It’s not a “cite”, it’s a magazine article recounting accusations, and responses to allegations.
The most credible argument I can see from back then - over 2 years ago - is of Farrow as an unfit mother. What she has done to her children is extraordinary.
Nobody will ever know for certain except Allen and Farrow. Certainly none of us will.
After extensive review of all the information that can be known, a team of detectives, medical investigators and child psychologists determined the allegation was false. These are not the type of people who are likely to be influenced by fame or celebrity, in fact they are more frequently seen as being so biased in favor of the child they will tear families apart and separate children from their parents with only the slightest hint of evidence of any such allegation being true. They approach investigations with the due concern that a small victim’s voice will be heard and no amount of pressure, influence or social standing by the parents will stand in their way of prosecuting such a case if they have evidence. They didn’t have any, and in fact they found evidence that Dylan was subject to delusions and that there were very stong indications that she was being coached and telling a rehearsed story.
The apparent myth about Dylan being found with no underwear that day remains an unsubstantiated claim - at least throughout the criminal investigation and custody battle. If any posters in this thread have evidence it is true they apparently aren’t willing to share it.
In sworn affidavits taken from one of the nannies, Monica Thompson, Farrow pressured the entire household staff to support the allegation. Two other household employees and one of the adopted children expressed doubt that it was true. The day after the incident allegedly took place, Farrow took Dylan to the doctor and apparently Dylan didn’t cooperate. The next day she took her back to the doctor and returned “very happy and excited for herself” saying that “everything is set”.
Kristie Groteke, Dylan’s personal nanny, told Thompson that she felt guilty allowing Ms. Farrow to say those things about Mr. Allen, and that on the day of the alleged incident Dylan was never out of her sight for more than 5 minutes. She did not remember any incident of Dylan being without her underwear.
She went on to charge that "Ms. Farrow set the stage to report the incident involving Dylan. For several weeks, Ms. Farrow insisted that Mr. Allen not be left alone with Dylan and wanted me to be with them at all times. On several occasions Farrow “asked me if I would be on her side. Ms. Farrow has tried to get me to say that I would support her with these accusations.”
She went on to charge that “Ms. Farrow has suffered dramatic mood swings and screaming fits about Mr. Allen. These fits of rage were often conducted in front of the children where she would say mean and nasty things about Mr. Allen.”
As to the ridiculous ‘gotcha’ being parroted here by some posters, based on a flawed analysis of the timeline of events, that there was no custody battle brewing at the time since Allen’s custody suit came a week after the alleged incident: it is hogwash. They were in the build up to a massive custody battle for months prior.
The cite provided in post #339 doesn’t say what people seem to be thinking it says. The proported agreement of $6,000 a month child support was essentially a blackmail attempt by Farrow’s attorney because she had nude photos of Soon-Yi in her bank vault to be used as a bargaining chip against Allen. It wasn’t her claim that Allen molested Dylan that caused Allen to sue for full custody a week later. That was due to Farrow’s apparent mental breakdown over the Previn revelation. Allen realized every time she had a painful breakup with a lover she adopted another child in some apparent attempt to soothe her own emotional state. If one actually reads the cite given rather than a cherry-picked paragraph this is abundantly clear.
And then after all this came to pass, oh yeah, Mia also made a claim that he molested one of their adopted children. At this point he decided to sue for custody. Quite a different version of events than that being presented by those who think that the Aug. 5 - Aug. 13 timeline is some kind of gotcha.
Annie-Xmas’s statement is factual. There was no custody battle at the time of the incident/accusation, the couple was, as Woody alluded to in his famous “heart wants what it wants” interview, on the eve of an agreement. One must, after all, file for custody for a custody battle to exist.
And the idea that $6000/month in child support was supposed to be a blackmail attempt is kind of silly. $2000 per kid was perfectly reasonable–maybe even modest-- for a multi-millionaire whose children lived and attended private schools in Manhattan in the early 1990s. For comparison, Mick Jagger was ordered to pay $1500/month for one kid in 1979, and currently pays $25000/month for another kid today.
Well, you might want to read the cite that you provided. It contradicts everything you are saying about it.
Oh, so Woody planned all along, in secret, to file for custody, and the plans to meet to sign the agreement on August 6 were all a big fake-out? What evidence is there of that?
One thing I must quibble about here:
The evidence for this is of course Allison Strickland’s testimony in court that she saw it. To my knowledge she has never backed down from her story.
Again, the cite you provided, not me, is what you are arguing with here. Read it.
It’s not so much that he planned all along in secret, it’s that during a bitter and acrimonious breakup, and with the obvious fact that a support/custody battle would be forthcoming looming over his head, one possible solution involving paying the suggested support amount was considered after Farrow and her attorneys held nude photos of her adopted adult daughter over his head as a bargaining chip. Her lawyer claims he was ready to agree. That may be true, it may not be. His camp says that after watching her overall mental breakdown occur over a period of months, the adoption of several more children while she wasn’t in a state to even care for those she already had, and, finally, the accusation that he molested Dylan, he (according to your cite) then decided to sue for custody. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t already a ‘custody battle’ brewing, it means that only then did he decide to sue for full custody rather than merely negotiating visitation and support payments as had been already happening, for months prior to the allegation.
This is the babysitter for one of Mia’s lifelong friends since childhood. According to the story her children were visiting the house, and their babysitter (Strickland) claimed she saw Dylan without underwear. This is contradicted by the evidence also presented in the same court from her own nanny, that she and two other babysitters all say that didn’t happen and couldn’t have happened.
If Mia was depressed and irrational enough to threaten suicide and to threaten Allen throughout the winter, and Woody was supportive of her adoption plans right up until his affair with Soon-Yi was discovered, it implies that either Mia really wasn’t that unstable, or Woody has just terrible judgment.
You seem to be more familiar with the actual court case and testimony than I am. Did Sophie Berge not say that she also saw Dylan without underwear? And did Kristie Groteke not testify that Dylan was out of her sight for 15 or 20 minutes?
You’re really changing the goal posts here now that your original statement has been proven wrong. Ironically you yourself proved it wrong with your own cite. All I did was point that out.
What we were talking about, before you decided to delve into speculation about Allen’s judgment instead, was:
Yes there was a custody battle underway prior to the allegation. Your own cite that lawyers had already drafted a deal involving child support/visitation demonstrates that they were already in the midst of a custody battle prior to the allegation. The date of that proposal was almost eight months after Farrow discovered Allen’s relationship with Sun-Yi. The ‘battle’ had been going on for months prior to August.
They knew they were splitting up They knew they had children in common. They knew there would be some court ordered arrangement regarding support, visitation, etc. The moment either or both of their lawyers became involved, IT WAS A CUSTODY BATTLE. The only thing that changed on Aug. 13 is that Allen decided to battle for full custody of the children instead of battling over visitation and support payments. But a custody battle was underway no matter how many hairs you want to split about it.
The reason this came up in the first place is that under the circumstances, going on a visit to a house full of people who hated him and who were watching him while in the midst of an acrimonious breakup and custody battle, it would be a very unusual moment for a 57 year old man to decide to molest an adopted child for the first, last, and only time ever alleged. That point remains true and the rest of this argument is entirely irrelevant.
Am I the only one thinking that deciding to battle for full custody would be a rather odd strategy to take for someone caught molesting one of the kids? What, Allen didn’t think that little tidbit would come up in subsequent negotiations?
Allen had zero chance of prevailing in that custody battle to begin with. Whatever issues Mia had, there was no chance that a court would give full custody to a guy who had almost no parenting experience, to the point that he had never even lived in a household with children in the many decades of his adult life.
People in bitter relationship-breakup situations don’t always act rationally, and their legal advisors are not necessarily inclined to warn them off, considering the financial incentives.
This, amended to read “People in bitter relationship-breakup situations very often act irrationally.”
Hmmmm…people…you mean…men *and *women?
Interesting.
In Woody Allen’s original custody papers, he stated that Satchell, his only biological child, was born in September. Actually, he was born in December. He stated that Mia accused him of sexually molesting Satchell. She never did, and Woody dropped the claim. He stated she had made application to adopt two more children. She hadn’t at the time.
Woody totally lost both the custody claim and the appeal. The lower court stated that Mia’s greatest failing as a parent was not getting rid of Woody sooner. She knew she was in a bad relationship and tried to get him to leave,
but he would not go.
CrazyHorse, you are seeing the whole affair in black and white–Woody is right and Mia is wrong. Don’t forget that he was fucking her teenaged daughter, without regards to the effect it would have on his family. “But there’s nothing wrong with that.” If Mia was such a horrendouse mother, why wasn’t Woody concerned about her other children?
I know this has been said over and over, but while she was “teenaged,” she was still 19 and a legal adult.
If by ‘seeing it in black and white’ you mean that I’m not allowing my opinion about him starting a relationship with an adult woman influence my opinion about whether or not he molested a 7 year old child, you’re right. For the first time in this thread.
When Mia was 19 and married Sinatra he was almost as much older than her as Woody is compared to Sun-Yi, so what’s the beef exactly? When Mia began an affair with a much older Previn, and sent his wife to the loony bin, putting his entire family life in upheaval, was she concerned about them?
The only relevance Sun-Yi has to the abuse claim is that it’s widely believed she hated Mia so much she purposely left the nude photos of herself somewhere that she knew she would find them. While there was nothing illegal or particularly immoral about their relationship to an outsider, to Mia of course that relationship gave her ample and understandable reasons to hate Allen and be very angry with him. They, however, are not good enough reasons to falsely accuse him of rape, brainwash a small child, and try to ruin several lives in the process of venting her anger.
Legal documents, particularly ones on the earliest stages of a proceeding, often include factual errors. It’s not particularly significant. These papers go through many hands, often of people who are distant from the facts, they don’t always get reviewed thoroughly by the people who do know the facts, etc. It is very common for litigants to later stipulate to corrections.
I wade into this thread with my asbestos gloves on, so fearsome is the vitriol on both sides.
But I do want to say that in this case I am an “outsider” (thank God!) and I find the relationship you describe to be highly immoral.
Fair enough and to each their own. I would call it very selfish (most relationship-breaking decisions are) but in the context of his relationship with Mia and the family, not immoral.
Either way, pursuing a relationship with an adult who happens to be much younger is not the same thing as raping a small child.
I don’t believe the allegations against Allen.
For the allegations to be true, he would have to, in the middle of a bitter break up, during a time when he was just shacking up with his new crush, and during a visit with (as I recall) tons of people in the house, find the will and the time and the opportunity to squirrel away one of the kids and molest her.
This could of course happen if someone is a sex-crazed maniac, because for these people rational behavior is not their strong suit. But if Allen is such a sex-crazed maniac that he made such a risky and irrational move, then he would have undoubtably made similar moves since. You just can’t turn off this behavior at will.
Since, as far as we know, he hasn’t done anything remotely similar since then, this makes it extremely unlikely if not impossible that he is the sort of sex-crazed maniac that he would need to be in order for the allegations to be true.
Updating this thread: