Ronan Farrow on Golden Globes Woody Allen tribute: Where was the part about Woody molesting a girl?

[alp227]

This tweet by diplomat and MSNBC host Ronan Farrow is getting a lot of buzz:

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?

Farrow is referring to the Golden Globe Awards that took place Sunday night.

What Farrow is referring to is described in this March 26, 1993 New York Times article Farrow Testifies That Daughter Accused Allen of Molestation:

Speaking slowly and choosing her words carefully, Mia Farrow testified yesterday that her 7-year-old daughter, Dylan, told her last summer that she had been sexually molested by her adoptive father, Woody Allen. But Ms. Farrow conceded that the girl would not tell a doctor of the abuse, and that a medical examination a few days later showed no sign of it.

In a grueling day of questioning by Mr. Allen's lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz, Ms. Farrow testified that she had feared for years that Mr. Allen's attachment to Dylan O. Farrow was sexual. She also admitted attacking another of her adopted daughters, Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, after learning of her affair with Mr. Allen.

Investigators at Yale-New Haven Hospital, who were brought into the case by the Connecticut state police, concluded that Dylan had not been molested, sources on both sides of the dispute said. Ms. Farrow's lawyer, Eleanor B. Alter, has dismissed the report, which has not been made public, as "incomplete and inaccurate."

Ms. Farrow, 48, said Dylan told her the molestation began with her father's putting his head in the child's lap and his hand under her bottom. Mr. Allen has testified that he knelt, speaking to Dylan, but did not put his head in her lap.

Ms. Farrow said she had begun to videotape the girl because "I wanted this documented, because it had happened before." She said that Dylan then told her of the incident in the attic, which Mr. Allen said never took place.

Mr. Allen and his lawyers have suggested that the video, which has many stops and starts, reflects Ms. Farrow's efforts to cajole false answers from the girl. Ms. Farrow said she simply turned the machine on each time Dylan began to talk about the incident.

Last fall, Dylan spoke publicly for the first time about being abused in a Vanity Fair profile of Mia Farrow and Mia's family.

In 1997, Mia Farrow won sole custody of all her children including Dylan, and the family court judge called Woody Allen "self-absorbed, untrustworthy and insensitive."

It's tough to say whether Ronan was right to do this. On one hand, this could be seen as a family feud as the police investigated but decided not to charge Woody Allen and Ronan hasn't had a good relationship with Woody. On the other, most people believe Woody Allen is a creep because of his relationship with Soon-Yi, if not for Dylan's abuse allegations.

Ronan retweeted this message: "As far as I'm concerned, @RonanFarrow is standing up for all sexual abuse survivors tonight. Thank you."

[MADem]

1. Woody is, ostensibly, legally, his "father." Of course, we look at RF, and he looks like Frank,

not the molester on the birth certificate.

He might know who his daddy is via DNA by now.

And he's closer to Dylan than any of us are.

I'd believe my sibling if they told me something like that--I can't imagine who wouldn't, absent a history of prevarication.

[Cha]

4. Yeah, it's terrible thing..

Her mother certainly believed her and WA did not get custody.

Back then I read Mia found out about Soon Yi and Woody by finding photos of her in a drawer that were sans clothing. wth.

Ronan looks so much like Frank and Mia.. wow, what a beautiful child.

[MADem]

5. Sure is. I won't buy a ticket for any WA film. He won't get a dime from me!

Years ago, before this scandal, I saw a number of them, and he came across as a frigging whiner to me. I just don't think he's "all that and a bag o'chips" as they used to say back before it was revealed he was messing with his daughters, the sick shit.

[SunSeeker]

6. Same here.

I will never go to see a Woody Allen film.

[redqueen]

2. I hope that Dylan's coming forward will encourage more girls and women to speak up.

Incest is an enormous problem and most don't ever say a word. Many who do aren't believed. Also, adopted daughters and step-daughters are prime targets for this kind of abuse.

[pnwmom]

3. I believe Ronan/Mia/Dylan: He's done some great work, but Woody Allen is a loathsome creep.

[El_Johns]

7. Allen is a creep, because only a creep would put the make on one of his stepchildren.

I'm not so sure I believe Farrow about the molestation at 7 years though. Teenagers seem to be his MO.

[pnwmom]

9. We don't know when his affair with the teenager started. It could have been years earlier.

And as the OP said, the 7 year old is an adult now who has begun to speak out on this herself. I can remember things that happened to me at that age. Especially sad or stressful things. Can't you? Why wouldn't anyone believe her, given the whole situation?

[El_Johns]

10. I am always skeptical. My reason for saying teens are his MO is his history. Child molestors

typically have some history of molesting children.

Allen has a history of being involved with young women in their teens and twenties.

The film Manhattan is said by the Los Angeles Times[108] to be widely known to have been based on his romantic relationship with actress Stacey Nelkin. Her bit part in Annie Hall ended up on the cutting room floor, and their relationship, though never publicly acknowledged by Allen, reportedly began when she was 17, and a student at New York's Stuyvesant High School

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Allen

[pnwmom]

13. This is what the 27 year old told Vanity Fair about what happened to her. She sounds genuine.

Don't you remember things that happened to you when you were 7?

Plus, all her siblings believe her, and they were there.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/10/mia-farrow-children-family-scandal

According to Dylan, “There’s a lot I don’t remember, but what happened in the attic I remember. I remember what I was wearing and what I wasn’t wearing.” She tells Orth, “The things making me uncomfortable were making me think I was a bad kid, because I didn’t want to do what my elder told me to do.” The attic, she says, pushed her over the edge. “I was cracking. I had to say something. I was seven. I was doing it because I was scared. I wanted it to stop.” For all she knew, she tells Orth, “this was how fathers treated their daughters. This was normal interaction, and I was not normal for feeling uncomfortable about it.” Woody Allen’s lawyer Elkan Abramowitz says that Allen still denies the allegations of sexual abuse.

[El_Johns]

14. 12 year old is still in the pubescent category, while 7 year old is pre-pubescent.

Just saying, molestors have MOs & histories. Had Allen had a history with really young kids, I expect there would have been rumors -- he was about 50 when he got involved with Farrow.

Also, the timing of the molestation charge:

Allen and Farrow separated in 1992, after Farrow discovered nude photographs that Allen had taken of Soon-Yi, who was around 20 years old then.[114][115] In her autobiography, What Falls Away (New York: Doubleday, 1997), Farrow says that Allen admitted to a relationship with Soon-Yi.[116]

After Allen and Farrow separated, a long public legal battle for the custody of their three children began. During the proceedings, Farrow alleged that Allen had sexually molested their adopted daughter Dylan, who was then seven years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Allen


Mia Farrow had young children around during her entire relationship with Allen, but after they separate she discovers molestation? Just seems unlikely.

Not saying it couldn't have happened, just that Allen's history plus the timing make it seem unlikely.

To me, Allen's violation of the boundaries of a father-child relationship is creepy enough for several lifetimes, but I remain highly skeptical that he is interested in toddlers.

And no, I don't remember everything that happened when I was 7. Very little in fact, and most of what I remember from my childhood I couldn't assign a year to. I understand people are different in their ability to remember things that happen in childhood.

But I remain skeptical.

As an aside about Dory Previn, Andre Previn's wife who got dumped when the 23-year-old Farrow got pregnant by Previn:

"Beware of Young Girls" is a scathing attack on Mia Farrow and her motives for befriending the Previns (Farrow belatedly apologized to Dory in her memoir What Falls Away).

The track "With My Daddy in the Attic" is a chilling piece dealing with Stockholm Syndrome and fantasies of incest. The album's lyrics were published in book form in 1971.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dory_Previn

Lyrics of song include:


Upon our attic
Past the stair
Where we’ll live on
Peanut butter
Spread across assorted crackers
And he’ll play
His clarinet
When I despair

http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858661061/

Weird anti-serendipity.

[pnwmom]

15. I changed the post while you were responding to it. What convinced me

were the woman's own words. She's now 28, and told her story to Vanity Fair this fall.

(Seven year olds aren't toddlers, so I'm not sure where you're getting that.)

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

To this day it’s hard for me to listen to jazz,” Dylan told me. “He [Allen] would take me with him [when he practiced the clarinet with his band]. I’d be in between his legs, facing out. I felt like a dog or something. I was just told to sit there. I did what I was told. He used to sing to me the famous song ‘Heaven’ [“Cheek to Cheek,” by Irving Berlin]. It really sends shivers up and down my spine and makes me want to throw up, because it’s a throwback.”

SNIP

From the time she was able to register Allen’s obsessiveness toward her, Dylan said, she could never shake the feeling that she was disappointing one parent or the other. “After I told my mom what happened to me in the attic, I felt it was my fault,” she said. Individuals outside the family who were there at the time remarked to me how Dylan would shut down when Allen came around. She would complain of stomachaches and lock herself in the bathroom to avoid him. A babysitter testified that on the day of the alleged attic incident, while Mia was out shopping, she had come upon Allen in the TV room, kneeling, face forward, with his head in Dylan’s lap.

“I didn’t know anything formally wrong was going on,” Dylan said. “The things making me uncomfortable were making me think I was a bad kid, because I didn’t want to do what my elder told me to do.” The attic, she said, pushed her over the edge. “I was cracking. I had to say something. I was seven. I was doing it because I was scared. I wanted it to stop.” For all she knew, Dylan said, “this was how fathers treated their daughters. This was normal interaction, and I was not normal for feeling uncomfortable about it.” (Allen initially denied having gone into the attic. When hairs of his were found there, he said he might have popped his head in once or twice. Because of where the hair was found, his presence could not be proved conclusively.)

“Did he tell you it was a secret?,” I asked.

“Yes. He said, ‘You can’t tell anyone.’ I didn’t realize how careful he was—things that would happen when nobody was in the room. I was not feeling O.K. with him putting his thumb in my mouth, or how he hugged me.” When she was told that such behavior “wasn’t normal, I felt more guilty. There was no way not to make me feel guilty. There was no way someone was not hurt, whether me, my father, or my mother, and my brothers and sisters having to cope.” She thought she was to blame for all the tears and turmoil. “I felt I was damaging the family structure; that was crushing, damning.” Allen was already paying for a shrink for Dylan on the day she went missing with him. “I remember the doctor coming over once a week, and it was so annoying,” Dylan said. “I didn’t want to sit in a room and talk to grown-ups.”

SNIP

One time, the sight of a boy at school wearing a Woody Allen T-shirt sent Dylan into a fit of vomiting. She still fears that he might phone her. “I’ve had physical breakdowns because I opened a magazine to the wrong page. Once I was at Madame Tussauds, and I got separated from my friend. There was a bench, and I sat down on it to look around for her. I noticed a wax replica next to me. Him! It was the only time I screamed in public.” She called her fears “crippling” and said, “I’m scared of him, his image. Nobody wants to think this legendary filmmaker is my worst nightmare. That’s what scares me, when I picture things chasing me or happening—I think it’s him after me. It’s hard to explain how terrifying that is.” Her savior is her husband, whom she met through a classified ad in The Onion shortly before graduating from college.

[El_Johns]

17. I changed my post too. I know 7 year olds aren't toddlers, but they're basically still kiddies.

I can understand how that could convince you, but it doesn't convince me. I'm not really clear about what is supposed to have happened in the attic -- he made her sit between his legs while he played jazz music?

It sounds a bit odd, but it seems to me the damage to that family is this:

Farrow’s son Fletcher Previn, who built his first computer at the age of 13, tells Orth that he has Photoshopped Allen out of every single family photo and edited him out of family videos so that none of them would ever have to see him again. “We can look at them and be reminded of the good and not be reminded of the bad,” Fletcher tells Orth. Of the family’s reaction to the crisis with Soon-Yi, Fletcher says, “To my siblings and me, you thought of (Allen) as another dad. It can disrupt your foundation in the world. It resets the parameters of what is possible.” He also discusses the impact Allen’s actions had on the family, telling Orth, “There were casualties, who were totally derailed. It had a different impact on everyone, but everyone had a reaction.” Fletcher singles out Lark, who died at 35. “I really do think he’s got some blood on his hands,” he says of Allen.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/10/mia-farrow-children-family-scandal


The trauma of all that, the divorce, the betrayal and split in the family, is trauma, with or without molestation thrown into the mix.

What I added to my last post:

As an aside about Dory Previn, Andre Previn's wife who got dumped when the 23-year-old Farrow got pregnant by Previn:

"Beware of Young Girls" is a scathing attack on Mia Farrow and her motives for befriending the Previns (Farrow belatedly apologized to Dory in her memoir What Falls Away).

The track "With My Daddy in the Attic" is a chilling piece dealing with Stockholm Syndrome and fantasies of incest. The album's lyrics were published in book form in 1971.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dory_Previn


Lyrics of song include:


Upon our attic
Past the stair
Where we’ll live on
Peanut butter
Spread across assorted crackers
And he’ll play
His clarinet
When I despair

http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858661061/

Weird anti-serendipity.

[pnwmom]

19. That article didn't say much about the attic. I added a post from a 1992 piece

that went into more detail.

Also, it quoted a babysitter who encountered him with his head in Dylan's lap.

[El_Johns]

20. I'm not expecting you to agree with me; it just doesn't ring true to me. Even after reading the

1992 story, it just doesn't ring true.

[Bluenorthwest]

24. Here is the song Dory Previn wrote about Mia, who at 23 had an affair with Andre Previn twice her

age. Andre dumped Dory for the pregnant Mia. Mia is currently unsure if Ronan is Woody's son or Sinatra's, she'd been with Sinatra when she was really young, then apparently again when she was 'with' Woody.
Here's Dory's view of Mia

Beware Of Young Girls :


Beware Of young girls
Who come to the door
Wistful and pale
Of twenty and four
Delivering daisies
With delicate hands

Beware
Of young girls
Too often they crave
To cry
At a wedding
And dance
On a grave

She was my friend
My friend
My friend
She was invited to my house
Oh yes
She was
And though she knew
My love was true
And
No ordinary thing
She admired
My wedding ring
She admired
My wedding ring

She was my friend
My friend
My friend
She sent us little silver gifts
Oh yes
She did
Oh what a rare
And happy pair
She
Inevitably said
As she glanced
At my unmade bed
She admired
My unmade bed
My bed

Beware
Of young girls
Who come to the door
Wistful and pale
Of twenty and four
Delivering daisies
With delicate hands
Beware
Of young girls
To often they crave
To cry
At a wedding
And dance
On a grave


She was my friend
My friend
My friend
I thought her motives were sincere
Oh yes
I did
Ah but this lass
It came to pass
Had
A dark and different plan
She admired
My own sweet man
She admired
My own sweet man

We were friends
Oh yes
We were
And she just took him from my life
Oh yes
She did
So young and vain
She brought me pain
But
I'm wise enough to say
She will leave him
One thoughtless day
She'll just leave him
And go away
Oh yes

Beware
Of young girls
Who come to the door
Wistful and pale
Of twenty and four
Delivering daisies
With delicate hands

Beware
Of young girls
To often they crave
To cry
At a wedding
And dance
On a grave

Beware of young girls
Beware of young girls
Beware


So this is a family with no side to take, at least for me. I personally feel for Dory.

[pnwmom]

18. And there's also this article from 1992.

There were witnesses to inappropriate behavior with Dylan, including a psychologist.

But there was also an incident involving them alone in the attic.

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1992/11/farrow199211

On August 4, Woody was in Connecticut to visit the children, and Mia and Casey went shopping, taking along Mia’s two most recently adopted children—a blind Vietnamese girl named Tam, 11, and Isaiah, a seven-month-old black baby born to a crack-addicted mother. While they were gone, there was a brief period, perhaps 15 minutes, when Woody and Dylan vanished from sight. The baby-sitter who was inside searched high and low for them through the cluttered old farmhouse, but she couldn’t find them. The outside baby-sitter, after a look at the grounds around the house, concluded the two must be inside somewhere. When Mia got home a short time later, Dylan and Woody were outside, and Dylan didn’t have any underpants on. (Allen later said that he had not been alone with Dylan. He refused to submit hair and fingerprint samples to the Connecticut state police or to cooperate unless he was assured that nothing he said would be used against him.) Woody, who hated the country and reportedly brought his own bath mat to avoid germs, spent the night in a guest room off the laundry next to the garage and left the next morning.

That day, August 5, Casey called Mia to report something the baby-sitter had told her. The day before, Casey’s baby-sitter had been in the house looking for one of the three Pascal children and had been startled when she walked into the TV room. Dylan was on the sofa, wearing a dress, and Woody was kneeling on the floor holding her, with his face in her lap. The baby-sitter did not consider it “a fatherly pose,” but more like something you’d say “Oops, excuse me” to if both had been adults. She told police later that she was shocked. “It just seemed very intimate. He seemed very comfortable.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1992/11/farrow199211

As soon as Mia asked Dylan about it, Dylan began to tell a harrowing story, in dribs and drabs but in excruciating detail. According to her account, she and Daddy went to the attic (not really an attic, just a small crawl space off the closet of Mia’s bedroom where the children play), and Daddy told her that if she stayed very still he would put her in his movie and take her to Paris. He touched her “private part.” Dylan said she told him, “It hurts. I’m just a little kid.” The she told Mia, “Kids have to do what grown-ups say.” Mia, who has a small Beta video camera and frequently records her large brood, made a tape of Dylan for Dylan’s psychologist, who was in France at the time. “I don’t want to be in a movie with my daddy,” Dylan said, and asked, “Did your daddy ever do that to you?”

According to people close to the situation, Mia called her lawyer, who told her to take Dylan to her pediatrician in New Milford. When the doctor asked where her private part was, Dylan pointed to her shoulder. A few minutes later, over ice cream, she told Mia that she had been embarrassed to have to say anything about this to the doctor. Mia asked which story was true, because it was important that they know. They went back to the doctor the next day, and Dylan repeated her original story—one that has stayed consistent through many tellings to the authorities, who are in possession of the tape Mia made. The doctor examined Dylan and found that she was intact. He called his lawyer and then told Mia he was bound by law to report Dylan’s story to the police.

[identify]

8. ohmahgerd..

This kind of tweet is akin to a shotgun blast to the face. Cue 'Mama Said Knock You Out'. He's Frank's kid, no doubt. Good job, Ronan! #isaidDAMN!

[brettdale]

11. you know

The nude photos he took of his 12 year old step daughter and his excuse that "This will give her confidence" should be reason enough to hate the creppy pedofile.

[BainsBane]

12. I have no idea if the molestation allegation is true

but the guy did marry his own daughter.

[JI7]

16. Woody Allen was able to adopt some kids with Soon Yi, i wonder how that was allowed

[Heidi]

21. Maybe through money and influence, as in the past.

One of the great ironies of this story is that Woody Allen, by virtue of his vaunted reputation, was able to adopt Dylan and Moses, who had already been legally adopted by Mia in 1985 and 1978, respectively. Never before in New York, it seems, had two single people separately adopted the same children—unmarried couples have not been able to adopt at all—and in fact, had the case been taken to family court, the usual venue for adoptions, such an exception would probably not have been allowed. But their lawyer Paul Martin Weltz put the adoption of Dylan and Moses before Judge Renee Roth in the surrogate court in Manhattan. “Surrogate court is less hectic. I felt the two judges there were both very humane and forward-looking,” says Weltz. “In family court you never know who you’re going to get. I didn’t want some clerk to say, ‘The statute doesn’t permit it. Go away.’ ” But, adds Weltz, “to have a second parent of the intellectual ability and the financial ability of a Woody Allen—how could anybody at that point think of a single negative?”

Given the status of the father, the home study was waived, and the court presumably knew nothing about Woody’s sessions with Dr. Coates...

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1992/11/farrow199211

[countryjake]

22. Good for him! Why they insist on lauding Woody Allen is bizarre.

Ronan speaking up on his big sister's behalf was appropriate, as far as I'm concerned.

The guy lived thru the mess that his "father" made of their family, so I doubt that anyone could blame him for feeling a bit bitter as Hollywood chooses to celebrate such a person.

[geek tragedy]

23. Hollywood tacitly approves of child rape.

Ask Roman Polanski.

[monmouth3]

25. Diane Keaton, with her silver wig (I'm sure it was a wig) was just gushing over her friend Woody.

I had to turn her off. She has that nasal, pretentious authoritarian tone to her voice where you just want to slap her..

[joeybee12]

27. She's a brilliant actress...one of the best of her generation...nt

[redqueen]

28. Hair and voice

Very meaningful issues and worthy of critique.