Moses Farrow defends Woody Allen

Great Debates
141

I think Polanski is a very great director, and he actually has starred in some of his films. He does not have a recognizable shtick like Allen does, playing a lovable shlub. His acting is subtle.

However, unlike Allen, he is not a US citizen, so being “exiled” from the US, and “forced,” so to speak, to work outside of Hollywood, was no sweat for him. Of course, Woody Allen has always worked outside of Hollywood, technically, funding all his projects independently, but my point is that lots of directors who are not American direct films in Europe. It’s not so common for Americans (location films for Hollywood studios don’t count).

It’s a more salient point that Polanski has only partially denied the charges against him (IIRC, he acknowledged “having sex with,” not raping, the victim, and denied that he drugged her or knew she was drugged; I don’t recall whether he knew he age). He agreed to a plea bargain, which (again, IIRC) was rejected by the judge.

Allen has straight ticket denied everything. He even denied having sex with Soon-yi before she was 18. I allow that could be true, because Soon-yi backs it up, albeit, if it turned out to be false, I would not be shocked, but still think it has no bearing on what did or did not happen with Dylan.

It’s also interesting to me that Farrow has never publicly denounced Roman Polanski, and still says working with him was a great experience. And it strikes me as a little creepy that the name she chose for her son, when she wanted to ditch the name Allen had chosen, is so close to “Roman.”

142

I don’t have a great deal of difficulty believing that Woody Allen may have interacted “inappropriately” with Dylan. Allen has been an offbeat character whose interactions with societal norms in general would be viewed as “inappropriate” by many if not most people. It seems likelier than not to me based on the evidence released to date that “inappropriate” in Dylan’s case was not sexual abuse, and that in her outrage over being blindsided by Allen’s relationship with her adopted adult daughter, Farrow conflated or inflated Allen’s behavior into sexual abuse.

Background: a former co-worker and long distance friend of mine got accused of sexually abusing his daughter in the course of a bitter divorce. Nothing ever came of the allegation. I didn’t cut off contact with him but didn’t offer character witness-type support. Rationalizing that as not fully knowing everything about what people are capable of is something I still feel a bit guilty about.

It’s unlikely that I’ll watch the documentary in question. Blowing substantial amounts of time on heavily one-sided “documentaries”, that are about events that have been debated to the point of nausea without the hope of resolution, doesn’t seem like a profitable activity.

143

I’m not sure that’s actually true, and Allen’s real life persona may be quite different than his on-screen persona (he himself claims it is).

But what’s more to the point along the lines of what you’re saying is that Allen was in his 50s at that time, had never been a parent (or had much interaction with children, best as I can tell), and even as parent, did not have a normal household-type relationship with them, living as he did in a completely separate household since they were born (or adopted as the case was). I think Allen simply had no idea of what was or wasn’t normal in the context of a parent-child relationship.

IIRC the professional(s?) who looked at the issue felt that he had a “boundary issue”. I think that’s about par for the course, in light of the above.

144

You are aware that there’s such a thing as a non-paedophilic child abuser, right? So any arguments based on what paedophiles do or don’t do aren’t really arguments against what non-paedophilic child abusers do.

145

Mia Farrow was a non-paedophilic child abuser. Her behavior is utterly at odds with everything we know about Allen’s parenting, putting the dispute about Dylan aside.

146

Non-paedophilic sexual abuse? Against a child as young as Dylan was?

I honestly did not.

147

Neither did I (if this is what was meant). I assumed it was tautological – someone who sexually abuses a child is a pedophile.

148

Is a man that sexually abuses another man, by definition, a homosexual?

149

Yes. Younger, even.

No. Paedophiles are primarily or exclusively attracted to kids. Non-paedophilic child molesters are opportunistic psychopaths.

By most studies, paedophiles aren’t even anywhere near the majority of child sex offenders.

150

My understanding is that the second group would still be considered pedophiles, just “non-exclusive.” Certainly, I don’t think there’s much of a distinction there in the common, non-clinical usage of the term.

At any rate, under either definition, the “People who do this sort of thing don’t just do it once,” defense seems equally applicable.

151

:roll_eyes: I meant non-paedophilic child sexual abuser, as context made bleedingly obvious. Please don’t misuse my posts to score cheap rhetorical tricks.

152

I was also unsure what you were trying to say there.

153

No. They may even not be attracted to children in the slightest.

But there is in the actual neuropathology of the two groups. Multiple studies have been done on this.

Possibly, but the latter group can include people who only commit a child sexual offense once, and confine their other offenses to other groups (adults, animals…probably public statuary). Then, also, there are paedophiles who never actually assault a child, even by proxy.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, mind you, just that “paedos never just offend once” is not a sound argument in-and-of itself.

154

We were obviously talking about sexual abuse. That’s the context of the whole thread.

155

Thank you, MrDibble. I was preparing to make the same point.

In one phase of my life, I received training in and worked with kids who’d been sexually abused. All pedophiles are child molesters, but not all child molesters are pedophiles. Some adults are attracted to both children and adults. Unlike pedophiles, some adults who molest kids are situational offenders: they don’t groom children, as pedophiles do, but they may take advantage when a situation presents itself–and not necessarily every time a situation presents itself. (Some pedophiles DO have sexual relationships with adults, but only as a cover or to produce their own potential victims.)

Young kids who are asked leading questions may reply with the answers they think are expected. That’s very different from outright fabrication, which is rare. This is important because kids who’ve been sexually abused, disclose the abuse, and are not believed suffer even more emotional damage–damage I’ve seen first-hand. Please don’t assume kids fabricating abuse is common.

There’s a sort of magical thinking most of us are vulnerable to. It says if someone were truly capable of molesting children (assaulting people, raping women, murdering anyone), we’d know it. “Why, I’ve known George all my life!” we say. “He’d never do that!” We’re particularly vulnerable to this sort of thinking when we like the accused.

None of this necessarily applies to the Farrow-Allen allegations. I just wanted to point out these things.

156

Very good commentary @nelliebly, thank you.

This has become a fairly long thread, and in the interest of perspective, I should perhaps add a few observations.

The accusation about Dylan was, AFAIK, the only such accusation made against Allen, with Mia insisting that he was “obsessed” with her in her childhood. That would make this “obsession” unique for someone who has not been accused of anything else that I’m aware of. Liking younger adult women, or at least rehashing that meme in multiple films, and being regarded as “creepy” by some, is not a crime nor even necessarily a moral failure. Allen was very much criticized for his affair with Soon Yi and for marrying someone so much his junior, but one might note that they have been happily married for 24 years now, which is a hell of a lot longer than many of his detractors have been able to hold their own marriages together.

If I sound like I’m defending Allen, it’s not because I pretend to know what actually happened. None of us really know. But I’m infuriated at how our electronically connected society – sanctimonious, prurient. and judgmental – can so rapidly destroy a stellar career that took a lifetime to build, with no actual evidence whatsoever.

One may well and justifiably argue that the real causes of this are the pedophiles and sexual predators in our society, and that’s certainly true. But I fear that the pendulum has swung over to the other extreme. We’ve become hyper-sensitized to this apparently new revelation to many people that such predators exist, as if they’ve never realized it before. And that has empowered accusers – armed with nothing more than unsubstantiated accusations – with the power to create devastating consequences for the accused in the court of public opinion, without recourse or due process.

157

I guess it depends how you are defining “pedophile.” If it is just sexually attracted to children as MrDibble notes there is presumably some percentage that never acts on that attraction. It seems like you would need to have two interrelated dysfunctions - attraction and then a willingness to act on that attraction despite the serious disincentives. I have no idea what the percentage of non-offending pedophiles is, but I can’t imagine it is zero.

158

The thing that seems unlikely here is that, AIUI, the incident of abuse took place in the middle of a party, at someone else’s house. If it were a situational thing, that seems like one of the least opportune situations. It seems that - and I recognize that this is one of the areas where “common sense” can lead to conclusions completely at odds with clinical observations - that someone who would view that as an good opportunity would have a huge number of even better opportunities to act, which he apparently never did. I’d expect a one-off, situational assault to have happened when they were alone in a hotel room, or while she was sleeping over at his house, but the brazenness of what’s alleged sounds more like someone under a compulsion, or just wholly depraved.

You make a good point about people not believing allegations based on a person’s public reputation - but this is Woody Allen. It’s extremely easy to view him as a pervert of some sort. The most surprising thing about this is that there aren’t more allegations against him. If, at the beginning of MeToo, you’d ask me to guess which celebrities were going to be revealed to be Weinstein-level monsters, he’d have been at the top of the list.

159

I thought I was agreeing with your straightforward assertion. It’s meaning was clear, even obvious, to me, as it was to others.

As for context, your post had none. Saying that the entire thread is about sexual abuse is simply false. We’re often discussed Farrow’s abuse of her children, which was non-paedophliic.

160

It’s not like there are wildly different definitions of pedophilia by mental health professionals or like either MrDibble or I are making up definitions. Sure there are people who successful resist sexual urges, no matter how powerful they may be. I’m not sure how relevant it is to the current discussion, but I don’t think anyone is claiming that every pedophile acts on those urges. The point is that not all adults who molest children are pedophiles, not that pedophiles are unable to resist acting on their sexual attraction to children.