Dylan Farrow accuses Woody Allen

[Neil]

Ronan is good looking.

Is Ronan the one that's Frank Sinatra's son?

[garbon]

Ronan is good looking.

Is Ronan the one that's Frank Sinatra's son?

Potentially.

[katmai]

Ronan is good looking.

Is Ronan the one that's Frank Sinatra's son?

Potentially.

No fucking way he is genetically linked to Woody Allen.

[Ideologue]

Does anybody else think adult Dylan Farrow is sorta cute?

Too soon?

Yeah.  I mean, I agree, but I don't know what the etiquette is on that.

[Queequeg]

Ronan is good looking.

He's gay, right?

[katmai]

The actual Woody Allen response.

In an open letter to the New York Times, which will appear in the paper's Sunday Review, Woody Allen has responded to the 1992 molestation allegations from his ex-partner Mia Farrow and their children Ronan and Dylan Farrow.

Read his full response below:

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. It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer.

I naïvely thought the accusation would be dismissed out of hand because of course, I hadn't molested Dylan and any rational person would see the ploy for what it was. Common sense would prevail. After all, I was a 56-year-old man who had never before (or after) been accused of child molestation. I had been going out with Mia for 12 years and never in that time did she ever suggest to me anything resembling misconduct. Now, suddenly, when I had driven up to her house in Connecticut one afternoon to visit the kids for a few hours, when I would be on my raging adversary's home turf, with half a dozen people present, when I was in the blissful early stages of a happy new relationship with the woman I'd go on to marry — that I would pick this moment in time to embark on a career as a child molester should seem to the most skeptical mind highly unlikely. The sheer illogic of such a crazy scenario seemed to me dispositive.

Notwithstanding, Mia insisted that I had abused Dylan and took her immediately to a doctor to be examined. Dylan told the doctor she had not been molested. Mia then took Dylan out for ice cream, and when she came back with her the child had changed her story. The police began their investigation; a possible indictment hung in the balance. I very willingly took a lie-detector test and of course passed because I had nothing to hide. I asked Mia to take one and she wouldn't. Last week a woman named Stacey Nelkin, whom I had dated many years ago, came forward to the press to tell them that when Mia and I first had our custody battle 21 years ago, Mia had wanted her to testify that she had been underage when I was dating her, despite the fact this was untrue. Stacey refused. I include this anecdote so we all know what kind of character we are dealing with here. One can imagine in learning this why she wouldn't take a lie-detector test.

Meanwhile the Connecticut police turned for help to a special investigative unit they relied on in such cases, the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital. This group of impartial, experienced men and women whom the district attorney looked to for guidance as to whether to prosecute, spent months doing a meticulous investigation, interviewing everyone concerned, and checking every piece of evidence. Finally they wrote their conclusion which I quote here: "It is our expert opinion that Dylan was not sexually abused by Mr. Allen. Further, we believe that Dylan's statements on videotape and her statements to us during our evaluation do not refer to actual events that occurred to her on August 4th, 1992... In developing our opinion we considered three hypotheses to explain Dylan's statements. First, that Dylan's statements were true and that Mr. Allen had sexually abused her; second, that Dylan's statements were not true but were made up by an emotionally vulnerable child who was caught up in a disturbed family and who was responding to the stresses in the family; and third, that Dylan was coached or influenced by her mother, Ms. Farrow. While we can conclude that Dylan was not sexually abused, we can not be definite about whether the second formulation by itself or the third formulation by itself is true. We believe that it is more likely that a combination of these two formulations best explains Dylan's allegations of sexual abuse."

Could it be any clearer? Mr. Allen did not abuse Dylan; most likely a vulnerable, stressed-out 7-year-old was coached by Mia Farrow. This conclusion disappointed a number of people. The district attorney was champing at the bit to prosecute a celebrity case, and Justice Elliott Wilk, the custody judge, wrote a very irresponsible opinion saying when it came to the molestation, "we will probably never know what occurred."

But we did know because it had been determined and there was no equivocation about the fact that no abuse had taken place. Justice Wilk was quite rough on me and never approved of my relationship with Soon-Yi, Mia's adopted daughter, who was then in her early 20s. He thought of me as an older man exploiting a much younger woman, which outraged Mia as improper despite the fact she had dated a much older Frank Sinatra when she was 19. In fairness to Justice Wilk, the public felt the same dismay over Soon-Yi and myself, but despite what it looked like our feelings were authentic and we've been happily married for 16 years with two great kids, both adopted. (Incidentally, coming on the heels of the media circus and false accusations, Soon-Yi and I were extra carefully scrutinized by both the adoption agency and adoption courts, and everyone blessed our adoptions.)

Mia took custody of the children and we went our separate ways.

I was heartbroken. Moses was angry with me. Ronan I didn't know well because Mia would never let me get close to him from the moment he was born and Dylan, whom I adored and was very close to and about whom Mia called my sister in a rage and said, "He took my daughter, now I'll take his." I never saw her again nor was I able to speak with her no matter how hard I tried. I still loved her deeply, and felt guilty that by falling in love with Soon-Yi I had put her in the position of being used as a pawn for revenge. Soon-Yi and I made countless attempts to see Dylan but Mia blocked them all, spitefully knowing how much we both loved her but totally indifferent to the pain and damage she was causing the little girl merely to appease her own vindictiveness.

Here I quote Moses Farrow, 14 at the time: "My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister." Moses is now 36 years old and a family therapist by profession. "Of course Woody did not molest my sister," he said. "She loved him and looked forward to seeing him when he would visit. She never hid from him until our mother succeeded in creating the atmosphere of fear and hate towards him." Dylan was 7, Ronan 4, and this was, according to Moses, the steady narrative year after year.

I pause here for a quick word on the Ronan situation. Is he my son or, as Mia suggests, Frank Sinatra's? Granted, he looks a lot like Frank with the blue eyes and facial features, but if so what does this say? That all during the custody hearing Mia lied under oath and falsely represented Ronan as our son? Even if he is not Frank's, the possibility she raises that he could be, indicates she was secretly intimate with him during our years. Not to mention all the money I paid for child support. Was I supporting Frank's son? Again, I want to call attention to the integrity and honesty of a person who conducts her life like that.

Now it's 21 years later and Dylan has come forward with the accusations that the Yale experts investigated and found false. Plus a few little added creative flourishes that seem to have magically appeared during our 21-year estrangement.

Not that I doubt Dylan hasn't come to believe she's been molested, but if from the age of 7 a vulnerable child is taught by a strong mother to hate her father because he is a monster who abused her, is it so inconceivable that after many years of this indoctrination the image of me Mia wanted to establish had taken root? Is it any wonder the experts at Yale had picked up the maternal coaching aspect 21 years ago? Even the venue where the fabricated molestation was supposed to have taken place was poorly chosen but interesting. Mia chose the attic of her country house, a place she should have realized I'd never go to because it is a tiny, cramped, enclosed spot where one can hardly stand up and I'm a major claustrophobe. The one or two times she asked me to come in there to look at something, I did, but quickly had to run out. Undoubtedly the attic idea came to her from the Dory Previn song, "With My Daddy in the Attic." It was on the same record as the song Dory Previn had written about Mia's betraying their friendship by insidiously stealing her husband, André, "Beware of Young Girls." One must ask, did Dylan even write the letter or was it at least guided by her mother? Does the letter really benefit Dylan or does it simply advance her mother's shabby agenda? That is to hurt me with a smear. There is even a lame attempt to do professional damage by trying to involve movie stars, which smells a lot more like Mia than Dylan.

After all, if speaking out was really a necessity for Dylan, she had already spoken out months earlier in Vanity Fair. Here I quote Moses Farrow again: "Knowing that my mother often used us as pawns, I cannot trust anything that is said or written from anyone in the family." Finally, does Mia herself really even believe I molested her daughter? Common sense must ask: Would a mother who thought her 7-year-old daughter was sexually abused by a molester (a pretty horrific crime), give consent for a film clip of her to be used to honor the molester at the Golden Globes?

Of course, I did not molest Dylan. I loved her and hope one day she will grasp how she has been cheated out of having a loving father and exploited by a mother more interested in her own festering anger than her daughter's well-being. Being taught to hate your father and made to believe he molested you has already taken a psychological toll on this lovely young woman, and Soon-Yi and I are both hoping that one day she will understand who has really made her a victim and reconnect with us, as Moses has, in a loving, productive way. No one wants to discourage abuse victims from speaking out, but one must bear in mind that sometimes there are people who are falsely accused and that is also a terribly destructive thing. (This piece will be my final word on this entire matter and no one will be responding on my behalf to any further comments on it by any party. Enough people have been hurt.)

[Razgovory]

It's not as funny as the Onion piece.

[grumbler]

The actual Woody Allen response.
(snip)

Allen should keep his mouth shut.  This reads to me like he is confessing that he is guilty.

[CountDeMoney]

The actual Woody Allen response.
(snip)

Allen should keep his mouth shut.  This reads to me like he is confessing that he is guilty.

[Caliga]

No fucking way he is genetically linked to Woody Allen.

You ever seen the dude?  He looks like a young clone of Sinatra, and good for him.  I would much rather be Sinatra's son than Woody Allen's son.

[CountDeMoney]

Oh yeah, that kid is a chip off the Chairman of the Board's block.  There's not a single drop of insecure nebbish Manhattan Jew blood in that body.

[Queequeg]

Isn't that, um, weird? That Farrow went so completely psychotic over this divorce but was having sex with her 80 year old ex husband that she divorced 20 years prior?

[OttoVonBismarck]

While agreeing with the general content of Berkut's temper tantrum earlier in the thread that we as individuals can certainly decide in our own minds how to feel about someone regardless of whether or not the evidence meets a legal burden of proof, in this particular case I see very little compelling evidence at all against Allen. Every part of the evidence against him is not only weak, but did not survive close scrutiny at the time, and the alternative explanation is quite plausible.

Now, on the flip side Woody Allen is a weird dude who basically looks like a pedophile and acts like one, if he was a family friend or something and not a famous director I'd never leave him alone with my child based purely on his mannerisms and appearance. Maybe that's judging a book by its cover, but I don't particularly care. So while I lean toward this particular allegation either being factually false or at the least totally unsubstantiated, I don't necessarily view Allen as a maligned good guy who has never done anything wrong.

Allen defenders muddy the water because in the two confirmed cases where he banged teenagers, they were over the technical age of majority in the jurisdiciton, and in Soon-Yi Previn's case she did not have a parent/child relationship with Allen. He was definitely an authority figure in her life but she was in regular contact with her actual adopted father (while Woody was just the partner of her adopted mother--never her adopted father) so Allen wasn't "the" father figure.  But just the fact he was a pretty advanced-in-years adult who had known her on at least some level as an adult authority figure while she was way under the age of consent, and the fact she was in fact his girlfriend's adopted daughter makes his behavior in regard to Soon-Yi 100% reprehensible and indefensible. People who continually point out that it was completely legal and "not incest" miss the point.

The reality is teenage girls develop at different paces physically, there are teenager girls that look unmistakably like children and you'd frankly need to be a pedophile to be attracted to them and there are teenage girls that most heterosexual men (perhaps shielded from any scrutiny) would admit are hot and attractive. But that being said the vast majority of the adult male population would never actually pursue a relationship with a teenager, with full womanly features or not, regardless of age of consent, because it's just socially unacceptable. So to me I do think there is definitely something to suggest that someone that violates a strong social taboo to pursue very young women may in fact have even more unacceptable desires and predilections such as a desire to bang actual children. I'd definitely say Allen's behavior toward other younger women definitely makes it so that society in general is going to think it's more likely you're a pedophile.

As for Woody Allen artistically I've seen two of his movies, hated both, and have no interest in his body of work. Boring/unfunny movies that rely on some type of Jewish/New York humor I guess I just don't get.

[Queequeg]

Ephebophilia and pedophilia are different pathologies.  I don't think there's a whole lot of evidence of people who sexually abused minors once or twice but otherwise were sexually attracted to people in the 16-20 (Previn was 20) age group, by which time the vast majority of girls who live in industrialized nations are post-pubescent. 

Pedophilia implies sexual attraction to a lack of secondary sexual characteristics.  It's less an obsession with abusing authority against children and more of an actual, physical attraction from what I understand. 

[katmai]

No fucking way he is genetically linked to Woody Allen.

You ever seen the dude?  He looks like a young clone of Sinatra, and good for him.

yes cal, hence my post.