occasionally touching genitals? Honestly, prior to recent times, this happened. What is more damaging to a child, a minor experience like this or a life-altering investigation, possibly including removal of the child from a house? I don’t condone it, but there is minor exploratory stuff (4 YO discussing private parts) and there is sick stuff (40 YO adults producing and selling child porn).
The entire sex thing has been entirely criminalized, and that process is often more damaging than the actual activities.
I’m in the camp that says we can’t know what happened based on the public evidence. There is sufficient evidence, including precedents, to support two alternate theories of the events. In either case Dylan Farrow is a victim of a horrible crime. And there is no doubt that both parents behaved poorly.
But did Allen sexually abuse her, or did Mia Farrow pressure her to falsely accuse Allen? At most we can assign a percentage likelihood to one scenario or the other based on our personal experience – but we cannot KNOW.
It’s hard not to take sides because the crime was horrible and the perpetrator should be publicly shamed and behind bars – we want there to be justice.