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Tue 4 Feb, 2014 10:08 pm
My parents knew the family, my father working with their father, somewhere like Halifax, where their father was a lieutenant commander. This was all about film.
Anyway, that naval officer, father of all these people, John Farrow, very knowledgeable about film, was later known more re his book, Damian the Leper.
I have photos and a bit re these people, but I'm not all for it as some kind of sales.
You may find marvelous photos in my garage, but you'll probably break you neck.
@ossobuco,
I see I am being obtuse - I'm talking about the gathering against Woody Allen.
Obviously I don't know. I met the parents. Cannot claim to know them.
I haven't followed the story very closely. My initial reaction, the other day was, "That bastard." But, I have had second thoughts, enough to say, "I also don't know."
@edgarblythe,
I know some about John Farrow, and remember stuff against him, now vaporous.
He and my father were letter writers at a formal level ( I still have one, John writing about Maureen), but I doubt they were saints.
I've also a lot of (are they eight my tens?) Ok, some.
I could use help to put this stuff in the mill - I am very ignorant on all of that.
@ossobuco,
Backs off, I'll ask whoever is the director now at the museum.
Woody Allen wrote:
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.
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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.
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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.)
Woody Allen is a filmmaker in New York City.
@edgarblythe,
Around it goes - to me, sad, whatever is true.
http://www.vulture.com/2014/02/dylan-farrows-brother-defends-woody-allen.html
copy and pasting -
In this week's People magazine, Moses Farrow comes out against the allegations made by his sister, Dylan, that their father molested her when she was young:
"My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister. And I hated him for her for years. I see now that this was a vengeful way to pay him back for falling in love with Soon-Yi. 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. The day in question, there were six or seven of us in the house. We were all in public rooms and no one, not my father or sister, was off in any private spaces. My mother was conveniently out shopping. I don’t know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother. Pleasing my mother was very powerful motivation because to be on her wrong side was horrible.
People, who describes Moses as being "estranged from Farrow and many of his siblings and is close to Allen and Soon-Yi," also reached out to Dylan Farrow for comment about her brother's defense:
"My mother never coached me. She never planted false memories in my brain. My memories are mine. I remember them. She was distraught when I told her. When I came forward with my story she was hoping against hope that I had made it up. In one of the most heartbreaking conversations I have ever had, she sat me down and asked me if I was telling the truth. She said that Dad said he didn’t do anything. and I said, 'He's lying.'"
I just find the whole thing really strangely timely after a NY Times article on Ronan, who is going to host a show on MSNBC. His mother let it slip (sure, sure, keep claiming that) that he might be Sinatra's kid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/magazine/ronan-farrow-reluctant-tv-star.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
That article states, "Just after news of his book deal broke this fall, on the very day that Farrow and MSNBC were set to announce their new TV show, a bit of gossip appeared. In an article in Vanity Fair, his mother let slip, somewhat coyly, that Farrow’s father might not be Woody Allen, but Frank Sinatra, her first husband. (As she told Vanity Fair, “We never really split up.”) “There was a very serious conversation at MSNBC about, ‘Oh, crap, is this going distract from the story?’ ” Farrow said. “Spoiler: Yes!”
He made a pitch-perfect quip on Twitter — “Listen, we’re all possibly Frank Sinatra’s son” — and waited a few weeks for chatter of his parentage to run its course on the Internet, conversations on “The View” and so on.
“Look, I get it, it’s hilarious, it’s wild,” he said at lunch. “There are salacious aspects of the story I’m able to sit back and appreciate with everybody else. And then it’s, ‘O.K., how do we move to the substance and redirect this conversation so we’re actually talking about stuff that’s useful?’ ”
Of course, no publicity is truly bad for a TV host trying to break into the ratings."
Emphasis mine.
The timing is awfully suspicious.
My interest is about the melieu of the thirties, when my parents were young and hopeful and John Farrow and my dad were friends. I sort of doubt my my mother and his wife, Maureen, were. As they aged, my parents didn't have a lot of friends and I was an only child and we moved a lot, so there is a kind of nostalgia for them in this for me. Nostalgia for something I wasn't really around. Trying to imagine what my father would think of this present stuff. I never met Mia or the other Farrow children, and wasn't particularly interested in her life as something to follow after she became famous. I did like some Woody Allen movies as the years went by.
From the bits I've read over time, I've tended to think Mia was, uh, on the strange side, but that's not fair since I don't know her.
@jespah,
Addressing this issue in his New York Times Op-Ed, Woody Allen wrote: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.
This strikes me as a very good point. While I agree that nobody knows anything for sure, to me this affair smells more like a furious ex-wife framing her ex-husband than a father abusing his daughter.
Allen said he passed a lie detector test, something neither side has elaborated on, that I could tell.
@edgarblythe,
edgarblythe wrote:Allen said he passed a lie detector test, something neither side has elaborated on, that I could tell.
Yeah, well, I sympathize with Allen but I'll pass over that one because polygraphs are just that --- machines that draw several lines. The notion that polygraphs are lie detectors is junk science; I have vowed never to volunteer to a polygraph test, either.
@Thomas,
Yeah, polygraphs are useless.
What makes more sense to observe is Allen's behavior, before and since. Sure, it's entirely possible that he could be hiding things very, very well (with no slip-ups for over two decades?). Or it was a one-time thing. But how often are child sex abusers going to doing it just one time?
Too many elements just don't hold water, from the idea that he only did it one time, to the child changing her story after ice cream, to the son now revealing that it wasn't good to be on the mother's "bad side".
Applying Occam's Razor and simplifying the story down to its essence, it's a lot more logical that Mia Farrow was and is vindictive and probably batshit crazy.
@jespah,
jespah wrote:Too many elements just don't hold water, from the idea that he only did it one time, to the child changing her story after ice cream, to the son now revealing that it wasn't good to be on the mother's "bad side".
. . . to the mother who is either lying now or lied under oath during the 1992 custody hearings, which ended up giving her the custody she wanted. I know I'm repeating myself. But it can't hurt to throw this one in again, just for good measure.
@Thomas,
Allen's right to question Ronan's paternity (a simple test will take care of that) and then point out that this revelation wasn't made when it was time to squeeze him for child support payments. Mia seems to tell the truth when it suits her, and spreads rumors when it can help out whoever she's currently favoring. Even if Ronan turns out to be Allen's, it still points out a pretty glaring lie by omission, of claiming that there were no other possible candidates for baby daddy. I do believe that DNA testing existed then - if this was the case, then Frank should've been tested.
And if the only lie is the current statement of possibility, and the sole motivation is to get Ronan buzz for his new show, then that smacks of someone who exploits this kind of sordid crap for her own purposes.
Which leads us back to the initial allegation from two decades ago.
Let's enumerate the possible lies, eh?
- Allen abused Dylan.
- Allen is Ronan's father.
- Allen isn't Ronan's father; Frank is.
The only way that #2 and #3 can both be lies if there is a third possible baby daddy candidate, which would make the whole thing even odder.
Mia is not lookin' good in this, not one bit.
@Rockhead,
Ha, I had never heard that song before. Perfect.
@jespah,
the hidden advantages of a misspent youth...
@jespah,
Mia doesn't look good to me either for your reasons, and the underlying sense I have that the accusations don't fit, which I get counts for nothing.
There's real rondelay going on over at the Guardian/Observer Comment is Free section. Lots of opinions flying and some things I didn't know - Mia defended Polanski highly, and Mia's brother is a convicted child abuser, confusing the issue with her changing ways. Plus nanny and babysitter had qualms .. according to someone posting there.
Read it at your potential dismay, whatever your views.. the comments are endless and some of them interesting:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/commentisfree+film/woodyallen
Me, I'm back to souffle making.
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