Last Sunday, Nicholas Kristof
wrote a column about Dylan Farrow, the adopted daughter of Woody Allen
and Mia Farrow. Mr. Allen has written the following response to the
column and Dylan’s account.
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.
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.
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.)
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