Woody Allen's daughter: my father molested me when I was a child.

Really messed up. Especially because "woody" is a tag in this thread.

 

Annie Hall, no question.

 

This isn't the Asian daughter is it?

 

Hollywood has already shown that they don't care about stuff like this.

 

Wasn't this already known? Or am I mistaken?

 

Who does this surprise?

Rocket River

 

no, you're not mistaken.

Woody Allen's (alleged) Son, when Allen received a lifetime achievement award at the globes, was all over Twitter bashing Allen for molesting his sister.

 

What the hell, did this just come out? What a sick MFer

 

yeah, like 20 years ago. Mia Farrow accused him in a custody battle. The judge decided not to prosecute because Dylan was too young to be put into a trial. She, apparently, is just now writing about it.

 

Does the statute of limitations apply to minors who are sexually abused?

 

Well he did marry his "stepdaughter", Soon-Yi. So this is not surprising. Even Mia Farrow was saying in their custody case that Woody molested Dylan but nobody listened then.

But that Blue Jasmine was a hell of a movie, right?

 

I knew about this story when it happened, and this is from the perspective of the person who filmed the documentary on him (caution-long read):

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/27/the-woody-allen-allegations-not-so-fast.html

Now, on to the more delicate issue of Mia’s accusations during the custody case that Woody sexually abused Dylan/Malone.

A brief but chilling synopsis of the accusation is as follows: On August 4, 1992, almost four months after the revelation about Woody and Soon-Yi’s relationship understandably ignited a firestorm within the Farrow household, Woody was visiting Frog Hollow, the Farrow country home in Bridgewater, Connecticut, where Mia and several of her kids were staying. During an unsupervised moment, Woody allegedly took Dylan into the attic and, shall we say, “touched her inappropriately.” Later in the day, it was alleged that the child was wearing her sundress, but that her underpants were missing. The following day, Mia’s daughter allegedly told her mother what had happened, and Mia put the child’s recounting of the story on videotape as evidence.

Did this event actually occur? If we’re inclined to give it a second thought, we can each believe what we want, but none of us know. Why does the adult Malone say it happened? Because she obviously believes it did, so good for her for speaking out about it in Vanity Fair. Her brother Ronan believes it happened, so good for him for sticking up for his sister in 140 characters or less. They’ve both grown up in a household where this scenario has been accepted as indisputable fact, so why shouldn’t they believe it?

I know I’m treading a delicate path here, and opening myself up to accusations of “blaming the victim.” However, I’m merely floating scenarios to consider, and you can think what you will. But if Mia’s account is true, it means that in the middle of custody and support negotiations, during which Woody needed to be on his best behavior, in a house belonging to his furious ex-girlfriend, and filled with people seething mad at him, Woody, who is a well-known claustrophobic, decided this would be the ideal time and place to take his daughter into an attic and molest her, quickly, before a house full of children and nannies noticed they were both missing.

Even people who give Woody the benefit of the doubt and defend him on the internet are often confused on a few points. Some mistakenly say that the court found him “not guilty” of the molestation charges. The fact is there was never such a ruling because he was never charged with a crime, since investigative authorities never found credible evidence to support Mia’s (and Dylan’s) claim.

[Woody] was never charged with a crime, since investigative authorities never found credible evidence to support Mia’s (and Dylan’s) claim.

Let’s back up a bit: Mia’s allegations of molestation automatically triggered a criminal investigation by the Connecticut State Police, who brought in an investigative team from the Yale-New Haven Hospital, whose six-month long inquiry (which included medical examinations) concluded that Dylan had not been molested. I’ve since read a recurring canard that Woody “chose” the investigative team. Yet nobody has suggested how or why Mia’s team would ever outsource the investigation to a team “chosen” by Woody. Others have said that the investigators talked to psychiatrists “on Allen’s payroll” before letting him off the hook. The only way I can explain this is that the investigators, naturally, would have spoken with Woody’s shrinks before giving him a clean bill of health. So technically, yeah, Woody’s shrinks would have been paid a lot of money by Woody over the years. (Let’s even call it an annuity.) The same would be true of his dentist, his eye doctor, and his internist.

As for the evidentiary videotape of young Dylan’s claims, it’s been noted that there were several starts and stops in the recording, essentially creating in-camera “edits” to the young girl’s commentary. This raises questions as to what was happening when the tape wasn’t running. Was Mia “coaching” her daughter off-camera, as suggested by the investigators? Mia says no—she merely turned the camera on whenever Dylan starting talking about what Daddy did. Maybe we should take Mia at her word on this. Since I wasn’t there, I think it’s good policy not to presume what took place.

The videotape and the medical exams weren’t the only problems Mia faced in bringing abuse charges against her former lover. There were problems with inconsistencies in her daughter’s off-camera narrative as well. A New York Times article dated March 26, 1993, quotes from Mia’s own testimony, during which she recalled taking the child to a doctor on the same day as the alleged incident. Farrow recalled, “I think (Dylan) said (Allen) touched her, but when asked where, she just looked around and went like this,” at which point Mia patted her shoulders. Farrow recalls she took Dylan to another doctor, four days later. On the stand, Allen’s attorney asked Mia about the second doctor’s findings: “There was no evidence of injury to the anal or vaginal area, is that correct?” Farrow answered, “Yes.”

In the midst of the proceedings, on February 2, 1993, a revealing article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, headlined: “Nanny Casts Doubt on Farrow Charges,” in which former nanny Monica Thompson (whose salary was paid by Allen, since three of the brood were also his) swore in a deposition to Allen’s attorneys that she was pressured by Farrow to support the molestation charges, and the pressure led her to resign her position. Thompson had this to say about the videotape: ““I know that the tape was made over the course of at least two and perhaps three days. I recall Ms. Farrow saying to Dylan at that time, ‘Dylan, what did daddy do… and what did he do next?’ Dylan appeared not to be interested, and Ms. Farrow would stop taping for a while and then continue.”

Thompson further revealed a conversation she had with Kristie Groteke, another nanny. “She told me that she felt guilty allowing Ms. Farrow to say those things about Mr. Allen. (Groteke) said the day Mr. Allen spent with the kids, she did not have Dylan out of her sight for longer than five minutes. She did not remember Dylan being without her underwear.”

On April 20, 1993, a sworn statement was entered into evidence by Dr. John M. Leventhal, who headed the Yale-New Haven Hospital investigative team looking into the abuse charges. An article from the New York Times dated May 4, 1993, includes some interesting excerpts of their findings. As to why the team felt the charges didn’t hold water, Leventhal states: “We had two hypotheses: one, that these were statements made by an emotionally disturbed child and then became fixed in her mind. And the other hypothesis was that she was coached or influenced by her mother. We did not come to a firm conclusion. We think that it was probably a combination.”

Leventhal further swears Dylan’s statements at the hospital contradicted each other as well as the story she told on the videotape. “Those were not minor inconsistencies. She told us initially that she hadn’t been touched in the vaginal area, and she then told us that she had, then she told us that she hadn’t.” He also said the child’s accounts had “a rehearsed quality.” At one point, she told him, “I like to cheat on my stories.” The sworn statement further concludes: “Even before the claim of abuse was made last August, 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… It’s quite possible —as a matter of fact, we think it’s medically probable—that (Dylan) stuck to that story over time because of the intense relationship she had with her mother.” Leventhal further notes 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.

Much is made by Mia’s supporters over the fact that the investigative team destroyed their collective notes prior to their submission of the report. Also, the three doctors who made up the team did not testify in court, other than through the sworn deposition of team leader Leventhal. I have no idea if this is common practice or highly unusual. I won’t wager a guess as to what was behind the destruction of the notes any more than I’ll claim to know why Mia stopped and started her video camera while filming her daughter’s recollections over a few days, or who was alleged to have leaked the tape of Dylan to others, or why Mia wouldn't take a lie detector test. (Woody took one and passed.) In any event, destruction of the notes may have been part of the reason that, despite the very conclusive position taken by the investigators that Dylan was not abused, presiding Judge Elliot Wilk found their report “inconclusive.”

Judge Wilk would ultimately grant Mia custody of Satchel and Dylan. 15-year-old Moses chose not to see Woody, which was his right. It was a hard-won victory for Mia who returned home with eight of her nine children intact. She would go on to adopt six more, including Thaddeus Wilk Farrow, named in honor of the Honorable Judge Wilk.

Woody was granted supervised visitation of Satchel, but his request for immediate visitation with Dylan was denied until the young girl underwent a period of therapy, after which a further review of visitation would be considered. As a legal matter, the investigation of possible criminal abuse would continue.

Almost four months after Wilk’s decision, the Connecticut authorities abandoned the criminal investigation, resulting in an unusual statement from Litchfield, Connecticut County Prosecutor Frank Maco, who dismissed the abuse charges against Woody, but still maintained that he had “probable cause” to believe Dylan. In the minds of many, the decision would leave Woody in a kind of moral limbo. Legally, he was cleared of everything—except a dark cloud of suspicion. Woody was furious, and called a press conference in which he referred to the state’s attorney office as “cowardly, dishonest and irresponsible. Even today, as they squirm, lie, sweat, and tap-dance, pathetically trying to save face and justify their moral squalor… there was no evidence against me. There is none now. I promise you, smear as they may, they will always claim to have evidence; but notice that somehow they will manage to find reasons why they can’t quite show it to you.”

Woody’s ad-hoc press conference made for good television and was widely covered in the press. Less widely disseminated was a news item that appeared in the New York Times five months later (Feb. 24, 1994), which reported that a disciplinary panel found the actions of County Prosecutor Frank Maco (the “probable cause” guy) were cause for “grave concern” and may have prejudiced the case. It winds up that Maco sent his “probable cause” statement to the Surrogate’s Court judge in Manhattan who was still deciding on Allen’s adoption status of Dylan and Moses, which Mia was trying to annul. The panel wrote, “In most circumstances, [Maco’s comments] would have violated the prosecutor’s obligation to the accused. [His actions were] inappropriate, unsolicited, and potentially prejudicial.” The article states that the agency could have voted sanctions against Maco ranging from censure to disbarment. Though the decision was quite damning, Maco got what amounted to a slap on the wrist. Two years later, the reprimand was overturned, but Mia was unsuccessful in her bid to annul the adoptions. Legally, Woody remains the adoptive father of Dylan and Moses.

Moses Farrow, now 36, and an accomplished photographer, has been estranged from Mia for several years. During a recent conversation, he spoke of “finally seeing the reality” of Frog Hollow and used the term “brainwashing” without hesitation. He recently reestablished contact with Allen and is currently enjoying a renewed relationship with him and Soon-Yi.

 

Never understood woody Allen movies.

 

I thought I was the only one!

 

Previously no, but most states are changing this, to up to 50 yr birthdays of victim. I don't know if there's a grandfather clause, though -- no pun intended.

 

Don't care much about the person nor his movies.

MOAR SUPER HEROES!

 

There's too much contradictory evidence, statements, etc. that I don't think it's fair to pass judgment unless they opened up the case again. I would be curious to know from some of our conservative posters, who as conservatives believe fully in the Rule of Law, whether they feel Allen is guilty or not. Since the OP simply posted the article, he is not saying one way or the other. So I can't accuse him of accusing Allen of anything. But I'd still be curious as to know the OP of the OP.

In a broader sense, that's why that except for in the most obvious of circumstances, in which an artist has admitted to a crime or there is concrete evidence, it's best to separate the art from the artist. Led Zeppelin were known for having underage groupies, Tennessee Williams apparently had affairs with young boys, and Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13 year-old cousin. Not to mention all the things we don't even know about. Separate the art from the artist in almost every case.

I agree on Roman Polanski- he admitted to it and as such deserves to be in jail. But Allen has denied this vehemently and passed a lie detector test on it- if they reopen it and he is found guilty or he admits to it, I'd be the first to stop watching his films even though he's one of my favorite writers/directors. But this needs to be decided by the courts or otherwise I am going to follow the premise of innocent until proven guilty.

 

woody allen is one weird mofo.

you can see it when watching his films