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

[Swanky]

Rosie O'Donnell returns to 'The View' and things get awkward

Rosie O'Donnell returned to her old stamping grounds on "The View" on Friday and before her hour was up, the outspoken former moderator got into an awkward moment with Barbara Walters. O'Donnell, who was back on the show for the first time since 2007, was asked near the end of the program if she missed the platform of a daily TV show. O'Donnell said she did miss it, but added that she didn't miss the backlash if she said something people disagreed with or weren't ready to hear, "Your Twitter feed blows up."
O'Donnell added, "People can be very mean online."

"I went through that just this week," Walters added. Earlier in the week she had voiced her support for director Woody Allen, who has been the basis of much speculation after Dylan Farrow, the daughter he adopted with former partner Mia Farrow, accused him publicly of molesting her when she was 7 years old.
O'Donnell knew exactly which moment she was referring to.
"With the Woody thing?" O'Donnell said. "I saw it."
She added, "It's hard. Especially for people who had been abused, it's very hard to hear somebody who has come out, which takes such courage, and admit the abuse, and then be disbelieved."

"OK, I don't want to go through the whole argument again," Walters said, visibly annoyed.
"We can edit that right out," O'Donnell suggested. "No one will know."
"No, we don't edit," Walters said. "We leave it in. That's why the show is called 'The View.' We're not afraid. That's what we do."
"Whatever she says, she knows I love you," Walters said to close the show, patting O'Donnell's arm.
One of the first topics mentioned was the Dylan Farrow op-ed in the New York Times.
O'Donnell was forthright in her support of Farrow, telling the panel, "I totally believe her."
"I'm very close friends with Mia Farrow... She's the best mother I've ever seen," O'Donnell added.


http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...wkward-20140207,0,3215620.story#ixzz2sgHwMtSi

 

[Bag*Snob]

Gotta love Rosie - always says what is on her mind.

 

[TheCapodecina]

Not sure where I stand on this one. I'll wait.

 

[gazoo]

Go Rosie.

 

[missjay7]

I hadn't seen this posted yet:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts

Very interesting.

 

[bobbyjean]

I wish I could be the prosecutor in this case.

 

[Wentworth-Roth]

I have been reading lots of threads and articles about this particular issue and I am mostly disgusted by the comments I've had the displeasure to read so far (on the internet in general not tPF in particular). I do not know whom or what to believe, but I adhere to the stance innocent until proven guilty (by the US judicial system).
To read all the (unsubstantiated) filth that is thrown against Woody Allen makes me question the decency and intelligence of a substantial part of the internet population. Intelligent and respectable people aught to comment on such a serious issue with restraint and objectiveness, not with regurgitated blanket statements or emotional one-liners.

 

[LeeLooDallasMP]

You say you don't know what to believe and yet you say innocent until proven guilty, add to that you throw in the "Unsubstantiated filth thrown against Woody Allen" when it clearly indicates your bias and you come here to insult people intelligence with your logic? The irony LOL!

 

[FreeSpirit71]

I have been reading lots of threads and articles about this particular issue and I am mostly disgusted by the comments I've had the displeasure to read so far (on the internet in general not tPF in particular). I do not know whom or what to believe, but I adhere to the stance innocent until proven guilty (by the US judicial system).
To read all the (unsubstantiated) filth that is thrown against Woody Allen makes me question the decency and intelligence of a substantial part of the internet population. Intelligent and respectable people aught to comment on such a serious issue with restraint and objectiveness, not with regurgitated blanket statements or emotional one-liners.

Goodness..did you even READ what Swanky posted. *smh*

Yeah..Woody Allen is a real stand up guy..he's the real victim in this scenario. Seriously? Spare me.

 

[nycmom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/woody-allen-speaks-out.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1

Woody Allen Speaks Out

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.

Continued...

 

[nycmom]

...continued

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.)

 

[Wentworth-Roth]

I am neither biased nor do I feel superior to anyone.
I am simply saying I am bothered by people who write Woody Allen deserves to die, should rot in hell, is a disgusting human being and so on. To this day this man is considered innocent and should be treated with the same respect we would like to be treated ourselves with. My point was that people should look at this story without allowing emotions or preconceived notions clouding their judgement.
Regarding the question if I had read what another member has posted, my reply is that for every article and argument there is contradicting article and a counterargument.

 

[Sasha2012]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ther-molesting-turns-fury-Cate-Blanchett.html

Tinsel Town torn apart over 'child abuser' Woody Allen as daughter who accused director father of molesting her turns her fury on Cate Blanchett

With a plot revolving around a warring family, dark goings-on in the attic of a family house and the simmering fury of a scorned lover, it’s the sort of old-fashioned melodrama that rarely gets a look-in at the Oscars nowadays. But this time it will.

In three weeks’ time, the Academy Awards will take place with one burning question at the front of everyone’s minds: who is going to emerge victorious on the night? Mia Farrow or Woody Allen?

For the real drama won’t be anything showing on the big screen, but the fate of the clutch of award nominations for Allen’s latest comedy, Blue Jasmine — hailed as his best film for more than 20 years.

Will the director win the fifth Oscar of his career for screenwriting? Might he, in a show of defiance, break the habit of a lifetime and actually turn up to accept it? Will the film net Cate Blanchett her first Best Actress gong? And if she does win, what will she say?

We must also watch out for the other players in this affair, who were ‘named and shamed’ in a jaw-dropping open letter last week written by Allen’s adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow. The 28-year-old wrote graphically of how Allen sexually abused her when she was just seven, lying on an attic floor in front of a toy train set.

But Dylan also challenged Hollywood stars to justify their decision to work with the man she first accused more than 20 years ago. Most of them have yet to respond, so the likes of Scarlett Johansson and Emma Stone may have weightier questions to answer on the red carpet than who designed their frock.

Supremely cynical Hollywood doesn’t really go in for philosophical dilemmas, but it has one to wrestle with this year. Will the fact that one of its most revered icons has been accused of the most unimaginably vile behaviour result in his films being shunned at the awards?

If the Oscars judges do feel the scandal means that Blue Jasmine should be passed over, then revenge will be sweet for Allen’s former long-time lover, Mia Farrow.

No one seriously denies that the actress and activist wishes ill to the man who left her for her own adopted daughter. Allen later married Soon-Yi, even though she was 36 years younger than him.

Farrow, the star of Rosemary’s Baby and The Great Gatsby (and 12 of Allen’s 13 films between 1980 and 1992), was humiliated and her family wrecked as her eight other children at the time suddenly discovered one of their sisters had effectively become their stepmother.

So has the lingering anger felt by Farrow and some of her children coloured their judgment, not to mention their memory of what exactly Woody Allen did more than 20 years ago?
U.S. radio phone-ins and internet messageboards were jammed this week with people condemning Allen and insisting that Dylan’s account should not be doubted.

But friends of Allen rallied to his tattered banner. They point out that the molestation allegations first emerged during Allen and Farrow’s child custody battle in 1993, and were investigated but not pursued.

Why, they ask, are the claims being resurrected now if not to scotch Allen’s Oscars chances?

Meanwhile, Farrow has found herself almost as much on trial as Allen, accused of manipulating her daughter into making allegations she knows are false.

Dylan’s brother, Moses, who is estranged from the rest of the family, insisted this week that Allen was innocent — and that if anyone was guilty of abuse in their family it was Farrow. ‘My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister,’ said Moses, now a 36-year-old family therapist.

‘I don’t know if my sister really believes she was molested or if she is trying to please her mother. Pleasing my mother was a very powerful motivation because to be on her wrong side was horrible.’

His intervention prompted a furious outburst from Dylan, who said her brother was now ‘dead to her’.

In an interview with People magazine published yesterday, Dylan — now married and working as a writer in Florida — dismissed claims she was being manipulated by her mother but confirmed she acted after Allen was honoured at the Golden Globes last month.

‘It took all of my strength and all of my emotional fortitude to do what I did this week in the hope that it would put the truth out there,’ she said, adding in a jibe probably aimed at Allen: ‘That is my only ammunition. I don’t have money or publicists or limos or fancy apartments in Manhattan.’

And what exactly does she remember? Her recall appears to be vivid as she describes the day one August when Allen led her by the hand into the attic of Farrow’s summer home in Connecticut.

‘He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me,’ she wrote in her account posted on the New York Times website by one of its foremost columnists, Nicholas Kristof.

‘He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies.’ Dylan — who these days calls herself Malone — recalled ‘staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it travelled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.’

Many must have found it equally difficult to read her excoriating letter, in which she admitted the acclaim for Allen in the intervening years had only intensified her pain.

She said her ordeal in the attic was the culmination of Allen’s escalating attempts to push the boundaries of their relationship — sticking his thumb in her mouth, urging her to get into bed with him when he was in his underwear and placing his head in her naked lap.
She singled out the Hollywood stars who have worked with Allen despite knowing of her claims. ‘What if it had been your child?’ she asked of Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Emma Stone and Scarlett Johansson. And to Allen’s former girlfriend and film muse, she was even more pointed. ‘You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?’

Allen, she said, is a ‘living testament to the way our society fails the survivors of sexual assault and abuse’. The director, who has always denied any wrongdoing, rejected Dylan’s accusations. His lawyer accused Mia Farrow of using her daughter as a pawn, implanting the molestation idea in her mind.

Legally, the statute of limitations on Dylan’s accusations ran out years ago, meaning Allen could not be prosecuted on abuse charges even if the authorities were inclined to re-investigate her claims.

His relationship with Farrow fell apart shortly before the alleged attic incident, after Farrow discovered he had taken naked and explicit snapshots of Soon-Yi, whom she had adopted with ex-husband Andre Previn. Allen admitted the couple — he was 56, she was about 20 — were having an affair.

Farrow videotaped Dylan talking about Allen’s alleged abuse and it was raised in court during the custody battle over the three children they had together.

It was investigated by a police-appointed panel of psychologists, which concluded Dylan had not been molested. But the custody hearing judge not only gave custody of the children to Farrow but barred Allen from even visiting Dylan, denouncing his behaviour towards the girl as ‘grossly inappropriate’. And the prosecutor in the case later said he had suspected abuse had occurred but wanted to spare the child the ordeal of a trial. ‘I hope she finds peace and solace,’ the ex-prosecutor said of Dylan this week.

So Allen can be tried now only in the court of public opinion.

to be continued...

 

[Sasha2012]

Inevitably, many people see his tawdry history of pursuing much younger women as a black mark against him. Some of his comments have suggested he has a very uncertain moral compass.

‘What was the scandal? I fell in love with this girl, I married her,’ he said in 2012 when asked about his pursuit of Soon-Yi.

He is a good friend of Jeffrey Epstein, the sleazy multi-millionaire friend of the Duke of York who was jailed for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.

Some of his critics have highlighted a 1992 report that Allen was so ‘completely obsessed’ with the young Dylan that he had to go into therapy. Allen would arrive at Mia’s house at 6 am (he and his lover lived on opposite sides of New York’s Central Park) and sit on the end of Dylan’s bed, staring at her until she woke up. He insisted that Dylan be kept up until he got back in the evening to tuck her in.

But Allen, still a powerful figure in Hollywood, has his supporters. Sympathisers have been circulating a rejoinder to the Dylan/Mia allegations written by Robert Weide, maker of a recent documentary about Allen.

‘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,’ he wrote scornfully.

Weide reminded readers that Farrow’s affair with Andre Previn reportedly led to his wife, Dory — a friend of Farrow — having a breakdown and being institutionalised.

And Weide didn’t forget to add shameless hypocrisy to the charge list against Farrow, a steadfast supporter of her friend Roman Polanski, still a fugitive from justice after he admitted raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Some might say that Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, both so self-absorbed and flawed, deserve each other.

Quite who the Oscar judges will side with remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure: if they were giving out an Academy Award for most vicious feud, the result would be a shoo-in.

 

[slang]

I don't think thats accurate…According to her most recent Vanity Fair interview, Mia Farrow describes finding the photos first, with the attic incident (and subsequent accusations) occurring after.

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/11/mia-farrow-frank-sinatra-ronan-farrow

I keep reading about WA being in therapy BEFORE the accusations, for inappropriate behaviour towards Dylan. It's again in this article posted:

..."Only a month earlier, in December 1991, Allen had formally adopted two of Mia’s children, 15-year-old Moses and 7-year-old Dylan, even though he was in therapy for inappropriate behaviour toward Dylan..."

Just curious, what behaviour are they referring to?

***This is not directed at you specifically to answer nycmom, I am just quoting the Vanity Fair article you quoted***