Woody Allen and Dylan Farrow: did he or didn’t he?
I’ve avoided the latest Woody Allen sexual abuse furor so far, and this post isn’t going to be an exhaustive treatment of it. It’s one of those “he said, she said” arenas where what actually happened can be difficult to know for sure, and feelings are high (and angry) on both sides.
The allegations by Woody Allen’s now-grown adopted daughter Dylan that he sexually abused her when she was seven are not at all new; they were part of the custody trial that surfaced when the two adults split. They are also being spun by Allen—and accepted on many blogs and in many articles—as the fabrications of a vengeful woman (Mia Farrow) implanting thoughts into an impressionable child.
I want to firmly state that there is absolutely no question that some abuse charges are fabricated or “implanted” in children, and that accusations that surface in a divorce or custody trial for the first time must be looked at with particular suspicion.
However, I am astounded (although perhaps I shouldn’t be) at the amount of ignorance about this particular case shown by many people opining on it. Of course, how many people have willingly followed this sordid mess? But if you are interested, there are quite a few links I’d recommend for learning more details: this, and this, this.
Those are long, but they include the official court documents, and if you read them you will learn why the judge not only did not allow Woody Allen to have custody of Dylan, but also took away his visitation rights. But here are a few highlights of the case that might help in understanding what was going on:
(1) Farrow and Allen had never married, and they didn’t ever live together regularly, even at the beginning when their relationship was going well. By the time of the final split things had not been going well for years and the couple had already been quite estranged even before the Soon-Yi affair and the subsequent custody battle.
(2) The abuse allegations came prior to the custody battle. Allen sued for custody shortly after the abuse allegations, which were initially reported to a pediatrician, who was mandated to report the charges to the authorities.
(3) Even prior to the abuse allegations, Farrow had noticed Allen behaving inappropriately with their (Mia and Woody’s) adopted daughter Dylan. This behavior had been going on for years and had been reported years earlier, beginning when Dylan was two or three, and had been witnessed by other people, some of whom testified during the trial. Farrow and Allen had been in couple’s therapy for years in order to deal with the problem of his inappropriate behavior with Dylan. These allegations of inappropriate touching occurred years before the Soon-Yi affair was exposed, and the work of the couples therapy was to set limits on what was even then seen as an excess of physical affection of an inappropriate type (although not frank abuse such as was alleged to have later occurred).
(4) Farrow discovered Allen had been having an affair with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi because she discovered photos of Soon-Yi in Allen’s apartment. The photos are usually described as “nude,” but they were actually Hustler-type (spread-eagled) nude photos, and Allen had left them out in the open (if memory serves me, on the mantel) where he should have known Farrow would have a very good chance of noticing them in his otherwise spare and completely neat apartment.
(5) Allen’s behavior regarding Dylan is often equated with his behavior with Soon-Yi. But the latter might be called an example of ephebophilia, a technical term for attraction to late adolescents (although Soon-Yi was about twenty-one when the affair was discovered, it almost certainly began in her late teens). There is nothing criminal about that, and it doesn’t necessarily involve any sort of abuse. The common denominator between Allen and Soon-Yi and Allen and Dylan is that both were the daughters of his girlfriend or ex-girlfriend, and that Dylan was his own adopted daughter as well.
If you put yourself in Mia Farrow’s place, it really must have been an astonishing shock to find those pornographic (not just nude) photos of Soon-Yi. It would be bad enough to discover that your long-term boyfriend (or sort-of boyfriend, or even boyfriend you’re having some difficulty with) is having an affair with another woman. Add to that the fact that said boyfriend is around fifty-six years old and the “other woman” is twenty-one. Then add the fact that the other woman is your daughter, and that the affair has been going on for years, probably since she turned eighteen. It is rather like betrayal squared, or perhaps cubed—a truly exponential effect.
To top it all off, the guy feigns puzzlement (or truly is puzzled) as to why anyone might disapprove of any of this:
“What was the scandal? I fell in love with this girl, married her. We have been married for almost 15 years now.”
He added, “There was no scandal, but people refer to it all the time as a scandal and I kind of like that in way because when I go I would like to say I had one real juicy scandal in my life.”
That doesn’t mean that same person showing such insensitivity is going to be sexually molesting a child. Not at all. But put the two together—the well-documented inappropriateness and boundary-crossing with Dylan prior to the Soon-Yi affair’s discovery by Mia, and the affair with Soon-Yi itself and the failure to acknowledge anything upsetting there—and it’s no stretch to think that Allen might have committed a crime of opportunity with Dylan and rationalized it to himself.
The latest rounds in this battle consist of Allen’s rejoinder in the Times and Dylan’s response.
And if you don’t much care about all of this, I wouldn’t blame you. My own interest in the case stems not from any special fascination I have with either Mia Farrow or Woody Allen, whose work (except for “Annie Hall”) I’ve never much cared for (both of them, that is). It’s the intersection of law, child abuse, the press, and public opinion that are the hooks for me.
you left out the other adopted kid Moses who was also part of the fiasco pointing out its moms vengeance…
Artfldgr:
I left out a ton of things pro and con Allen, in a case that has reams of information and an argument that has been going on for decades.
Moses has his own perspective on it from his childhood, but most of his siblings disagree with his perception. If I were to write an in-depth look at the entire issue, person by person, there would be Moses on one side and many many other people on the other. As I said, there’s no way to know for sure what happened. But the preponderance of testimony (including Allen’s own testimony at the trial), the witnesses to other very strange sexualized behavior of Allen towards Dylan, and the timeline of the original allegations of inappropriate behavior, tip the balance for me in favor of Dylan’s story.
And I left out not only Moses’ story, but Allen’s own testimony at the trial, which demonstrated an intense lack of understanding even of what parenthood is. Although I have little doubt that Mia Farrow’s parenting had some problems as well, Allen’s parenting deficits seem to have been profound back then, even without the abuse allegations.
Why aren’t these artsy types subjected to the same kind of shame and ostracism as the rest of us? Do all the media types that put them on mag covers care more about selling their wares than about society? Do the people who give them awards care more about invitations to promi dinners than decency? I am absolutely sick of the narcissism I see everywhere in the arts and entertainment business. Being a parent means putting yourself in the background once in a while, something the Allens and Farrows seem incapable of.
My offer’s still good, Mia . . .
I don’t care what anybody says.
Ronan Farrow looks more like Paul Newman than Frank Sinatra. That is my main concern.
Woody should have been aborted. That he has thrived, sexually and otherwise, coincides with the long slippery slope slide we have been on.
Except for his (ahem) member, there is nothing XY about him. Nothing. He is disgusting and revolting.
Lest we forget:
Woody Allen: “It Would Be Good If Obama Could Be a Dictator for a Few Years”
Looks like Woody got his wish.
***
My boss never tires of pointing out that, throughout history, artists and entertainers were usually considered to be low-class scum by normal people, due to their substance abuse and loose morals.
It’s only since the 20th Century, thanks to the advent of mass culture, that they have been elevated to the position of multi-millionaires and role models.
I have never cared much for either one. But, I do remember 30-some years ago while an undergraduate I made the mistake of mentioning that I didn’t care for Woody Allen’s humor.
The leftists were out in full force in academia then too; I was instantly labeled anti-Semitic.
Charles—You probably also said you didn’t care for the work of Jerry Lewis.
I’ve recently begun to follow your website. I like what you have to say and I think it is thoughtful and worthy of high respect.
But of all the real issues facing us, Woody Allen did or did not screw his daughter?
Between this and Global Warming we are doomed by our own stupidity.
Neo, you seem to have investigated this far more than I have, but you’re a psychologist, too.
I ask one question, which I think I know the answer to, and which seems pertinent, but you probably understand things better as a professional:
He became involved with, and then married, Soon Yi. They’ve been together for 20 years now, married for 16. That seems an unusually long time for a Hollywood marriage, if you think about it.
More critically, if Mia found these pictures of an 18yo Soon Yi, this suggests a serious degree of sexual interest in her… a woman in the prime of life.
Does this not seem particularly ATYPICAL of a child molester? I mean, we aren’t talking mere “statutory” rape of a 15yo or so, someone at least in the same ballpark as Soon Yi — we’re talking about an out-and-out prepubescent child. I am under the impression that a molester attracted to children prior to menarche is not likely to have any sexual interest in an adult woman.
I defer to your opinion on this matter.
Perhaps in Soon Yi he has found a more “open-minded” enabler to his proclivities. Mia Farrow was a peer, Soon Yi was a thrall. Still is, apparently.
As for Moses, be thankful you had a mom to thrash you from time to time and demand obedience. If that’s your worst lot in life, be damned grateful.
In Allen’s own words, he provides a “hide in plain sight” ploy for his sickness:
He goes on: “I’m open-minded about sex. I’m not above reproach; if anything, I’m below reproach. I mean, if I was caught in a love nest with 15 12-year-old girls tomorrow, people would think, yeah, I always knew that about him.” Allen pauses. “Nothing I could come up with would surprise anyone,” he ventures helplessly. “I admit to it all.”
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20066950,00.html
Understanding most of these people is not that difficult once you accept that evil does exist. So do enablers.
For the victims I pray. But Moses I can not understand. He more or less says: looking back at it all, my mothers is a horrible and often horrifying person,so it’s not a problem that my father is married to my sister. A family therapist? Woody Allen used the excuse: I was never a father figure to her. Actually saying: I was such a lousy father figure for the daughter of my significant other from the moment she was 8 till the moment she was 18 years old, I wasn’t a father figure at all. How can a family therapist accept such a person as someone to defend, how can a family therapist come to the conclusion that if one party is “wrong” the other party is suddenly an acceptable familymember? Where did Moses get his degree?
Don Carlos got it right.
It’s a sad commentary on our culture, or at least the culture our media has created for us, that actors and musicians who are guilty of reprehensible behavior, drug addiction, and open, frequent adultery are elevated to statesmen and role models.
Every time one of them OD’s on something, we’re reminded that even they are human, and when they fall from Olympus to OUR level, we should remember them as tragic figures who brought all of us joy and laughter through their selfless arts.
Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, etc, all deserving of a state funeral for their enormous contributions to America.
You do realize that this train wreck and us all fascinated and rubbernecking to get a peak at the gore is exactly the kind of “distraction” that enable things like Obama’ incipient tyranny to keep on chugging along while we are all mesmerized looking at this or anther essentially inconse
Sorry, hit the submit button instead of the preview button by mistake
…that enables things like Obama’s incipient tyranny to keep on chugging along and making progress while we are all mesmerized looking at this or that ultimately inconsequential train wreck, and are not fighting Obama & Co. tooth and nail and on every front.
Regarding Woody’s relationship with Soon Yi, he does have a history of seeing teens having previously dated Stacey Nelkin. She has nothing bad to say about him 35 years later.
Eh – I find it rather hard to care very much either way, save for feeling a bit sorry for the various kids. I never much cared for the nebbish-with-a-small slice of perv on the side – and Mia Farrow always struck me as a bit neurotic, as well as being a bit of a home-wrecker herself. She broke up the marriage between Dory and Andre Previn, after all.
Woody?
London Trader:
Technical name “ephebophilia.” There is no question that Allen’s main attraction appears to be to girls/women in their late teens.
Now that he’s 78 this may have cooled off quite a bit, which would make it easier for him to stay married to Soon Yi, who is now in her early 40s but still looks quite young (and certainly is quite young, compared to the geriatric Woody).
Wolla Dalbo,
Actually, I don’t see this as a distraction.
It deals with some very important issues: how to tell what’s true? How to evaluate a story that’s been filtered through the media and various spokespeople, and try to get to what really happened? As I wrote in the last sentence of my post, “It’s the intersection of law, child abuse, the press, and public opinion that are the hooks for me.” Those are big big issues.
from across the pond:
There are lots of family therapists with some very very strange ideas. Take it from me; I had to read some of their books.
Moses is not just a family therapist (Master’s from U Conn), he’s an adopted child in the Farrow family. According to Mia Farrow’s autobiography written some years ago (and this has not been contradicted by anyone, as far as I know), Allen pretty much ignored Moses during Moses’ growing up years. Initially at the time of the break Moses refused to see Allen. But my point is that, if Farrow’s report is correct, Moses really lacked a father at all.
And so one possibility for Moses’ current position is that his relation with Mia isn’t so great, and bonding with Woody was an opportunity to find a father at last, and a grateful one. I don’t think any of the other children in the family have taken Woody’s side, so this would give Moses a unique and especially-favored position with the only father he’s ever known, Woody Allen.
IGotBupkis:
You’ve stated what’s a common misconception.
Let me try to clarify: there are complete pedophiles, people attracted only to children and not to adults. No one has said that is true of Allen. His major sexual attraction appears to be (and of course I’m not speaking from personal experience here, just what I’ve read about his life) to girls/women in their late teens. But of course he also has been attracted to women closer to his own age as well.
So, where does abusing Dylan come in? That is a crime of opportunity and closeness: in other words, incest. Men who commit incest (or women who do so, for that matter) on children (rather than with adult relatives) are not necessarily predominantly pedophiles. In fact, they are usually parents, and therefore are usually married to other adults. Typically the incest (typically father-daughter) begins in childhood or certainly before the daughter is fully grown. But these men are not pedophiles otherwise; they are not luring random children and molesting them; that’s a whole different thing.
Incest towards a child—and if you look at the evidence in the Allen case it is very very typical—is a crime where the adult usually starts with acts that fall well short of what we’d think of as rape. Inappropriate touching, parading around naked, acts that are sort of borderline. Then it escalates, and escalates, and escalates, over time. That’s what appears to have happened with Allen and Dylan. The child is the parent’s little sex toy, as it were, under his control, and the adult thinks what he/she is doing to the child is just a game and doesn’t hurt the child at all.
Dylan’s allegations about Allen, by the way, almost certainly do not include penile/vaginal intercourse.
By the way, I’m not a psychologist! I have a master’s in marriage and family therapy, a different type of degree.
Hah. This all piqued my curiosity. Per Wiki, Allen has been under psychoanalysis for 37 of his 78 years. Thirty-seven.
If ever evidence was needed that psychoanalysts and their analyses were BS, I give you the case of Allen.
The sheer craziness of assaulting Dylan up in the attic in Mia’s Connecticut house on that August day in 1992 — because of the wildly hostile atmosphere there at that point — is what makes me believe Allen. Seems to leave me two choices: he’s telling the truth or he’s totally psycho city, and I don’t think he’s the latter.
Thanks for drawing out a distinction regarding different types of sex abuse, sex abuse initiated chiefly because of sexual desire (which generally focuses on a certain age-range) versus because of desire for control. One of the many things that has hung me up on this is that Dylan was 7 yo at the time of the alleged incident and Allen’s obsession seems to be with mid-late teenagers.
Another aspect of this mess — The New York Times Owes its Readers an Apology: Kristof’s column on Dylan Farrow and Allen was out of bounds.
Worth a read, but a howler alert: the author calls the NY Times, “a publication with a reputation for veracity that carries over to its columnists.”
Actually, a more accurate piece would be titled something like:
The New York Times Owes its Readers an Apology: It hasn’t published a single article where the Truth was its primary focus in four decades
😉
AMartel:
Another thing is that the one alleged incident of abuse that was more extreme, the one that was alleged to have occurred when Dylan was 7, was only the culmination of a long line of lesser (but still troubling) incidents that began when she was 2 or 3 that involved inappropriate behavior and touching. Some of this was witnessed by strangers. And Allen and Mia Farrow were in couples counseling around the incidents for quite some time prior to the incident at 7.
I have never seen any denial of that fact, and I recall it being mentioned in the court documents, as well as the testimony of the witnesses (who were housekeepers and babysitters, I believe). So there was a pattern of documented behavior on Allen’s part prior to the supposed incident in the attic. Many Allen defenders either are unaware of that history or ignore it. And that history occurred long prior to Mia’s learning of Allen’s dalliance with Soon Yi, so one can’t rightly call those accusations revenge for the affair, either.
Ann (@335pm) just always wants to think the best of people.
Ann:
Take a look at my post above this one. That incident (if it occurred) was the culmination of a long line of behavior that was slightly lesser in degree but along the exact same trajectory.
What’s more, consider that Allen has shown a somewhat “psycho city” lack of understanding of some very very basic things, such as why people might consider it thoughtless and especially hurtful to have an affair with the daughter of your girlfriend, to whom you stand in a quasi-stepfatherly relationship, and to leave nude hardcore porn photos of said daughter where the girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend, or soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend) can easily find them.
His denial is profound, as is his seeming narcissism.
As for the incident in the attic—which I believe happened, although I’m not 100% sure—understand the following possible reasons why he might have gone ahead and done it:
It occurred after the split-up was already happening, after his affair with Soon-Yi had been discovered by Mia. Dylan (who was his adopted daughter) had always only lived with Mia, never with him, and at 7 she probably was going to be continuing to live with Mia. In other words, he was about to lose his previous easy and frequent access to Dylan (see this timeline). In fact, he had probably already lost that access, and would henceforth only be seeing Dylan now and then. My guess is that part of his motivation for the escalation of abuse, if it occurred, would be the intensity of his feelings of loss and anger about the coming separation. He also apparently told her that her reward would be to go to Paris with him and be in a movie—would she like that? So there was a promise of more contact, away from Mia’s control.
Many abusers think the child likes it (sometimes the child actually does like the physical part, despite the feeling of wrongness and debasement, which is part of the reason the child is so confused by it). Allen, by my reading, is probably a narcissist, and therefore probably thought this was a way to bond Dylan ever tighter to him, and that Dylan would beg Mia to let him take her on further outings.
There are many possibilities here that would have made sense to him.
Don Carlos:
Most people cannot understand how abusers operate.
See my response to Ann, right above this comment.
Sorry; I meant Ann @ 3:16pm.
Good clarification, Neo. That should help.
As a teen, Woody was earning pretty big money from his written jokes, more than both parents combined. Might have been gas poured onto his young narcissistic fire.
So much curious stuff about all this. For instance, here’s Mia Farrow in a 2006 interview, talking about the Soon-Yi affair:
“Asked whether she has since forgiven Allen, she says: ‘In an instant. I can’t carry any of that. That’s too heavy for me. It really isn’t up to me to forgive or not forgive, is it?’ ”
Nothing was said in the interview about the assault accusations, but would Farrow have been so unhesitatingly and kindly forgiving if she truly believed Allen had assaulted Dylan? Just about impossible to me that she would have been able to do that.
Ann:
Of course. There are many MANY people—particularly Christians or new age-y spiritual people (of whom I can imagine Farrow might be one) who believe forgiveness is very very important for their own spiritual growth and/or mental health. So Mia probably has a desire to forgive. She also says, cryptically and somewhat contradictorily, “It really isn’t up to me to forgive or not forgive, is it?” So that indicates to me she’s very conflicted about it.
Note, also, the question was about Soon Yi (who was, after all, past the age of consent when it all happened, and to whom Woody is still married). She was never asked if she could forgive him for what he did to Dylan.
In addition, Mia Farrow did not dredge this issue up again. It was Dylan who did so.
I have no problem believing Mia could forgive him for Soon Yi but not for Dylan—or at least that she could think she had forgiven him for Soon Yi, but not for Dylan.
And none of that would negate the strength of the evidence that Allen is guilty vs. the evidence that he’s innocent. The pattern of behavior is very clear.
A lot of people seem to have a deep need to see Allen as innocent. Perhaps some of them are people who have known other people who were falsely accused? False accusations exist, but the fact situation here argues very strongly against it in this case.
Mia really comes across as a very weak reed, Ann, if you read the quote you cite: ” I can’t….That’s too heavy for me.” She is clueless, too. Who forgives? “It’s not up to me to forgive.”
She is an airhead, always has been. Narcissists love airheads. They are so-o easy.
Neo…
My alarm went off when Woody sued his own patron and producer — for more ‘pie’ — only to discover at trial that his films had been money losers for years on end.
For those still in New York City: Allen’s films have lost distribution. They simply have no audience. The industry had l o n g since black-balled him.
It goes as far back as “Interiors.”
That disaster cost the exhibitors a super fortune. Allen has NEVER been forgiven.
This means that his stuff only plays to the industry in LA and NY. I haven’t seen his stuff on a marquee in decades. I’d have to read industry rags to even know he’s still alive.
He’s got Polanski’s world view: he likes small, helpless girls.
Such an attitude would entirely explain his history.
BTW, women love a guy who can make them laugh. Woody had been on the top ten ‘men-I’d-have-sex-with’ lists for years on end.
No more. Now he’s just a beta-boy freak-show.
Somehow, an entire quadrant of his personality is missing. He may well be an id-ego addict: a narcissist in love with his reptilian persona.
“I have no problem believing Mia could forgive him for Soon Yi but not for Dylan–or at least that she could think she had forgiven him for Soon Yi, but not for Dylan. ”
Okay, color me un-evolved, but I could not do that. Calls for a mental compartmentalization I’m not capable of. The thought of that molestation would be uppermost in my mind forever, and so would preclude my forgiving him for anything.
Mia Farrow did not dredge this issue up again. It was Dylan who did so.
Actually, Mia did start all this up again with the second interview she did with Maureen Orth in last November’s Vanity Fair, the one where she dropped the Sinatra tidbit. Orth then carried the ball forward and spoke with Dylan and some of the other children.
Ann:
The Sinatra thing is the only tidbit that got any traction from that Mia Farrow interview. I quickly read the article you linked, and it’s a long interview but Mia Farrow does not discuss the Dylan abuse in it or even mention it. She discusses a whole bunch of other things in her life and history, but not that.
All of the information about the Dylan abuse case in the article comes from the author herself and from the author’s interview with Dylan. How is this attributable to Mia? It is consistent with what I wrote earlier, which is that Mia has mostly stayed out of this current flap, and it is Dylan taking the lead.
The current discussion of the Dylan abuse allegations only started with Dylan Farrow’s letter published by Kristof in the Times. Also, a trifle earlier, Ronan Farrow had tweeted something about the allegations, after Allen got a Golden Globe award for lifetime achievement. That’s it.
Also, if you actually read that entire article you linked, and the things Dylan says, it only bolsters the case for Allen’s guilt. Dylan is a very credible witness and what she describes is in line with that pattern I discussed earlier, of escalating inappropriate behavior escalating to abuse.
blert:
I love a man who can make me laugh. Just about everyone I’ve ever loved has been very funny (intentionally funny, that is). But not Woody Allen! I have always found him repulsive. He hasn’t been funny since Annie Hall, either. But ugh, I’ve never understood his attraction at all. Not at all. Long before the Soon Yi thing or the allegations about Dylan.
The film “Manhattan” really really turned me off to him (not that I was ever turned on by him). The romance with the high school student played by Mariel Hemingway was icky and the acting did not have the ring of truth to me. Little did I know that life would imitate art.
Neo…
His mask of perversion was slipping.
Right then and there.
Also, get his weird split with Meryl Streep’s character… his ex!
Displacement is writ all over that script.
To include his financial blues.
“The cash… It’s not flowing!”
I agree with Neo. I believe Dylan.
And just because Soon Yi was 17 or 18 when the photographs were taken, does not mean that she was not a lot younger when he started molesting her. He had to build up to that. And he and Soon Yi adopted two little girls. Yikes!
He was grooming Dylan to be next. Too many witnesses to his predator type behavior to Dylan.
He is a pathetic, non virile man and probably only feels big with a small girl.
Dorothy Rabinowitz at the WSJ weighs in today. She could take some lessons from Neo.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304104504579372971308988130?mod=djemMER_h
Don Carlos:
Thanks for that article. Rabinowitz uses so many fallacious arguments in it that I’m surprised it was published. But what people don’t know about child abuse—and child abuse investigations—could fill a book (several).
The day care investigations of the 80s were deeply flawed. The Amirault case was terrible. But it has nothing to do with the Allen case, which was different in almost every respect. And of course the denial of the guilty sounds very much like the denials of the innocent—duh! How many ways are there to say “I’m innocent”? The resemblance of denials is meaningless.
Even more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2557270/Mia-Farrows-whistleblower-friend-speaks-reveals-Woody-Allens-obsession-strange-intensity-daughter.html
BTW, there’s a pic there of Woody’s latest acquisitions and thralls, or as it’s known in Hollywood’s terms, “adoption.”
Where is William Booth when we need him?
Get rid of Hollywood tax cuts.
Why are you paying Hollywood and Democrats to wage a war on women? That’s the question we need to ask people up front.