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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDylan Farrow: Why has the #MeToo revolution spared Woody Allen?
We are in the midst of a revolution. From allegations against studio heads and journalists, to hotel maids recounting abuses on the job, women are exposing the truth and men are losing their jobs. But the revolution has been selective.
I have long maintained that when I was 7 years old, Woody Allen led me into an attic, away from the babysitters who had been instructed never to leave me alone with him. He then sexually assaulted me. I told the truth to the authorities then, and I have been telling it, unaltered, for more than 20 years. Why is it that Harvey Weinstein and other accused celebrities have been cast out by Hollywood, while Allen recently secured a multimillion-dollar distribution deal with Amazon, greenlit by former Amazon Studios executive Roy Price before he was suspended over sexual misconduct allegations? Allen’s latest feature, “Wonder Wheel,” was released theatrically on Dec. 1.
Allen denies my allegations. But this is not a “he said, child said” situation. Allen’s pattern of inappropriate behavior — putting his thumb in my mouth, climbing into bed with me in his underwear, constant grooming and touching — was witnessed by friends and family members. At the time of the alleged assault, he was in therapy for his conduct towards me. Three eyewitnesses substantiated my account, including a babysitter who saw Allen with his head buried in my lap after he had taken off my underwear. Allen refused to take a polygraph administered by the Connecticut state police.
In the final legal disposition of the matter, a judge denied him custody of me, writing that “measures must be taken to protect” me and that there was “no credible evidence” that my mother, Mia Farrow, coached me in any way. A prosecutor took the unusual step of announcing that he had probable cause to charge Allen but declined in order to spare me, a “child victim,” from an exhausting trial.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-farrow-woody-allen-me-too-20171207-story.html
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bathroommonkey76
(3,827 posts)No one ever mentions how fuckin' batshit crazy Mia Farrow was during the 90s. Here's a Valentine's Day card she gave to Woody Allen.
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)was because of the victim's "fragility."
I don't think that Valentine, after her long time partner seduced her teenage daughter, the sister of Woody's children, and ran off with her, is a sign of Mia's being crazy.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts
4. Allen subsequently lost four exhaustive court battles—a lawsuit, a disciplinary charge against the prosecutor, and two appeals—and was made to pay more than $1 million in Mia’s legal fees. Judge Elliott Wilk, the presiding judge in Allen’s custody suit against Farrow, concluded that there is “no credible evidence to support Mr. Allen’s contention that Ms. Farrow coached Dylan or that Ms. Farrow acted upon a desire for revenge against him for seducing Soon-Yi.”
SNIP
9. The state attorney, Maco, said publicly he did have probable cause to press charges against Allen but declined, due to the fragility of the “child victim.” Maco told me that he refused to put Dylan through an exhausting trial, and without her on the stand, he could not prosecute Allen.
VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)That's the state dr.
Writing about it 20 years after the fact is interesting, but not as credible as the actual report of the state-hired dr.
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)pnwmom
(108,980 posts)because of the fragility of the victim. It was the prosecutor who stopped the process, not a judge.
However, the article you posted in 1993 has been discredited by a great deal of further reporting, including this article four years later in Connecticut Magazine, and several in Vanity Fair.
The doctor on the panel didn't conduct a single one of the 9 interviews. He signed off on the report but never interviewed Dylan himself. The interviews were conducted by a couple of social workers -- and the transcripts were thrown away.
The "Maco" referred to below is Frank Maco, the Litchfield County State's Attorney.
http://www.connecticutmag.com/the-connecticut-story/mia-farrow-s-vanity-fair-interview-references-connecticut-magazine-article/article_4327cac7-ffef-5eb5-9c19-fdaf70e84855.html
Maco had commissioned the Yale study with instructions to determine whether Dylan was a viable witness who could stand up in court. He said that enlisting Yale’s assistance was the biggest mistake he made in the case.
“Regardless of what the Connecticut police wanted from us,” Leventhal said in an April 1993 deposition, “we weren’t necessarily beholden to them. We did not assess whether she’d be a good witness in court. That’s what Mr. Maco may have been interested in, but that’s not necessarily what we were interested in.”
Yale, Maco says, “took the case and ran away with it. I gave their report very little weight.”
An examination of the Yale report and court documents shows:
• The Yale team used psychologists on Allen’s payroll to make mental health conclusions. “That seems like a blatant conflict of interest; they should have excluded themselves,” Schetky says.
• Custody recommendations were made even though the team never saw Allen and any of the children together. “I’d sure want that information,” Schetky says.
• The team refused to interview witnesses who could have corroborated the molestation claims.
• The team destroyed its notes. “I don’t know why they would,” Schetky says. “They shouldn’t have anything to hide, unless they’re in disagreement.”
• Leventhal, the only medical doctor on the team, did not interview Dylan. “How can you write about someone you’ve never seen?” Schetky asks.
• The night before Leventhal gave a statement to Farrow’s attorney, he discussed the scenario with Abramowitz, the head of Allen’s legal team, for about 30 minutes.
• The team interviewed Dylan nine times. For three consecutive weeks, she said violated her sexually. In several of the other sessions, she mentioned a similar type of abuse. When Dylan did not repeat the precise allegation in some of the sessions, the team reported this as an inconsistency.
VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)all they want. Note he never arrested Allen, so I'm betting he did not enough for a warrant. Thus, no probable cause.
As for Leventhal, so what? The child was interviewed 9 times and not found to be credible.
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)he didn't want to take the case to a criminal trial.
As for Levanthal, the NYTimes falsely reported that the doctor who signed the report had interviewed the children. This is significant because the interviews were conducted by two social workers, and when the doctor put his report together, he destroyed the notes the social workers made. That isn't normal procedure.
The doctor also included psychological reports paid for by Woody in his report.
Woody was involved in 4 lawsuits involved with these accusations and he lost all of them. He had to reimburse Mia for a million dollars in attorneys fees.
Woody was able to hang on despite these allegations because of money and power -- the same thing that props up Trump no matter how badly he behaves.
I was able to understand people who took Woody's side back in 1993, and I agreed that the situation seemed very complicated. But we have a lot more information now. And even in 1993, I thought that someday we'd find out -- when a grown-up Dylan spoke out. And she has been doing this for years, and no one believes her.
VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)Here's the Yale info:
https://radaronline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/yale-new-haven-hospital-allen.pdf
Ny State also found no evidence of abuse:
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/26/nyregion/agency-drops-abuse-inquiry-in-allen-case.html
And the 13 year old in the house, Moses Allen, tells us how it could not have happened:
“Of course Woody did not molest my sister. 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. The day in question, there were six or seven of us in the house. We were all in public rooms and no one, not my father or sister, was off in any private spaces. My mother was conveniently out shopping. I don’t know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother. Pleasing my mother was very powerful motivation because to be on her wrong side was horrible… Our mother has misled the public into believing it was a happy household of both biological and adopted children. From an early age, my mother demanded obedience and I was often hit as a child.”
When this statement went public, I recall your sister’s response was, “My brother is dead to me.” But I’ve never heard you address Moses’ statement. So here’s a hard question for you: Is your brother Moses a liar?
Your recent essay linked to your sister’s very compelling New York Times piece published on the blog of your family friend, columnist Nicholas Kristof (though it provided no link to your father’s response). To this day, I find the part of Dylan’s letter hardest to shake is the vivid picture she paints of the actual moment of violation, which she says took place in the attic: “[My father] told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me… I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.”
Here’s what your brother Moses recently had to say:
“I assure you, there was no electric train set in that attic. There was nothing practical about that space as a place for kids to play, even if we wanted to. It was an unfinished attic with exposed fiberglass insulation. It smelled of moth balls and there were mouse traps and poison pellets left all around. My mother used it for storage where she kept several trunks full of hand-me-down clothes, that sort of thing. The idea that the space could possibly accommodate a functioning electric train set, circling around the attic, makes no sense at all. One of my brothers did have an elaborate model train set, but it was set up in the boys’ room, a converted garage on the first floor. Maybe that was the train set my sister thinks she remembers.”
https://ronanfarrowletter.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/hard-questions-for-ronan-farrow-an-open-letter/
Tanuki
(14,918 posts)a single time, much less nine times.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/02/woody_allen_and_dylan_farrow_digging_deeper_into_misleading_coverage.html
"Weide quotes at length from a sworn deposition by John Leventhal, the pediatrician who led the Yale–New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic’s investigation of the allegations. Leventhal’s deposition hypothesized either that “these were statements made by an emotionally disturbed child and then became fixed in her mind” or “that she was coached or influenced by her mother.” But Leventhal himself never interviewed Dylan Farrow, nor did he interview her mother or any of the child care workers present at Mia Farrow’s home on Aug. 4, 1992. Dylan was interviewed nine times over a six-month period by Julia Hamilton, who had a Ph.D. in social work, and Jennifer Sawyer, who had a master’s degree in social work. Neither Hamilton nor Sawyer would testify at trial, and Leventhal would only testify via deposition; as Weide points out, they also destroyed their notes on the investigation. (Diane Schetky, a professor of psychiatry and past editor of the Clinical Handbook of Child Psychiatry and the Law, itemized other irregularities in the Yale investigation in this 1997 Connecticut Magazine piece.)
In his 1993 state Supreme Court decision, Wilk found that testimony “proves that Mr. Allen's behavior toward Dylan was grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.” In May 1994, the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court cited a “clear consensus” among psychiatric experts that Allen’s “interest in Dylan was abnormally intense.”
My colleague Dahlia Lithwick wisely cautionsagainst trying this case again in the court of public opinion. But it’s also worth remembering that—no matter how Robert Weide wants to spin things—Woody Allen did not fare well at all when actual courts of law looked at the facts."
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)
MaryMagdaline
(6,855 posts)to save the victim the anguish, not because there was no evidence.
Before ANY police involvement, Allen was undergoing therapy because of "boundary" issues with his daughter. He voluntarily agreed NOT TO BE ALONE WITH HER and then broke the agreement. Not until the family and babysitters suspected the abuse in the attic did he retain counsel and attempt to go for custody. His claim was laughable, since he did not even know what his kids ate for breakfast, who their friends were, or who their teachers were. The judge in the divorce case found no evidence of "tampering" by the mother, but did find that his daughter needed protection from Allen.
Read her statement. It is credible. Allen does have one report in his favor from a group of psychiatrists/ psychologists who said the report of abuse from the child was not probable, but they never interviewed the child and they destroyed all of their notes. The family court judge went off on them for failure to follow routine procedures. This does not mean that the psychiatrists hired by Allen did not hold sincere opinions, but to say that there was no evidence in the case is not true. The judge found fault with Mia for failure to keep Allen away from her daughter, not for instigating lies.
VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)Dr. Leventhal headed the hospital team that was asked by the Connecticut State Police to investigate the claim that Mr. Allen molested Dylan last August at Miss Farrow's summer home in Connecticut. The team told Mr. Allen and Miss Farrow on March 18 that it had concluded that Dylan was not molested, but the transcript gives the first look at the thinking behind that finding.
snip...
The doctor suggested a connection between Miss Farrow's outrage over Mr. Allen's affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, and the accusation made by Dylan, who he said was unusually protective of her mother. "It's quite possible -- as a matter of fact, we think it's medically probable -- that she stuck to that story over time because of the intense relationship she had with her mother," he said.
Even before the claim of abuse was made last August, he said, "The view of Mr. Allen as an evil and awful and terrible man permeated the household. The view that he had molested Soon-Yi and was a potential molester of Dylan permeated the household."
Dr. Leventhal said it was "very striking" that each time Dylan spoke of the abuse, she coupled it with "one, her father's relationship with Soon-Yi, and two, the fact that it was her poor mother, her poor mother," who had lost a career in Mr. Allen's films. He also said it was possible that Miss Farrow encouraged her child to fabricate simply by videotaping her telling the story, because Dylan liked to perform.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/04/nyregion/doctor-cites-inconsistencies-in-dylan-farrow-s-statements.html
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)didn't interview Dylan a single time, though he signed off on the report, and that the notes of the social workers who spoke to her were destroyed.
And Levanthal's panel, among other serious errors, relied on psychological reports prepared by psychologists paid for by Woody.
MaryMagdaline
(6,855 posts)I read a Woody Allen biography about 4 years ago and the details are all there. The red flag to me has always been his agreement to stay away from his daughter while he was undergoing therapy. This was inconsistent with behavior of any father or mother I had ever known, especially a father who ruled the household as was the case with Allen. I don't know what he did when he crawled into bed with her but it freaked everyone out in the household. So yes, after finding evidence of his having sex with his step-daughter, they probably went insane and could no longer justify his behavior as eccentric old Woody
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)with his sister.
And because he stood by his sister publicly, I think that is why a lot of the Hollywood actresses trusted him with their stories about Weinstein. He is my new hero
VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)younger siblings "remember."
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)And three babysitters confirmed Dylan's account.
VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)pnwmom
(108,980 posts)According to Slate, the Court Documents list who was home when the alleged attic incident occurred, and Moses was NOT among them. A babysitter who was there with some visiting children, Alison Stickland, had seen Woody (at a different time of the day) with his head on Dylan's lap, facing her body, and later told her employer what she had witnessed, who then told Mia. A French tutor at some point noticed that Dylan wasn't wearing underwear, and Farrow's babysitter had to put some on her. Farrow's babysitter also testified to having to search for Dylan for 15-20 minutes -- during a period of time when Dylan says she and Woody were in the attic.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/culturebox/2014/01/did_woody_allen_molest_his_adopted_daughter_22_years_ago_reviewing_the_evidence.html
And in their May 1994 decision, the judges of the New York appellate court held that, with regard to the events of Aug. 4, 1992, “the testimony given at trial by the individuals caring for the children that day, the videotape of Dylan made by Ms. Farrow the following day and the accounts of Dylan's behavior toward Mr. Allen both before and after the alleged instance of abuse, suggest that the abuse did occur.” Although “the evidence in support of the allegations remains inconclusive,” the court stated, “our review of the record militates against a finding that Ms. Farrow fabricated the allegations without any basis.”
SNIP
Now, to New York Supreme Court Justice Wilk’s decision. Here are the biggest reveals in the court documents, in chronological order.
Aug. 4, 1992
On this date, Allen traveled to Farrow’s country home in Connecticut to spend time with the children. At the home was Allen; Casey Pascal (Farrow’s friend) and her three children; the Pascal nanny, Alison Stickland; Kristie Groteke, a babysitter employed by Farrow; Sophie Berge, the Farrow kids’ French tutor; Dylan and Satchel. Farrow had “previously instructed Ms. Groteke that Mr. Allen was not to be left alone with Dylan,” but for about 15-20 minutes in the afternoon, Groteke “was unable to locate Mr. Allen or Dylan. After looking for them in the house, she assumed that they were outside with the others.” But Allen and Dylan were not outside with them, according to Berge and Stickland. At a different point in the day, Stickland says she “observed Mr. Allen kneeling with his head on her lap, facing her body. Dylan was sitting on the couch staring vacantly in the direction of a television set.” When Farrow returned home, Berge noticed Dylan “was not wearing anything under her sundress” so Farrow had Groteke put underpants on Dylan. That evening, Stickland claims she told Pascal that she “had seen something at Mia’s that day that was bothering me,” and told of the TV room observation. The next day, Pascal phoned Farrow and told her of Stickland’s statements.
https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1992/11/farrow199211
On August 4, Woody was in Connecticut to visit the children, and Mia and Casey went shopping, taking along Mia’s two most recently adopted children—a blind Vietnamese girl named Tam, 11, and Isaiah, a seven-month-old black baby born to a crack-addicted mother. While they were gone, there was a brief period, perhaps 15 minutes, when Woody and Dylan vanished from sight. The baby-sitter who was inside searched high and low for them through the cluttered old farmhouse, but she couldn’t find them. The outside baby-sitter, after a look at the grounds around the house, concluded the two must be inside somewhere. When Mia got home a short time later, Dylan and Woody were outside, and Dylan didn’t have any underpants on. (Allen later said that he had not been alone with Dylan. He refused to submit hair and fingerprint samples to the Connecticut state police or to cooperate unless he was assured that nothing he said would be used against him.) Woody, who hated the country and reportedly brought his own bath mat to avoid germs, spent the night in a guest room off the laundry next to the garage and left the next morning.
That day, August 5, Casey called Mia to report something the baby-sitter had told her. The day before, Casey’s baby-sitter had been in the house looking for one of the three Pascal children and had been startled when she walked into the TV room. Dylan was on the sofa, wearing a dress, and Woody was kneeling on the floor holding her, with his face in her lap. The baby-sitter did not consider it “a fatherly pose,” but more like something you’d say “Oops, excuse me” to if both had been adults. She told police later that she was shocked. “It just seemed very intimate. He seemed very comfortable.”
As soon as Mia asked Dylan about it, Dylan began to tell a harrowing story, in dribs and drabs but in excruciating detail. According to her account, she and Daddy went to the attic (not really an attic, just a small crawl space off the closet of Mia’s bedroom where the children play), and Daddy told her that if she stayed very still he would put her in his movie and take her to Paris. He touched her “private part.” Dylan said she told him, “It hurts. I’m just a little kid.” The she told Mia, “Kids have to do what grown-ups say.” Mia, who has a small Beta video camera and frequently records her large brood, made a tape of Dylan for Dylan’s psychologist, who was in France at the time. “I don’t want to be in a movie with my daddy,” Dylan said, and asked, “Did your daddy ever do that to you?”
VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)disagreed or recanted.
Nanny Casts Doubt on Farrow Charges : Custody: She tells Allen's lawyers the actress pressured her to support molestation accusations against him. She says others have reservations.
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-02-02/news/mn-952_1_woody-allen
She mentions that Moses denied anything happened that day.
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)Last edited Sat Dec 9, 2017, 07:20 PM - Edit history (6)
The only children present were Pascal's three children, and Dylan and Satchel (now known as Ronan.) Not Moses or the other teenagers.
But let's pretend that Moses were there. At the age of 15, he wasn't following Dylan around all day. He wouldn't have known if she was up in the attic for 15 minutes with Woody. But the babysitter whose job it WAS to keep track of Dylan lost her and had to look for her for 15 or 20 minutes.
Aug. 4, 1992
On this date, Allen traveled to Farrow’s country home in Connecticut to spend time with the children. At the home was Allen; Casey Pascal (Farrow’s friend) and her three children; the Pascal nanny, Alison Stickland; Kristie Groteke, a babysitter employed by Farrow; Sophie Berge, the Farrow kids’ French tutor; Dylan and Satchel. Farrow had “previously instructed Ms. Groteke that Mr. Allen was not to be left alone with Dylan,” but for about 15-20 minutes in the afternoon, Groteke “was unable to locate Mr. Allen or Dylan. After looking for them in the house, she assumed that they were outside with the others.” But Allen and Dylan were not outside with them, according to Berge and Stickland. At a different point in the day, Stickland says she “observed Mr. Allen kneeling with his head on her lap, facing her body. Dylan was sitting on the couch staring vacantly in the direction of a television set.” When Farrow returned home, Berge noticed Dylan “was not wearing anything under her sundress” so Farrow had Groteke put underpants on Dylan. That evening, Stickland claims she told Pascal that she “had seen something at Mia’s that day that was bothering me,” and told of the TV room observation. The next day, Pascal phoned Farrow and told her of Stickland’s statements.
ON EDIT:
This article includes the actual Court document. On page 10 it lists "those present" on the day Dylan and others said the events occurred. Dylan's younger brother Satchel (Ronan) was in the house, but Moses and the other older children were not.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-shea/heres-the-1993-woody-alle_b_4746866.html
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)I don't trust her hearsay about the other women who were there. Or about anything. She wasn't even present in the house on the day the incidents occurred, according to your article.
The Pascal children's nanny wasn't paid by either Allen or Farrow, and she was the one who told her employer how uncomfortable she was seeing Allen's face in Dylan's lap. (Which was a gross enough story itself, though separate from the incident in the attic that Dylan told her mother about.)
kskiska
(27,045 posts)Excerpt:
"Of course Woody did not molest my sister," Moses, 36, told People magazine.
He continued, "My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister. And I hated him for her for years. I see now that this was a vengeful way to pay him back for falling in love with Soon-Yi."
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/dylan-farrows-brother-moses-mia-farrow-woody-allen/story?id=22377303
pnwmom
(108,980 posts)Last edited Sat Dec 9, 2017, 03:45 PM - Edit history (1)
I believe Ronan and Dylan and the babysitters.
Court documents list who was in the house when the incident in the attic occurred, and Moses was not. Two babysitters (one from another family) and a French tutor were there, and they all testified in Court.
Gothmog
(145,321 posts)VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)pnwmom
(108,980 posts)VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)Shouldn't you note that when you claim he had "probable cause?"
Tipperary
(6,930 posts)I am sick of this insanity. I have now watched as our own leadership screwed one of our own today. This was one of the most disheartening political episodes in recent memory.
Puzzledtraveller
(5,937 posts)or...
even more frightening
our people are really not trying that hard to get rid of him
kskiska
(27,045 posts)pnwmom
(108,980 posts)still_one
(92,219 posts)kskiska
(27,045 posts)Excerpt:
…Mia Farrow, ostensibly all-too-familiar with accused child predators, testified on Polanski’s behalf in a libel suit. According to biographer Robert Weide, Farrow submitted a statement after Polanski’s arrest for raping Geimer describing him as “a loyal friend, important to me, a distinguished director, important to the motion picture industry, and a brave and brilliant man, important to all people.”
https://nypost.com/2017/10/05/why-does-hollywood-keep-defending-roman-polanski/
Excerpt:
…I think this is weird. Flat out, weird. Also, in more mature terms, it is pretty damned hypocritical. One would think that if Farrow has this position on the Golden Globes giving Woody Allen an award for his achievements in cinema, that she would have it on being actual friends with Roman Polanski. There is a difference between saying someone is a good filmmaker and having someone be your actual friend.
…
Farrow’s brother is also currently in jail for several counts of child molestation, and to my knowledge she’s never spoken about that.
https://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/213078/isnt-it-just-a-little-weird-that-mia-farrow-is-still-friends-with-roman-polanski/
oberliner
(58,724 posts)VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)
onecaliberal
(32,864 posts)
milestogo
(16,829 posts)bhikkhu
(10,718 posts)Not for years now. A part of me just cringes hearing his name or seeing his face.
Thekaspervote
(32,778 posts)
LeftInTX
(25,375 posts)Woody stooped so low that I don't know if there is anything worse to uncover about him.