Woody Allen: Truth Behind and in Front of Closed Doors.

by Christopher Barr

A couple of things to point out; the molesting of a child is arguably the most detestable of crimes, outside of murder as far as I’m concerned.  I work for Correctional Services and can tell you first hand that those that have committed and who have been convicted of that crime, in my opinion do not pay the full price for what they have done, both physically and psychologically to their young victims.  I will spare you the details of what I actually think should happen to such fiends.

American film director Woody Allen is back in the spotlight under accusations of sexual abuse of a child, his daughter Dylan Farrow, who was 7 at the time of the alleged assault on August 4^th, 1992.  I must admit that such accusations for this particular crime are hard to repudiate within my own internal, judge, jury and executioner.  Meaning, the majority may all have to live with the fact that we are in a world where adults victimize adults, despite the peace we all wish for, but what we really want to preserve in all of this madness, myself included, is the well-being and security of children.

The following will be based on evidence and very little on emotion for such a sensitive case, rational thought, balance and deduction must remain securely at the forefront.  First we must backtrack because these current accusations have been mounted atop a misunderstanding about Mr. Allen that has marinated in the public consciousness for the better part of twenty years.  The majority of people outraged at these current accusations were equally outraged at the past accusations back in 1992.  But I would argue that this majority is ignorant of the actual facts and have created misconceptions fuelled with misinformation by the scandal-hungry, tabloid-frenzied media over the years, that Mr. Allen has had sexual relations and has committed to a relationship with his own adopted daughter Soon-Yi, thus destroying his relationship with Mia Farrow and breaking up their family. 

Over the years these creepy allegation have lingered like a storm cloud over the career of the prolific director.  The majority of people who liked his films still held back because they thought of him as a pedophile.  Which I always thought odd, because if this were true then why was he still with her and how was he allowed to marry her?  I have never heard of a case in the United States in the last century where a pedophile was not only able to remain with his child-victim but was also later able to marry her and adopt two children with her.  But over the years, I didn’t have the facts either, I just loved his movies and thought the whole sexual assault thing seemed a little out of place.

Soon-Yi Previn, Woody Allen’s wife and partner for over twenty years was never his daughter and was never his step-daughter.  Mr. Allen never adopted her; she was the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and André Previn.  Woody Allen and Mia Farrow were never married and they never lived together.  They were in a relationship but Mia Farrow and her children all lived on Central Park West in New York City while Mr. Allen lived in his own apartment on Fifth Ave.  In their 12 year relationship, Mr. Allen never once stayed over at Mia Farrow’s house, so with that, the couple weren’t even common law.

Soon-Yi, at no point saw Woody Allen as her father or father figure, her adoptive father André Previn was her father figure.  Soon-Yi, at no point was under age when she and Mr. Allen started having relations, she was not a naïve girl that was being taken advantage of, she was a Columbia University graduate that was smart as a whip and spoke multiple languages.  It is not entirely certain whether her age was 19 or 21 because her Korean birth records were lost, so it was never certified if she was born in 1970 or 1972.

It was stated in court documents up until 1990, Mr. Allen “had little to do with any of the Previn children, (but) had the least to do with Soon-Yi” so again with the allegations of him grooming her as a child to be his bride is preposterous.  His relationship with her started at a legal age after going to a number of basketball games.  It may be ‘grotesque’ to all of us that a much older man, 55, was interested and ended up dating a much younger woman,19,  that developed into a relationship.  But regardless, there was still no illegal or exploitive activity happening, but by god the media and conservative America didn’t see it that way.  Judgments by the public were solidified because the media inflamed the rumor mill and the rest as they say was history.

During their custody battle for their three shared children, Dylan, Moses and Ronan, in 1991, Mia Farrow accused Woody Allen of molesting their 7 year-old daughter Dylan.  Ms. Farrow also accused Mr. Allen of throwing away their idyllic, loving, monogamous relationship, all the while five years prior, Mia Farrow, who was 42 at the time, was having an affair with her ex-husband, Old Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, who was 71 at the time and likely the real father of Woody Allen’s son Ronan Farrow, himself sporting bright blue eyes.

Mia Farrow was a wonderful actress and deserves admiration for her political activism but with that said; this is not the first time she had an affair and had a child by another married man.  In 1969, when she was 24, she became pregnant by the musician André Previn who was still married to singer Dory Previn.  This betrayal led to Dory Previn’s breakdown and institutionalization which as a result, she wrote a song called, “Beware of Young Girls” about Mia Farrow’s affair with her husband.  I point this out not in the attempt to defame Mia Farrow but to shed some light on how innocent she portrayed herself during their custody battle, while accusing Woody Allen of molestation and betrayal of their ‘monogamous and loving’ relationship.

As for the allegations of molesting their 7 year-old daughter Dylan, Woody Allen was not found guilty then as he is not guilty now.  He passed a lie-detector test the Connecticut Police department performed, one which Mia Farrow, herself defused to take.  We are now heading into sensitive territory if we are not already there yet, because with this, leans a high level of guilt toward the fact that Mia Farrow, coached her little daughter into accusing her father, Woody Allen of sexually assaulting her.  This certainly begs the question, why would a mother manipulate her daughter to betray her father? But this also begs the question that all ‘mothers’ are not created equal?  The accused takes a lie-detector test and passes, cooperating with the police and the accuser, refuses.

The devastating fact in all of this is now we have a 7 year-old girl who was likely coached into accusing her father of sexual abuse, is now all grown up thinking her father actually sexually abused her.  She could, using Freud’s ‘false-memory syndrome’, see this as a real thing because of the manipulation from her desperate mother who wanted custody of her children and them away from their father who was seeing her step daughter, Soon-Yi, but also knowing of the notoriety that Woody Allen has garnered over the years in the hearts of Americans all over the country and world.

What I am saying here is never at any point to dissuade a person from coming forth and reporting sexual abuse, which they themselves have been victim of or someone they know.  What I am saying is it isn’t always a black and white, clear-cut case.  Victims come in all shapes and sizes and the evidence, not the hearsay and conjecture, supports that Mr. Allen has been dragged into a plot to slander his name in the hopes of Mia Farrow winning custody of their children, and to rid her of the public embarrassment that often is associated with these big time celebrity separations.  I should point out again these three children that they were fighting for custody did not include Woody Allen’s current wife, Soon-Yi, who herself was not part of this particular scandal, until it was made public that they started a relationship together.

I feel I need to dispel any subjective favoring I might hold over Woody Allen, him being one of my favorite writers and film directors of all time.  If, aside from all the evidence in his favor, he was found guilty by the law or by morality itself, I say fuck him and burn in hell.  I have zero sympathy for pedophiles, molesters and any one that violates a child to any degree, including all the sons-of-bitches out there that beat their children. 

Woody Allen was investigated in 1992 by the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital’s special investigative unit, assisting the Connecticut police department and their conclusion, which has also been included recently in a written statement Woody Allen made in The New York Times, was as follows; “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 4^th, 1992… In developing our opinion we considered three hypotheses to explain Dylan’s statement.  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 cannot 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.”

Dylan Farrow recently wrote in response to Woody Allen’s own response to the sudden unearthing of his alleged assault on her; ‘Nothing he says or writes can change the truth.’  Dylan said that there was no credible evidence to support Mr. Allen’s contention that Ms. Farrow coached her, or that Ms. Farrow acted upon a desire for revenge against him for seducing Soon-Yi.  In conclusion she states that the prosecutor found ‘probable cause’ to prosecute, but made the decision not to as an effort to protect “the child victim”, given her fragile state.

This makes no sense because that would always be the case; there would always be a child in a fragile state.  So to use this as the only reason not to prosecute, who is believed to be a child molester, represents a clear dereliction of duty on the prosecutor’s part.  Unfortunately these cases happen more times then people would like to admit, there is no legal precedent that should free a so-called child molester where ‘probable cause’ is found because the child is fragile.  Despite an upset child, which no one wants, it’s the duty of the law itself to follow through and indict when all the evidence and facts lend to such an indictment.  Woody Allen’s own son Moses Farrow recently stated about the alleged assault of his sister, “My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister.” Moses, who is a family therapist by profession, also said, “Of course Woody did not molest my sister, 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.”

Despite of the dismay the presiding Judge Elliot Wilk and Mia Farrow held over Woody Allen and his relationship with Soon-Yi, to whom he is still married, the accusations of his sexual abuse with young Dylan were never found to be credible and were clearly found, by all those that investigated them, to be false entirely. 

Woody Allen and Soon-Yi has since gone on to successfully adopt two children after the standard investigation was performed by all adoptive agencies.  Woody Allen has always maintained his privacy and has paid dearly for his inaction, all the while his name and reputation being dragged around in the media mud accusatory circle.

The problem is, especially with mothers, which you can’t entirely blame, have their opinion on this matter edged in stone in their minds; Woody Allen molests children.  That’s a flag that is set and for the most part can never be unset.  We want to protect our children from all the crazy predators in the wilds of the concrete jungle and within our very homes, from those that assumed an equal responsibility to protect but yet become the predator within.

This subject will always be emotional and in some cases irrational, but that’s what we need to do to protect them.  If we even think they could be victimized it’s up to us to perform a preemptive strike to avoid all possible violations.  But most importantly in all of this is we need to understand the facts before we point fingers like we are watching a daytime talk show.  We need to stop being told the ‘facts’ by the news media and tabloid magazines.  We all want to be helicoptered to the top of Mount Everest and expect all the fast food answers.  Our opinions matter and our integrity about those opinions should matter even more.  We must always be climbing the mountain of truth rather than having it home delivered to us.  In short, he must earn our knowledge, we need to have an understanding as to why we think the way we think about any subject.