Woody Allen — Would He? Could He? Did He?

I have been asked by many people to weigh in on the issues surrounding Woody Allen. My first gut reaction was that the allegations were false, however before I gave my opinion I wanted to do a little more research. This article written by Robert B. Weide really did a great job of separating the facts and listing them out in a way that makes it easier to see and understand. So my original gut feeling stands. I believe that Woody Allen was in fact falsely accused of molesting his daughter. I believe that their mother did everything she could to manipulate her children into hating their father and continues her hate campaign, even today.

NOW, BEFORE YOU COMMENT, PLEASE READ THE EXCERPTS FROM THIS ARTICLE WRITTEN BY ROBERT B. WEIDE AND THE REST OF THIS POST.

Excerpts from Robert B. Weide's Article

There are basically two issues at play here. One is Woody's starting a romantic/sexual relationship with Mia's adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, in 1991. The other is Mia's accusation — used during their custody battle — that Woody had molested their 7-year-old adopted daughter Dylan.

The Soon-Yi matter: Woody began an affair with Soon-Yi in 1991. Soon-Yi was Mia's adopted daughter with Andre Previn. She was not Woody's daughter, step-daughter, or adopted daughter. At the time of the affair, she was either 19 or 21 (her exact age is unknown since she was adopted from Korea). Though she and Woody had met over the years, their first one-on-one encounter only took place a year prior to the affair beginning.

Woody and Mia were never married. They had separate residences — she on the East Side and he on the West Side of Central Park — and they each maintained their respective households. Woody had no financial arrangement with Mia, meaning he wasn't paying her bills or supporting her and her kids (beyond their biological son and two kids they jointly adopted). So he was not Soon-Yi's father, step-father, or any kind of father figure. He was her mother's boyfriend who she occasionally saw over the years. This is not to say that the affair wasn't a terrible betrayal of Mia. But it is to say that a 55-year-old man having a consensual relationship with a 19-21 year old woman is not a crime, nor the same as a man molesting a child in his care, which is what people are now casually conflating.

Actually, when I look at the numbers, Woody was 56 and Soon-Yi was 22 when the affair was discovered. Let me correct myself: Still not illegal, still not the same as molesting a 7-year-old.

So he hardly "had his eye on her" from the time she was a child. Let me add this: If anyone is creeped out by the notion of a 55-year-old man becoming involved with his girlfriend's 19-year-old adopted daughter, I understand. That makes perfect sense. But why not get the facts straight? If the actual facts are so repugnant to you, then why embellish them?

It's understandable that Mia would remain furious with Woody for the rest of her life. If I were in Mia's position, I'm sure I'd feel the same way. Though I'd likely handle it as a private matter and not be tweeting about him being a pedophile, just before tweeting, "omfg look at this baby panda."

I also understand the simmering anger of Ronan Farrow, who has famously said of Allen, "He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression." However, this particular dilemma might be resolved by Mia's recent revelations that Ronan's biological father may "possibly" be Frank Sinatra.

The Molestation Allegation

The molestation accusation is the far more serious matter. Let's approach it logically: What we know is that in August 1992, after Woody began his relationship with Soon-Yi, Mia alleged that during a visit to her Connecticut home, Woody took 7-year-old Dylan into the attic and molested her.

Now think about this: You're a well-known director in the middle of a nasty custody battle. You're at your ex's home for supervised visitation. Is this really the ideal time and place to take your daughter into an attic and molest her, quickly, before a house full of children and nannies noticed they were both missing?

Even people who give Woody the benefit of the doubt and defend him on the internet are often confused on a few points. Some mistakenly say that the court found him "not guilty" of the molestation charges. The fact is there was never such a ruling because he was never charged with a crime, since investigative authorities never found credible evidence to support Mia's (and Dylan's) claim.

Mia's allegations of molestation automatically triggered a criminal investigation by the Connecticut State Police, who brought in an investigative team from the Yale-New Haven Hospital, whose six-month-long inquiry (which included medical examinations) concluded that Dylan had not been sexually abused and that her account was either coached or the product of a troubled child's imagination. Let's back up a bit and approach this more carefully.

The three doctors who made up the Yale-New Haven team, after a six-month investigation, concluded that there was no abuse. Here was their reasoning: They found Dylan's account to be inconsistent in detail, and in their professional opinion, she was either coached or had imagined the incident. The report noted that in various tellings of the story, Dylan changed key details — where the abuse occurred, what Woody was wearing, etc. They also observed that Mia had, in one instance, been present when Dylan repeated her story.

Much is made by Mia's supporters over the fact that the investigative team destroyed their collective notes prior to their submission of the report. Also, the three doctors who made up the team did not testify in court, other than through the sworn deposition of team leader Leventhal. I have no idea if this is common practice or highly unusual. I won't wager a guess as to what was behind the destruction of the notes any more than I'll claim to know why Mia stopped and started her video camera while filming her daughter's recollections over a few days, or who was alleged to have leaked the tape of Dylan to others, or why Mia wouldn't take a lie detector test. Woody took one and passed.

In any event, destruction of the notes may have been part of the reason that, despite the very conclusive position taken by the investigators that Dylan was not abused, presiding Judge Elliot Wilk found their report "inconclusive." Judge Wilk would ultimately grant Mia custody of Satchel and Dylan and cut off Woody's visitation with Dylan.

The Custody Ruling

Here's a puzzle worth solving: If Woody molested Dylan, why didn't Judge Wilk grant Mia's request that all of Woody's visitation rights be terminated, and not just his visitation with Dylan? Woody continued to see Satchel (now Ronan) on a regular basis. If a man molested one of your children, you'd want him away from all of your children, yes?

Moses Farrow's Statement

Of equal importance in this case is the statement of Moses Farrow, who was 14 at the time. Moses claims that he witnessed Mia coaching Dylan to repeat her allegation. He also said, in 2014, that his mother had spent years turning her children against their father. "She has one story and is not going to stop telling it," he has said.

Dorcy's Commentary

Now, I want to add something that speaks to my area of expertise, and to the nature of parental alienation itself.

I've been working with target parents, alienating parents and children for over a decade, and I have to say that this case has all the hallmarks of a severe alienation campaign. You have a mother who was deeply hurt by her former partner. You have children being coached, changing their stories, and showing signs of a divided loyalty. You have a public narrative that was built to destroy the target parent's credibility while playing to the public's worst fears.

Regardless of what did or didn't happen in that attic in 1992 — and none of us can ever truly know — what is undeniable is that these children grew up in the middle of a war. And when children grow up in the middle of a war, they are casualties. Dylan Farrow, Ronan Farrow, and Moses Farrow have all been shaped by this conflict, by being used as weapons and pawns in a battle that should have remained between two adults.

That is the tragedy here. Not just "did Woody do it." The deeper tragedy is what happened to those children. And it is a tragedy that plays out in families of all kinds, every single day, all over the world.

If Mia truly believed Woody had molested Dylan, I understand her rage. If she allowed that rage to consume her and coached her children to hate and fear their father — consciously or not — then the children paid the price. And if Dylan has grown into an adult who carries these memories and has built her life around them, she deserves compassion regardless of what actually happened. Her pain is real, even if its source has been distorted.

Reader Comments

The following are reader perspectives that were posted in response to this article. They represent diverse viewpoints and are preserved as part of the original post:

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"One month ago, after CBS's partisan broadcast of the Dylan Farrow interview, I got interested in the matter. I do know a Woody Allen film or two, but I am not a particular fan. Yet 'difficult family relationships' and 'ugly split-ups' strike a chord with me, and I wanted to determine a position in this debate.

The facts of the Farrow vs. Allen matter show that the 'no abuse took place' scenario is not unlikely. Maybe you say 20% likely, or 50%, or 80%. We can't be 100% sure, because none of us were there up in the attic. But I would say that the 'Allen is innocent' scenario is surely likely to the extent that he must be declared 'innocent' (because not proven guilty)."

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"Moses Farrow's statements nail the coffin. If one wants to believe the abused child Dylan, one can't ignore the abused child Moses. This whole affair fits the scenario in which Mia Farrow coaches her children into hating Woody Allen. Some of her young, adopted children comply, such as Dylan and Ronan. Some of her children do not comply, such as Moses."

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"Regardless of who Ronan's biological father is, he grew up with Woody as his dad. Woody and Mia split when he was 5, and Woody had shared custody of him afterwards. Ronan's talked openly about the split custody, time spent at Woody's growing up, and that he fully considers Woody his father. Woody finding out he's possibly not his biological dad years later does not change that when Ronan was a kid, Woody was his parent, and it's really messed up what he did to him."

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"Since Woody was never alone with the children and never spent the night in Mia's homes it seems almost impossible for this to have happened, besides the facts of the case, which wholly support a child being coached and had zero evidence of a child molested. The actual abuser in this case was and still is Mia — she has waged a war against Woody and still hates him even to this day. She manifests the behaviors of borderline personality. An interesting side note is that her brother was recently arrested for child sexual abuse. It makes one wonder if she projected onto Woody and her daughter what happened to her as a child."