How about if they’re simply accused–absent any evidence–of anything bad?
Maybe not. Christina Crawford’s two sisters have disputed the claims in the book. Christina’s brother Christopher defended the claims. Many of the people who knew Joan Crawford have said that the book was either inaccurate or exaggerated. Some others say they witnessed some abuse themselves. It’s hard to know how accurate the book is in describing Joan Crawford’s parenting.
I don’t want to derail this thread, but I would like to point out that both Woody Allen and Joan Crawford have been accused of child abuse, and in both cases there are legitimate questions as to whether the accusations are true.
I’m not familiar with this particular case, nor do I know the parties involved. I’d like to note that research by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus have established that memories indeed can be implanted. Wiki has an article on the Lost in the Mall technique: The participants were told they were participating in a study looking at memory for childhood events and were instructed to try to remember as much as possible about each of the four events. If they could not remember anything about the events they were instructed to be honest and say so. Unbeknownst to the participants, one of the narratives was false. This narrative described the person being lost in a shopping mall at around the age of 5. … The participants first had to fill in what they remembered about each event in a booklet, and were then called in for two interviews where they were asked about details of the events. In the study, 25% of the participants reported to be able to remember the false event. A better, longer article was published in Scientific American: Creating False Memories
Here’s one part touching upon a related study: This effect was demonstrated in a study by Saul M. Kassin and his colleagues at Williams College, who investigated the reactions of individuals falsely accused of damaging a computer by pressing the wrong key. The innocent participants initially denied the charge, but when a confederate said that she had seen them perform the action, many participants signed a confession, internalized guilt for the act and went on to confabulate details that were consistent with that belief. These findings show that false incriminating evidence can induce people to accept guilt for a crime they did not commit and even to develop memories to support their guilty feelings. The point being is that memory implantation is a reasonably well studied and robust finding.
Uh, no. At least in Allen’s case, there are no “legitimate questions as to whether the accusations are true”. The allegations were looking into and found wanting.
We’d best get to cracking. We have an entire planet full of Art to destroy.
Bad English! Should read:
And what, no love for Tawana Brawley?
To clarify what I was trying to say: I believe the case against Allen is very weak - it consists of little more than an accusation. The case against Crawford is stronger, in that some people who were there at the time corroborate parts of it. Both of them may have been falsely accused - Allen quite probably so, and Crawford possibly so.
I think Allen is most likely innocent, but to say there are “no legitimate questions” is overstating it, IMO.
On another note, I think there may be a parallel – in terms of some of the evidence - between the Allen case and that of another celebrity whose image took a hit over suspicion of child abuse (but who was not shunned professionally): Michael Jackson.
I remember thinking at the time that the very weirdness that made so many people suspicious of MJ might actually be a mitigating argument for him. Because when you’re talking about “normal” people, you could support the notion that he was a pedophile from actions like sleeping with kids and the like, because a “normal” person doesn’t do those things unless he’s a pedophile. But when you’re dealing with an all-purpose weirdo and nut-case like MJ, that argument doesn’t hold, and that might be just part of his harmless nuttiness, no different than his makeup and pet chimp.
In the case of Woody Allen, I don’t have any reason to think he was or is a weirdo. But there’s good reason to think he didn’t know anything about being a parent. This is a guy who reached his 50s without being a parent and - strikingly unlike most pedophiles – seemed to show no interest in kids at all. I am not familiar with his movies, but I own a book of his collected short stories, and I don’t think there is a single child in the entire work, and he showed little to no interest in Mia’s kids (by all accounts, including Mia’s) and was apparently pushed into adopting and having his children by Mia. What’s more, is that Dylan (and Moses) were adopted, which means that Woody did not have a relationship that evolved from knowing them as newborns, but had to start from scratch with them already having identities.
So it’s possible that his relationship with Dylan did include actions that struck people as crossing boundaries, not because he had any sort of pedophilic interest in her, but because he was simply clueless as to what the accepted bounds were for fathers and 7 year old girls. Once the suspicion of child abuse arose, there were then all sorts of strange actions and bad vibes which could then be incorrectly reinterpreted – possibly with a little exaggeration or distortion here and there – as evidence of pedophilic interest.
As far as I know there is only one allegation about one specific incident on one specific day. I haven’t seen any mention of any other context in which his behavior with her or any other kids has been questioned.
This single allegation was made during a bitter and acrimonious break up and his spurned ex is the person who videotaped Dylan’s testimony. The camera was stopped and restarted several times during her statements which gave investigators further reason to believe that she was being coached.
So, no, it’s not like Michael Jackson at all. There aren’t dozens of people coming forward with separate accusations and a long history of weird, but possibly innocent situations with children. There is nobody trying to rationalize anything Allen has ever done with children by giving him the benefit of the doubt that he is just a ‘childlike’ man living in a fantasy world and his actions with kids, while questionable to some, was based only on innocent friendship - nothing like that at all. Just a lifetime void of any such events before or since, and one completely uncharacteristic accusation that originated with a spurned lover during a bitter breakup and custody battle.
As far as you know.
However, since you’re wrong about this, my comments apply.
Allen never “dropped the bombshell” that he was in a sexual relationship with Soon-Yi. He left out photos of her, naked and spread eagle, on the mantelpiece when he knew Mia was coming over to pick up Satchell. This was in January, the alleged abuse to Dylan happened the next August.
Mia was NOT in the house during the incident. She and three of the older children had gone out shopping.
Also, the abuse took place in the attic. Allen said he had never been in the attic. When the investigating team found his hair in the attic, he said “Well, I might have poked my head in the attic and looked around.”
Please get your facts straight.
Then could you provide some basis for your statements? Mine are made based on all the information detailed in the lengthy accounts cited earlier in this thread and current news reports.
Dropped the bombshell was just a figure of speech - the point is that this allegation only surfaced after Mia had been made aware of their relationship and the entire household was coping with this unexpected turn of events.
You’re right that at the moment of the alleged abuse, Mia was conveniently out of the house which is actually raised in both articles cited in this thread. But my point was that he was visiting Mia’s house, there were a lot of people there including Mia before and after the alleged event, two nannies, a cook and maid, etc.
The hair found in the attic is easily explained by a zillion possible scenarios.
Some backup for the info in my prior posts, from the apellate court custody ruling
In sum, 1) Allen had no connection to Farrow’s kids (or apparently, any other kids), 2) his behaviour with Dylan was weird independent of the specific incident, and 3) to say that there is absolutely zero evidence of any abuse other than Dylan’s statement is a distortion of the facts.
You are grossly misinterpreting what the cite you provided says.
There has never been any question that he had little or no involvement with Mia’s adopted kids or the Previn family.
There is no surprise that he would take an exceptional interest in the kids he did adopt together with her.
There is no surprise that, thinking one kid was actually his biological child, he would have a special interest in him.
There is absolutely zero evidence of any abuse other than Dylan’s statement and that has not changed any based on your cite.
Perhaps. But as I said I would provide some source for my earlier statements and this happened to be one of them, I figured I would back it up too.
Not sure what this is about.
You are confused.
The kid he took special interest in was Dylan, his adopted daughter, not Satchel/Ronan, his biological child.
The court said that “the clear consensus” of the “various psychiatric experts who testified or otherwise provided reports”, was that “his interest in Dylan was abnormally intense”. Now you may feel that you know better than all these experts and that’s fine. But for me, I’m going to stick with these experts. Not just because of their expertise, but because they were presumably just a bit more familiar with the facts than you are.
Again, the judges cited “the testimony given at trial by the individuals caring for the children that day, the videotape of Dylan made by Ms. Farrow the following day and the accounts of Dylan’s behavior toward Mr. Allen both before and after the alleged instance of abuse”.
You can disagree with these judges. But they are clearly stating that the evidence goes beyond Dylan’s statement, and if you deny this it’s you who are misinterpreting. Grossly, I might add.
Re Allen’s Case: Was weak initially. Investigated and now non-existent.
You quoted:
I replied that while he never had much involvement with the children Mia adopted on her own, it is not surprising that he elected to spend more time with the ones that they adopted together.
You quoted:
I replied that it is not unusual that he would take a special interest in the child he believed was his biological son. What you weren’t reading into my perhaps unclear statement is that is the case even if that interest was shown as concern that Mia’s attention to Satchel was causing Dylan distress, and compensating for it by spending more time with Dylan. In other words having his own biological child in the mix, or so he thought, not surprisingly caused him to spend more time involved with the kids and showing concern for their well being in general and trying his hand at ‘parenting’.
You quote:
See above. Showing interest in an adopted child, a biological child, and the relationship the two had with each other and their mother is not a veiled sign of him being a sexual predator. If giving Dylan extra attention to compensate for Mia not giving her enough is anything it may be a bad parenting choice but not a sexual crime.
I think I have given too much credence this line of argument by even replying to these individual irrelevant points one by one. Your original argument was “Gee, maybe it’s like the Michael Jackson case” and my reply is no, it isn’t.
Your interpretation of these quoted snippets notwithstanding, there has never been a need for people in the public or his private life to rationalize seemingly inappropriate behavior with children because he is like a child himself. Nor has there even been a pattern of such behavior. If we give every word of your post 100% benefit of the doubt as being true and correct, then what does that mean? It means a court didn’t agree with his parenting choices but found nothing sexually inappropriate about them.
As above, nothing I’ve said contradicts this.
I didn’t read this into your words because it wasn’t there, later weaseling notwithstanding.
I agree. Which is exactly what I wrote in my original post, to which you objected.
You left out the one about the judges finding other corroborating evidence of abuse. Odd, because this was precisely the very issue to which you originally objected.
I said perhaps it was like the Jackson case in the very narrow sense that behaviour that others might tie to abuse might be attributed to other causes. I specifically disclaimed the notion that Allen was like Jackson in being weird, let alone anything like being a child himself.
I realize that nuance may not be your strong point, you can give it a rest.
The court thought it was unclear. I myself think it’s unclear. I think it’s very likely that he was innocent, as I’ve been saying throughout this thread, but to say there’s no evidence at all of guilt is a gross distortion.