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

TPF may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, and others

I agree.....I think the involvement with Soon-Yi which I think started when she was 17 is disgusting.
I don't think Dylan is lying but isn't this type of molestation usually recurring rather than a one-time thing?
I have to think it's possible that Dylan is confused.
He's creepy but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on the child molestation

Did you not read the letter? In her letter she detailed several instances of abuse.
 
Did you not read the letter? In her letter she detailed several instances of abuse.

God that letter gives me chills, honestly. It makes me tear up. At the very least, even if people doubt Dylan's story, I wish they'd at least try and see some correlation between the person that Dylan is making these claims against to the person who had nude pictures of his girlfriend's adopted child.
 
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/03/the_uneasy_ambiguity_of_the_woody_allen_case/

The uneasy ambiguity of the Woody Allen

I don’t know if Woody Allen is a child molester or not. I wish I did. I wish there were a definitive way of knowing for sure, and then the appropriate participants involved could have justice and resolution. I wish these things were easier than a Team Woody or Team Farrow tweet. But the murky truths behind an accusation of sexual abuse aren’t always clear-cut.

After 20 years of relative quiet, the questions over Allen’s alleged*behavior first erupted again last month after the director was celebrated at the Golden Globes, and both Allen’s former partner Mia Farrow and their son Ronan*took their case to social media. Ms. Farrow noted on Twitter, “A woman has publicly detailed Woody Allen’s molestation of her at age 7. Golden Globe tribute showed contempt for her & all abuse survivors,” while Ronan asked, “Missed the Woody Allen tribute – did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?”*But the story really took off over the past weekend, when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof turned his space over to Allen and Farrow’s daughter Dylan so she could tell her side of the story.

In her open letter, Dylan Farrow states clearly, “When I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set.Then he sexually assaulted me.”*She goes on to say that “For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like….These things happened so often, so routinely, so skillfully hidden from a mother that would have protected me had she known, that I thought it was normal.” Allen meanwhile has called the letter*“untrue and disgraceful.”

What unfurled after the younger Ms. Farrow’s letter was a storm of passionate and utterly certain responses from both sides of the “Did he or didn’t he?” camp. Social media sentiment ran strongly in favor of Ms. Farrow’s account of events. Lena Dunham tweeted,*“To share in this way is courageous, powerful and generous.*Please read.” Writing in Salon, Roxane Gay said,*“I know I would rather stand where I stand and eventually be proven wrong than support Woody Allen and eventually be proven wrong.”*On “Morning Joe” Monday, Mika Brzezinski looked at the evidence against Allen and declared, damningly,*“He married his adoptive daughter when his wife found out they were having an affair.”*(Farrow and Allen were never married, and Soon-Yi Previn was never his adoptive daughter, but who cares, it’s just television news, right?)

In his accompanying comments to Dylan Farrow’s letter, Nicholas Kristof, who is a friend of Mia and Ronan Farrow, says, “None of us can be certain what happened.” But he makes his point of view very clear when he declares, “The Golden Globes sided with Allen,*in effect accusing Dylan either of lying or of not mattering.*That’s the message that celebrities in film, music and sports too often send to abuse victims.” But without certainty of “what really happened,” there can be no certainty if someone is an “abuse victim.”

Allen’s defenders have been outspoken too. Robert Weide, who made a 2012 documentary about Allen, wrote a lengthy piece in the Daily Beast titled*“The Woody Allen Allegations: Not So Fast.”*In it he outlined a chronology of both Allen’s relationship with his now wife Soon-Yi Previn and the accusations of sexual abuse of Dylan, including the inconsistencies in the narrative, apparent editing of Dylan Farrow’s original videotaped claims, and Allen and Farrow’s third child Moses’ current assessment of the incident as “brainwashing.”

Speaking on “The View” Monday,*Barbara Walters came to Allen’s defense, calling him a loving father.*And writing in the Guardian, columnist Michael Wolff smarmily insinuated that the allegations have resurfaced*“to establish Mia Farrow as a celebrity activist worthy of the world stage, and, as well, to launch a public career for her son Ronan.”*He went on to cynically declare, “In return for laudatory press coverage of her charitable work, and near sycophantic treatment of her yet-to-be-employed son, she would have had to agree to revisit her legendary scandal. That, and then some. The price of publicity for her and Ronan was, in effect, Allen.” In other words, there’s plenty of misinformation and emotion to go around on all sides.

I’m no Woody Allen apologist. I’m not even much a fan of his movies. I love “Annie Hall” and own a*beautiful print of the opening lines of “Manhattan,”*but I haven’t paid money to see one of his films in over 20 years. On the personal front, I think any man in his 50s who takes up with his girlfriend’s teenage daughter – the sibling of his own three children — is pretty ******* creepy. But I know being creepy alone doesn’t make someone a pedophile. In fact, as Ayelet Waldman mused aloud on Twitter, being involved with a teenager and molesting a child are*“2 different pathologies.”

I also think Mia Farrow has her own history of unusual behavior around her family and her conflict with Allen. In 1992, one month after she learned Allen was involved with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, she allegedly bestowed Allen with “an ornate Victorian Valentine meticulously adorned with a photograph of Ms. Farrow and her children in the center. The picture included the three children she and Mr. Allen share, as well as Soon-Yi.*Ms. Farrow had stuck steel turkey skewers through the hearts of the children and she had carefully slid a steak knife into her own heart.”*In 2005,*she testified on behalf of Roman Polanski*in his libel suit against Vanity Fair. Roman Polanski, by the way, is a man who has unambiguously*pleaded guilty to unlawful sexwith a 13-year-old girl who has steadfastly maintained he drugged, raped and sodomized her.

The allegations Dylan Farrow details in her open letter first became public in the context of a brutal custody battle, mere months after Allen’s relationship with Previn became known. As the Times reported at the time, “while a team of experts*concluded that Dylan was not abused, the judge said he found the evidence inconclusive.” A prosecutor said the case was cause for*“grave concern”*but never charged Allen.

There are things we know. We know*Roman Polanski is a convicted sex offender*who fled from justice. We know that*Jimmy Savile got away with decades of systematic sexual abuse*of multiple girls and boys. We know the Catholic Church spent years and years, and millions of dollars*covering up for the child molesters in its ranks. And we canbelieve*whatever we believe about Woody Allen and his daughter, but we don’t*knowwhat truly transpired. For now, I lean toward the stance of a friend who recently summarized the entire Allen-Farrow debate as “an awful, messy, murky situation involving two people who seem like crazy, dreadful parents.”

As my friend Chez Pazienza wrote over the weekend, there can be no question that Dylan Farrow is a woman firmly convinced of what happened to her. But for the rest of us, he writes,*“We’ll never know whether the events she recalls as searing memories really happened in the way she describes.”*And that is the rub. You can believe she is telling the truth, or you can believe she is lying, or you believe she is telling the truth as she recalls it, perhaps recounting something that’s eminently real to her but that may not have happened in that way at all.

Enough of Allen’s personal life is public record that I have plenty of my own judgments about his behavior and his choices. I think the judge who long ago declared he had*“no parenting skills that would qualify him as an adequate custodian”*was on the money. But I also think that for a person to be accused of a crime is not the same as him being guilty of committing it. And there’s no certainty, there’s no satisfaction, in there. There’s just the uneasy space outside of it. The space where so many of these kinds of stories of alleged abuse resides. Not in obvious villains and victims. In the dreadful, gnawing place of doubt.
 
I think the most telling factor comes from their biological son, who said, my father married my sister and that is morally wrong. I totally agree with him, even if creepy WA did not feel that was his daughter she was his son's sister.
 
I think it's disturbing that some would consider the possibility of Dylan making this up. The guy married his girlfriend's daughter for goodness sake. You have to wonder how and how long he had to manipulate that little girl for in order to convince her that it's ok to have an affair with her.adopted.dad. (Whatever you'd call him in this case. Heebie jeebies everywhere)

And let the church say AMEN!!!!!....
 
Did anyone hear Barbara Walters defending Woody Allen on the View this morning? Regardless of what you believe, I was outraged by her words. Implying that he was always a loving father so he could not be guilty of this. She also defended his relationship with Soon Yi.

It's funny because she called Wendy Williams crazy because Wendy said she yells at her son for him to put the trash out if he doesn't listen.... But see's nothing wrong with Woody Allen marrying his step daughter....
 
Barbara Walters is senile.You know things have gone severly wrong when Sherri Shepherd is making all the sense.

In one breathe she said that some adopting parents don't view adopted kids as there own. In the next she says he is a great father to his daughters.

So if he decides to marry one of them in 2 years, then what.
 
Did anyone hear Barbara Walters defending Woody Allen on the View this morning? Regardless of what you believe, I was outraged by her words. Implying that he was always a loving father so he could not be guilty of this. She also defended his relationship with Soon Yi.
I think Barbara is coming from the perspective of someone who's hooked into the NY showbiz social circle. This was a rare occasion where I also agreed more with Sheri. Interesting that Whoopi who is very social didn't weigh in.
 
I think Barbara is coming from the perspective of someone who's hooked into the NY showbiz social circle. This was a rare occasion where I also agreed more with Sheri. Interesting that Whoopi who is very social didn't weigh in.

Yes. I thought her silence was very odd considering.

Celebs never call out other celebs. So I guess it is not surprising.
 
Yes. I thought her silence was very odd considering.

Celebs never call out other celebs. So I guess it is not surprising.
I didn't like Barbara painting Woody and Soon-Yi as the great couple. And Sheri is always too hysterical for me (and often I'm on the other side of what she says). So Whoopi's silence was fine by me. She's not judging (at least publicly).
 
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…

Hamill: Dylan Farrow's child molestation claims against Woody Allen were planted by Mia Farrow

The 'Manhattan Murder Mystery' director doesn't fit the profile of a pedophile and asserts that the allegations are a part of his ex-lover's angry campaign against him.

I don't believe Woody Allen is a child molester.

But when I read Dylan Farrow's letter in The New York Times accusing her adoptive father of sexual abuse, I didn't think she was making it up. I believe it's a scenario she's come to believe after it was implanted in her impressionistic head as a kid.

On March 18, 1993, after a Connecticut prosecutor declined to charge Allen after a three-month investigation of the same allegations, I interviewed him at his Fifth Ave. apartment.

Soon Yi Previn, then his girlfriend and now his wife and mother of their two adopted children, answered the door. I sat with Allen in his living room. Previn excused herself.

I asked Allen about the effect of the charges on his relationship with his kids.

"In the past eight months, I haven't seen Dylan once, and I have spent a grand total of 36 hours with Satchel, my biological son," he said. "And those visits are just two hours a week. Supervised. They are intense because you try to jam-pack a whole week into that time. You rush from toy to toy and you have to brush past the things he says. Things like, 'I'm supposed to say I hate you.' And, 'Mommy is writing a book that she says will make you go away forever.' Or, 'We're getting a new daddy' and, 'I wish you were dead.' He would say these things but not act them. It was as if he were obliged to say them. It was hard."

What would he say to the child?

"I would tell him that me and his mommy had a fight. But that it would be over soon. I always made sure to tell him that his mommy is pretty and a wonderful actress ... I would change the subject, and we would go bake cookies, play with clay, show him a new toy. But every time I would start to feel bad I would remind myself that Dylan wasn't here and wonder how she was at that moment. Was she wondering why Satch could see me but not her? How confused can one kid become? And then I would have to refocus on Satchel," who now goes by Ronan.

I asked about the finding by a team of child abuse specialists from Yale-New Haven Hospital that Dylan had not been molested.

"The greatest feeling that came out of today's meeting at Yale was when the verifiers told me that I should see Dylan as soon as possible because she loves me and misses me," he said. "It brings me great joy, but at the same time, deep sadness. Because if she still loves me, I can't imagine how confused she is about my not seeing her. It will take a long, long time to answer all her questions."


Allen paused when he was asked about Farrow.

"You would think any mother would be relieved that a three-member panel, two of them women, found that her daughter had not been molested," Allen said. "But so deep is her venom that she actually sees this as a loss. That is terribly sad. She knows I never molested Dylan."

I interviewed Woody Allen several times before and since that story. The press-shy writer-actor-director talks to me for a couple of reasons. One, my brother Brian had worked as a still photographer on many of his classic movies including "Annie Hall," "Manhattan" and "Bullets Over Broadway." Another is that we had a working-class Brooklyn connection.

Allen and Farrow lived on opposite sides of Central Park. Allen told me he never once spent the night at Farrow's place. But after their romance ended, according to Allen, he'd occasionally ask Farrow to Knicks games. When she declined, Allen said, she asked him to take her adopted daughter Soon Yi Previn, with whom Allen said he'd rarely spoken.

He took her.

Previn was 20, Allen, 56. They fell in love. "The heart wants what it wants," was Allen's explanation.

A May-December romance blossomed, similar to the once Farrow and Frank Sinatra once enjoyed.

When Farrow found out, she launched an enraged public campaign against Allen.

Then Farrow accused Allen of molesting their daughter Dylan, then 7, in an attic in Connecticut. 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.

Here's my problem with believing the story Dylan Farrow now tells: I'm no shrink but I've often written about pedophilia and leading experts tell me the first time a pedophile is caught he's usually abused an average of 13 children. Pedophilia is not a passing experiment.

But in the 56 years before Farrow's initial accusations and in the 21 years since, there has never been another accusation of Woody Allen molesting another child.

What he told me back in 1993 remains true today.

"The burden of guilt is on you, not on the accusers," he said. "This is on me like a tattoo for life. There will always be some people who believe what I was accused of just because I was accused."

Again, I'm not an expert but I don't think Woody Allen is a child molester.

I also don't think Dylan Farrow believes she's telling a lie.

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