Woody Allen's daughter details how she was sexually abused by him in the NYT

[Coco Belle]

^ I've read that before. This bit:

A three-month investigation ended with the charges deemed unfounded by the Yale-New Haven team. The Connecticut prosecutor said* he thought there was probable cause to believe Allen molested Dylan, but he declined to press charges.

...is the crux of it IMO.

My previous post, I linked to the Connecticut Magazine article that mentioned the Yale-New Haven team and their conclusions. From the article:

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.
...
Leventhal himself later admitted, in sworn testimony in the custody case, that he made several mistakes during the course of the investigation. One of those was his false characterization of Dylan’s active imagination as a thought disorder.
...
“This guy Leventhal never left his office, never talked to the child, but he gave a wonderful account and said, ‘I exonerate you, Woody,’” D’Amico says. “Boy, I wouldn’t want to carry that flag around—‘Leventhal says I’m OK.’”

... Vanity Fair later used some of the findings in the Connecticut Post article to bolster what some believe to be a "pro-Mia" stance. FWIW, I myself am not pro-Mia. I think her support of another horrendous child rapist makes her a pretty nasty human being.

The prosecutor did, indeed, believe that there was probable cause to prosecute Allen. This CT Post article goes into his side of things a little more.

Although the Yale-New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic decided that Dylan hadn't been molested, State Police reached a different conclusion, and on Sept. 24, 1993, Maco called a news conference to announce that although there was probable cause to arrest Allen, he would not press charges because of the fragility of the "child victim."

The prosecutor got into a lot of trouble for referring to Dylan as a "victim", not a "complainant". From what I've read, he completely believed Dylan's accusations.

Allen is entitled to spin things in his direction, and that is fine. But there is another spin too. Somewhere between the two lies the truth. With Allen's history, I'm afraid I don't take his spin at face value -- not at all.

 

[guccimamma]

barbara walter's brain is failing her. 3-5 years from now she'll think she is married to woody allen.

 

[Jayne1]

I'm not arguing with you guys, although it sounds like it. I'm just seeing another side to things…

Perhaps Barbara Walters sees it as Woody's relationship with Mia was over and he gets to know her adopted daughter, at the request of Mia. He falls in love and marries the girl and they have children of their own and have stayed together for over 20 years.

He didn't molest her and move on. He made a life with her. He loved her and they are committed, something he never did with Mia.

I think that is what Walters was saying.

The story would be so much better if he molested Soon Ye and moved on to another 17 year old… but that's not what happened. They are in a solid 20 plus year relationship.

 

[pursegrl12]

I'm not arguing with you guys, although it sounds like it. I'm just seeing another side to things…

Perhaps Barbara Walters sees it as Woody's relationship with Mia was over and he gets to know her adopted daughter, at the request of Mia. He falls in love and marries the girl and they have children of their own and have stayed together for over 20 years.

He didn't molest her and move on. He made a life with her. He loved her and they are committed, something he never did with Mia.

I think that is what Walters was saying.

The story would be so much better if he molested Soon Ye and moved on to another 17 year old… but that's not what happened.

 

[Jayne1]

What I meant was, that's how people are treating his relationship with SoonYe -- yet it's not reality. They're just reacting as if it was.

 

[LADC_chick]

This is a good article, but I'm not sure some will want to read it. If you do, this is how I remember it from 20 plus years ago…



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...allen-planted-article-1.1601295#ixzz2sN4wcLzD

This quote from the article--"The Connecticut prosecutor said he thought there was probable cause to believe Allen molested Dylan, but he declined to press charges."--stands out to me. I found this People article about the prosecutor, Frank Maco.


Why Woody Allen Wasn't Prosecuted after Abuse Allegations by Daughter
By SAMANTHA MILLER
02/02/2014 at 09:50 AM EST
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It had been, she says, a private ordeal.

"For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like," Dylan Farrow writes to the New York Times, detailing for the first time the abuse she says she endured at the hands of her adoptive father Woody Allen. Finally, she writes, when she was 7 years old, "I couldn't keep the secret any more. ... I asked my mother if her dad did to her what Woody Allen did to me."

Soon, Dylan's allegations went public – very public. They became a battleground in her mother Mia Farrow's bitter custody war with Allen. And Connecticut prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against Allen.

But in a controversial move, state's attorney Frank S. Maco announced in 1993 that while he found "probable cause" to prosecute Allen, he was dropping the case because Dylan was too "fragile" to deal with a trial. Mia agreed with the decision, he said.

Dylan was "traumatized to the extent that I did not have a confident witness to testify in any court setting, whether that's a closed courtroom or an open courtroom," Maco recalled to PEOPLE last fall after Dylan spoke out to Vanity Fair about the alleged molestation.

A Manhattan judge had already awarded Mia full custody of adopted children Dylan, Moses and biological son Satchel (who later changed his name to Ronan), and barred Allen from any visitation with Dylan in the custody case, which had exploded after Allen's affair with Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi, then about 20, was revealed.

Allen, who vehemently denied the charges, lambasted Maco for saying that there was "probable cause," saying he had no opportunity to defend himself. His complaints led to disciplinary charges against Maco, which were eventually dropped.

Maco stands by his decision. Dylan's recent openness "does not change anything about my feelings as to the correctness of my words and actions back in '92 and '93," he said last fall. "I had to first and foremost consider the child."

As part of the case, a team of investigators at Yale-New Haven Hospital had studied Dylan's accusations and concluded that no sexual abuse had taken place and described Dylan as having "difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality."

But the custody judge had termed Allen's conduct with Dylan "grossly inappropriate," and Maco said he saw no evidence that Mia was manipulating Dylan.

Maco doesn't see Dylan's detailed accounts as vindication of his suspicions – or as criticism that he didn't pursue the case. "I take it as ... it's just a feeling of compassion, as any other parent would have," he said, "about what she is speaking about and reliving and telling."

• With reporting by K.C. Baker

 

[Coco Belle]

I'm not arguing with you guys, although it sounds like it. I'm just seeing another side to things…

Perhaps Barbara Walters sees it as Woody's relationship with Mia was over and he gets to know her adopted daughter, at the request of Mia. He falls in love and marries the girl and they have children of their own and have stayed together for over 20 years.

He didn't molest her and move on. He made a life with her. He loved her and they are committed, something he never did with Mia.

I think that is what Walters was saying.

The story would be so much better if he molested Soon Ye and moved on to another 17 year old… but that's not what happened. They are in a solid 20 plus year relationship.

See, I think he wanted access to the Farrow brood because it meant a steady stream of vulnerable children. Farrow is a weirdo, with an abusive past; she didn't maintain appropriate boundaries between her children and this man. Predatory men actively seek out women like Farrow. The fact that she a baby-collector (no matter what her personal motivations were for being such) was even better. He chose her for a reason.

I think he groomed Soon-Yi very deliberately, and then abused her, and entered into a relationship with her where the power balance was hopelessly skewed in his favour. Soon-Yi was adopted as an older child... again, he looked for the one with the biggest vulnerabilities, who would be easiest to manipulate.

And I think he married her because he wanted access to more children -- he had burned the Farrow bridges, very publicly, so how else was he going to keep the supply going if not through a new, compliant wife?

Interesting that he adopted only girls with Soon-Yi. And again... adopted. Again. A little loophole to help make any future abuse accusations a little more palatable...

Also, we have no way of knowing he hasn't moved on to multiple 17-year-olds, or indeed 7-year-olds. He's kept up just enough of a veneer of legality to still retain defenders. And his wife has been groomed since her childhood to listen to him and not to stray. If he is a paedophile, he's got his bum in the butter, for sure.

 

[pursegrl12]

What I meant was, that's how people are treating his relationship with SoonYe -- yet it's not reality. They're just reacting as if it was.

the reality is is that he married his freaking adopted daughter. there is no way to spin it to make it sound any less disgusting. just b/c they've been together for 20 years doesn't make it any better. again, IMO, he groomed her into that relationship.

 

[ShoreGrl]

I'm not arguing with you guys, although it sounds like it. I'm just seeing another side to things…

Perhaps Barbara Walters sees it as Woody's relationship with Mia was over and he gets to know her adopted daughter, at the request of Mia. He falls in love and marries the girl and they have children of their own and have stayed together for over 20 years.

He didn't molest her and move on. He made a life with her. He loved her and they are committed, something he never did with Mia.

I think that is what Walters was saying.

The story would be so much better if he molested Soon Ye and moved on to another 17 year old… but that's not what happened. They are in a solid 20 plus year relationship.

But that does not make it ok. He still preyed on her and her vulnerabilities. Just because he didn't jump right to another underage victim doesn't make him less of a pedophile.

 

[ShoreGrl]

See, I think he wanted access to the Farrow brood because it meant a steady stream of vulnerable children. Farrow is a weirdo, with an abusive past; she didn't maintain appropriate boundaries between her children and this man. Predatory men actively seek out women like Farrow. The fact that she a baby-collector (no matter what her personal motivations were for being such) was even better. He chose her for a reason.

I think he groomed Soon-Yi very deliberately, and then abused her, and entered into a relationship with her where the power balance was hopelessly skewed in his favour. Soon-Yi was adopted as an older child... again, he looked for the one with the biggest vulnerabilities, who would be easiest to manipulate.

And I think he married her because he wanted access to more children -- he had burned the Farrow bridges, very publicly, so how else was he going to keep the supply going if not through a new, compliant wife?

Interesting that he adopted only girls with Soon-Yi. And again... adopted. Again. A little loophole to help make any future abuse accusations a little more palatable...

Also, we have no way of knowing he hasn't moved on to multiple 17-year-olds, or indeed 7-year-olds. He's kept up just enough of a veneer of legality to still retain defenders. And his wife has been groomed since her childhood to listen to him and not to stray. If he is a paedophile, he's got his bum in the butter, for sure.

Absolutely. His actions were well planned and thought out.

 

[Swanky]

I wonder if the people that see his side would be totally cool if they and their DH adopted a child and she lived with them as a child and sibling to the others then he later married her ???

 

[nycmom]

the reality is is that he married his freaking adopted daughter. there is no way to spin it to make it sound any less disgusting. just b/c they've been together for 20 years doesn't make it any better. again, IMO, he groomed her into that relationship.

The story is upsetting enough on it's own merits, let's try to stick with facts...Soon Yi was not his adopted daughter, she was the daughter of his girlfriend. He's clearly an immoral narcissist, and there is no doubt his actions absolutely destroyed this family, but the length and strength of his marriage are why people question pedophilia.

But that does not make it ok. He still preyed on her and her vulnerabilities. Just because he didn't jump right to another underage victim doesn't make him less of a pedophile.

Of course it wasn't okay. But if they became involved when they claim they did he would not be a pedophile. And if he was, as Coco Belle said, it is extremely likely there would be more victims.

 

[LeeLooDallasMP]

I wonder if the people that see his side would be totally cool if they and their DH adopted a child and she lived with them as a child and sibling to the others then he later married her ???

I know right? People trying to rationalize his actions because it hasn't happened to them, and Barbara Walters level of ignorance in her comments and she has an adopted daughter herself I mean....

 

[Mimi2000]

I'm not arguing with you guys, although it sounds like it. I'm just seeing another side to things…

Perhaps Barbara Walters sees it as Woody's relationship with Mia was over and he gets to know her adopted daughter, at the request of Mia. He falls in love and marries the girl and they have children of their own and have stayed together for over 20 years.

He didn't molest her and move on. He made a life with her. He loved her and they are committed, something he never did with Mia.

I think that is what Walters was saying.

The story would be so much better if he molested Soon Ye and moved on to another 17 year old… but that's not what happened. They are in a solid 20 plus year relationship.

From what I can remember, Allen took naked photos of Soon Yi. That the whole thing with her started when she was only 17.

 

[guccimamma]

I wonder if the people that see his side would be totally cool if they and their DH adopted a child and she lived with them as a child and sibling to the others then he later married her ???

i bet none of those supporters would let their 7 year old daughter sit next to him at dinner.