Allen v. Farrow (2021) s01e04 Episode Script

Part 4

September 24, 1993
At this time I'd like to read
a written decision.
This decision addresses
certain sexual assault allegations
surrounding events
in Bridgewater, Connecticut,
on August 4th, 1992
involving Mr. Woody Allen.
I consider the state police investigation
to be thorough and complete,
and I commend the investigator
for their efforts
performed in an atmosphere
that was anything but conducive
to a smooth-running investigation.
As to the allegations contained in the
submitted arrest warrant application
I find that probable cause exists.
The option was clear:
have Allen arrested,
go to trial ultimately, and put the
child on the stand as my first witness.
But my concern was the further
traumatization of the child.
She had already
been through so much.
Was it truly in her best interest
to put her on the stand?
This is a story of two
of the biggest stars in the world.
The father is Woody Allen,
writer, director, actor.
The mother is Mia Farrow,
his frequent co-star,
and the mother of his three children,
two of them adopted.
Woody and Mia
have been together for 12 years
but never married
and kept separate residences.
She reportedly has a video
of their adopted daughter Dylan
explaining how Allen molested her.
Allen denies child abuse,
but freely admits
he's in love with another of Farrow's
daughters, 21-year-old Soon-Yi.
Allen said the newest allegations
are the bizarre concoctions
of a woman scorned.
Miss Farrow's only concern
have been exclusively
the protection of her children.
ALLEN V. FARROW
Episode 4
I met with Dylan Farrow
in early September 1993,
in what we considered to be
a child-friendly atmosphere.
In my office we had stuffed animal
toys strewn around the library.
The child was also there
with a female state trooper
that she had a fairly good
relationship with.
I'm on the floor with Dylan
playing with the toys.
I'm telling her about my son.
After some time
I start questioning her
about her relationship
with what I called "Daddy Woody."
She was totally unresponsive.
You could see a glazed look
over her eyes.
I said, "Tell me what's
about Daddy Woody."
Nothing at all.
Complete freezing at that point.
The strongest proponents
for prosecution
just looked at me and we all
shrugged our shoulders.
We weren't going anywhere
with this child.
I found probable cause.
Yet despite meeting
that standard,
and because of the risk
of exposing a child complainant
to the rigors, uncertainties,
and possible traumatization
of such actions,
accordingly I am announcing
my decision
not to initiate a prosecution.
The case, for all practical purposes,
ended with my decision
September of '93.
The prosecutor says he will always
be available to Dylan as she grows up,
to explain what happened
and why he did not press charges.
But one day Dylan may certainly
wonder if authorities
made the right decision by excusing
Woody's alleged behavior
to spare her a public trial.
I did not want more of this.
I didn't want more press,
more courts.
I was just glad to have my children.
I just wanted nothing more.
No punishment of Woody
would be worth punishing Dylan.
We just needed it
to be peaceful again.
Is there - is there a light?
Okay.
Well, here I go.
While
While one might think
that I would be happy or grateful
over the decision
to drop the investigation
by the Connecticut authorities,
I am merely disgusted
that my children
have been made to suffer unbearably
by the unwholesome
alliance between a vindictive mother
and a cowardly, dishonest,
irresponsible state's attorney
and his beliefs.
I want to send this message
to my little girl:
don't worry,
the dark forces will not prevail.
Connecticut
After the whole custody trial
my mom stopped having
to go to court all the time,
and we moved away
from the city.
That was great!
- Was it?
- Yes.
- Come and do your handstand.
- I want you to see something.
And there was sort of a grace period
where I thought,
okay, this is great;
I can start over.
We never talked
about Soon-Yi or Woody.
But there was a long period
of guilt for me.
I felt like I had caused
a rift in my family.
I felt if I'd just
kept his secret
that I could've spared
my mom all this grief,
and my brothers
and sisters, myself.
None of my older siblings
were ever the same.
How are you feeling, Daisy?
I just remember my family
was turned upside down.
We were all devastated.
It was a sad time.
I think most of us tried
to get through with our lives.
Kids, Fletcher is leaving for college.
Come say good-bye.
We were a tight
family unit and
that was much less
so the case after this.
People went
into survival mode.
It's just a really difficult time
for everybody, especially Dylan.
- Santa didn't forget you, did he?
- Nope.
When she was growing up
she was sullen and anxiety-riddled,
like, riddled with anxiety.
I was younger, but even then the signs
of her being depressed were obvious.
- What are you doing with that?
- Taking your picture.
She was always hidden away,
writing her stories,
or she was drawing,
and she kept to herself a lot
so didn't feel the right to ask her;
I didn't think it was my place.
The only reason I even knew
about anything that had happened
is from the news, and media,
and that's it.
And it was kind of like
a Voldemort situation,
He Who Must Not Be Named situation,
he was never brought up.
Growing up I never spoke about it
with any of my siblings.
None of them asked.
They all went through their own
gauntlet of emotions over this.
Is she six? Is she seven?
Is she eight?
Is she nine? Is she ten?
Is she 11?
Is she 12? Is she 13?
Is she 14?
Yay, 14!
I spent a lot of high school
feeling like there was something
fundamentally wrong with me.
I felt like I was the only person
that this had ever happened to.
I was completely isolated.
I was hiding a part of myself that
I really should've been
honest about.
I could've had
healthier relationships
with friends, with men,
with my siblings
I didn't even speak about it
in any depth with my mom,
even with my therapist.
I had literally
one boyfriend in high school,
and that lasted three weeks.
I remember listening to some
of the other girls in my class
talk about the things they were
doing with boys and thinking,
oh my God, at some point
he's going to want this,
and that was terrifying.
So I broke up with him.
And it was a relationship I wanted.
- Breaking up with a certain person?
- Yes.
- Is that what you were doing?
- Yes.
- So how do you feel?
- Very liberated.
Good for you.
Yeah. I feel kind
of bad for him though.
What made you do it?
I needed more space
and more time.
So what's the next plan?
What are your priorities?
My priorities
I would
just like to be better than I am.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Mr. Woody Allen!
I could ask you about the crisis
that you had recently in your life
regarding your wife, Soon- Yi,
and all the surrounding stories
that were about that.
Did that have an effect on your
perception within America?
Did it make you less popular?
Did it affect your movie?
No, it was an interesting thing.
I had always been unpopular,
and when I was going through public
talk about my life, my private life,
all it did - those people that had
never liked me reconfirmed it.
They said, "I always knew he was
a terrible little cockroach,"
"and this proves it."
Those people that liked me
continued to like me.
It was of no consequence.
Apart from not going out in public
without a fake nose and glasses,
I simply went
about my business and worked.
Being innocent
I felt it's not my problem.
I can carry on.
I'm not going to sacrifice
precious work time over a bad call.
Their high-profile affair
stunned the public
and became grist
for the tabloids.
Now actor
and film director Woody Allen
and his long-time
girlfriend Soon-Yi Previn
are husband and wife.
The 62-year-old Allen
and 27-year-old Previn
were married Tuesday at a small
secret wedding in Venice, Italy.
Yeah, that's right, it's me.
It's me, you've seen me
in those films. I'm the guy.
Hi fellas! Don't get too excited.
I come here a few times a year.
Connecticut
Did you ever get into another intimate
partnership with a person after Woody?
- Yes?
- I did.
But I never
brought them home,
because I just didn't want to risk
anybody falling for one of my beautiful
children or grandchildren.
If I couldn't trust Woody
after 12 years,
how would I would never take
another risk with anybody else.
I don't know.
I don't trust myself to know.
How would you know?
I don't know.
So I never brought them home.
You want the box open, honey?
His front tooth, he lost it.
What do you have to say about it?
How does it feel?
Great.
My mother did such a good job
of shielding us from all of this.
She went above and beyond
to never say anything
that would be construed
as critical of my father
or pushing us to think
or say one thing or another.
She really just tried
to distance us and shield us.
But for all of us growing up
there was always
a lot of incentive to be drawn
into Woody Allen's efforts
to discredit my sister.
For example, he made funding
my college education
contingent on me speaking out
in his support publicly.
The offer always stood
that if I were willing
to publicly go against
my mother and my sister
that he would offer financial support,
support for my education,
and perhaps, a comfortable life
with a powerful, influential guy.
I think it was hugely derailing for
my mom personally and professionally.
I think it's pretty devastating
if you build a life with somebody
and have a large family,
and then turns out that everything
you thought was true is not true.
Nobody really wanted to hire me
except in other countries.
I got offered movies
in Ireland and in France,
so I took every job I could.
But he told me I would never
work again in this country.
What?
He said,
"No one will ever hire you again."
But then UNICEF invited me
to come on board with them
on the issue of polio
Polio eradication
means a lot to me personally.
I was inflicted
with polio as a child.
Then they made me an ambassador,
and then I said I want to go to Darfur,
because there was a genocide
unfolding there.
If you can leave people with one image
of what you want people to know,
what would that be?
Two and a half million people
have been driven out of their villages,
are forced to live amidst deplorable
conditions in these refugee camps.
It was just deeply meaningful work,
and that became completely consuming.
We need the political
will to act now.
We need moral leadership
to act now.
Live from the Kodak Theatre,
Hollywood and Highland,
welcome to the
74th Annual Academy Awards.
Academy Awards (2002)
Let me tell you
why I'm here exactly.
About four weeks ago
I was sitting home
in my apartment in New York
and the phone rang,
and a voice on the other end said,
"This is the Motion Picture Academy
of Arts and Sciences."
And I panicked immediately
because I thought
that they wanted their Oscars back.
Tell me why we're all
so fascinated by Woody Allen.
Is it just talent,
or is it something else?
Good writing, good directing,
you usually get a really good movie
at the end of it.
He has a mystique to him.
He's - and actors love him
because he trusts them.
I'm in debt to my loyal friend
and a remarkable artist, Woody Allen.
Thank you for having written
over all these years
some of the greatest characters
for women.
For any actor it is always
an extraordinary experience
to have the chance
to work those dialects.
I feel very lucky to be sitting
on this couch with a proven genius.
We have this idea of the genius
and the artist,
the doer, the person
who's making things happen,
and they're controlling the narrative,
and we want to align with that,
and we want to believe in it, we want
to identify with these characters.
We spend our lives listening
to their side of the story.
We want to be next to power.
We want to be next to the winner.
Woody Allen is someone who we accept
as kind of this philosopher.
And if we hear anything
troubling about a person
that sort of might've informed
our values at all,
we're not going to want
to believe it.
I think so much of this is about
our willingness to not know the thing
so that we don't have to deal with it.
When you're forced to see,
when you're forced to know,
it's so dispiriting, it's so hopeless,
it's so uncomfortable.
It's just easier, right,
to opt out and to go back.
What?
The movie, your movie, the French
have seen your movie in Paris
and they say it's the greatest
American film in 50 years.
- You're kidding!
- No.
You're being hailed
as a true artist.
There's an additional layer
of distortion
when this kind of an allegation
is raised against someone
who is not just beloved
in a traditional sense,
but beloved in a way where people
have an identity association with it,
where it's existential to them
that they grew up loving Woody Allen.
You see it with a lot of fans
of individuals
who are accused of terrible
and serious things in a credible way.
About 2 hours ago Michael Jackson was
arrested on child molestation charges.
I think it's all fabricated, it's lies,
it makes me cross, very angry.
There have been a lot of people
that once they do research
and they look
into what the truth really was,
they finally understand
what happened to Michael Jackson.
I think the public
has a great deal of trouble
believing that someone
they like could be a sex offender.
The public is very harsh
towards sex offenders,
as long as they are over
there and unlikeable.
Bill Cosby was my boyhood mentor.
There was no one bigger.
Over a dozen women
have come forward
alleging that they've been raped
by the legendary comic.
So watching this play out over
the last few years, for a lot of folks,
it's very, very difficult.
The kind of attachment
that people get to celebrities,
it's a little like the attachment
they have to a family member
just projected on someone
that they've never actually spoken to.
Roman Polanski became famous as the
director of such classics as Chinatown,
he has been infamous for having sex
with a 13 year old girl.
People get very invested
in that person's persona,
and they trust them.
People don't give up trust easily.
This director
who raped a 13-year-old
He didn't rape a 13-year-old.
It was statutory rape, all right?
So why do you side with him?
Because I
his version sounds more likely.
Quentin Tarantino later issued
an apology for his statement.
She wasn't unschooled
in sexual matters.
She was consenting and willing.
Then you have sex against your will?
This is not consensual?
Right, this is not consensual.
I was, "No - no."
If you are powerful celebrities,
rich men,
people are more likely
to believe your denials.
You are nearly impossible
to prosecute.
What's the position now
with regard to your children?
I still don't see my daughter.
I left her.
She threw her arms around me
and gave me
a list of presents to bring back to her
the next day I was going to see her,
which was two days later.
And she was 7 years-old then,
and we were close,
she was crazy about me, I was crazy
about her, I am, still of course,
and I've not been able to see her.
Connecticut
Luna! You see this?
Go get it.
Go for it? Nope.
These dogs don't hunt.
She used to.
She used to be more interested in toys,
but now you're older, wiser.
When we first met we were
at pivotal dating moments in our lives
where we were both looking for
something serious at the same time.
I was going on the Onion
for satire purposes
and I saw they had a dating site
powered by OkCupid.
And I'm, like, why not?
Maybe I'll find someone funny.
And I put this very honest
post up - profile up there,
saying, "I'm a geek
but you can take me out in public.
I shower, I promise,"
you know?
And within the first day I got
this really surprising message
from this really smoking-hot girl
with this burgundy bob,
and this cute little chin,
and I was, like - and it said,
"You didn't mention
you were a cute geek."
And I'm, like, oh my
It was the first and last time
I've ever flirted with someone.
Yeah, but you knocked it out
of the park. That's a win.
I felt really connected to him
really quickly.
I had never connected
to anyone like that before.
At first,
when we first started dating,
and we first started going into
the natural intimacies of dating,
I had no idea
about her past in that way.
It didn't really come up
until one day
we were just having some fun,
and suddenly she tensed up.
She just really tensed up,
and then immediately
just started crying uncontrollably.
And it turned out that I had
inadvertently triggered something.
A lot of it was based on actually
her lying down on her stomach
because it's the same position
she was in the attic.
And I didn't think of myself
as an incest survivor.
I heard about rape in the news
and it was just something
that happened to other people,
and it was much worse
than what I'd been through.
I had no right to complain about
anything that had happened to me
because it wasn't - it didn't fall
neatly into a specific category.
I just
I'm shaking talking about this.
That was, like, weird.
I got, like, shaky for a second.
Yeah, I just need a second.
My jaw is shaking.
I'm sorry.
I don't know.
I don't know. I'm just
My jaw is chattering.
And I'm not cold.
I'm not cold. I just
There was a period of time
in which my sister was saying,
"Look, I have consistently
told this story for years
and no one is listening,
and I want to go public with it again."
I said, "This is not worth it.
You are going to make
your entire life an identity
about this one thing
that happened to you as a kid."
I hadn't yet thoroughly interviewed her
or looked at the facts.
I just wanted
to run away from this.
By then I was a public figure,
and all I wanted was for it to go away.
Ronan Farrow spent several years
working at the State Department,
including in the Office
of the Special Representative
for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Ronan Farrow joins us at the table.
Ronan, good morning.
- Such a pleasure to be here, guys.
- Great to have you.
I spent years of my life trying to
build my own career and reputation
and do work that I cared
about and believed in,
and wanting
to avoid questions about this.
She and I had
knock-down-drag-out fights
where I essentially
told her to shut up,
where I said,
"We're clearing 20 years out,"
or whatever it was at that point,
"for God's sake, just leave it behind."
He asked me for the first time,
he said, "What happened to you?"
And he was obviously very
he was very sensitive about,
he was, like, "You don't have
to tell me if you don't want to."
But he asked me,
and so I shared it with him,
the whole everything.
And after I was done
there was a long silence,
and he just started crying.
She was incredibly brave
about saying, "No, this is the truth.
I have never changed my story.
There is evidence on my side.
If you actually read these
court documents you'll see that."
And I did.
For the first time as an adult,
as a journalist, as an attorney,
I read the court documents.
And my reaction
was, well, holy shit,
I've been turning away from
a real miscarriage of justice here.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Diane Keaton!
Golden Globe Awards (2014O
Thank you very much.
Thank you, thank you.
I think it's safe to say
that Woody Allen is an anomaly.
He's made 74 movies
in 48 years.
He's directed him, he's starred
in them, he's produced them,
and of course
he's written them.
He's written all of them,
every one.
I wasn't even watching
the Golden Globes,
and all of a sudden
my phone started blowing up,
and people were saying,
like, "I'm so sorry,"
like, "you shouldn't have
to go through this."
And then I saw
what they were talking about
The feature, for me anyway,
that sets Woody's writing apart
are the voices of four decades
of unforgettable female characters,
starting with la-dee-da Annie Hall
And
I had a panic attack,
and I felt so small.
a genius who takes chances
and never compromises his vision,
a filmmaker who fills his movies
with wry observation,
frequently painful truth, and some
of the best one-liners in history.
As I'm watching this I was reluctantly,
grudgingly realizing
that I as a public person by then
had to make a decision about whether
I was going to turn away from this.
And so I tweeted about it in a much
more direct way than I had before.
Missed the Woody Allen tribute.
Did they put the part where a woman
publicly confirmed he molested her
at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?
At some point in the evening
my husband came in and he said,
"You know, Ronan tweeted
this really cool thing."
It was kind
of a light bulb moment because
It felt like
somebody's talking about it.
I remember her calling me
and crying,
and saying
that it just meant so much to her
that after we had had all these fights
where I had told her to shut up,
that someone had finally
acknowledged her.
That was sort of the watershed
moment for me,
where I felt like if Ronan
is talking about it
maybe I can talk about it, too.
But the doctor
I was seeing at the time said,
"If you go into this you
are going to undo
all of the hard work
that you've done to heal yourself."
And my first thought was,
there has been no healing.
So I wrote this essay
and I sent it
to the New York Times
and the L. A. Times
opinion section.
She went very far down
the editorial process
with a major national newspaper,
which then resulted
in the editor calling me,
as a fellow journalist,
and saying, "We can't run this.
We have to cancel this even though
we feel like it checks out."
And then I reached out
to Nick Kristoff.
I had known
Mia and Ronan Farrow for years.
We were engaged
in activities on Darfur.
Ronan told me
that Dylan had written an essay
and might I be able to help?
I found her essay heartbreaking
and just devastating,
and I thought
it should have an outlet.
There were some raised eyebrows
at the Times.
It really appropriate
for a columnist to use his blog
to publish something
that the Times itself
does not want to publish
on the op-ed page?
Is it appropriate in particular when
that columnist is a family friend?
I also think that there was
still a culture at that point
of being careful about
giving voice to accusations
and protecting powerful men.
But at the end of the day Dylan
had written this extraordinary piece
from the heart,
and how could we not give
the person at the center of this
a chance to give her account
of something everybody else
in America had already talked about?
"What's your favorite
Woody Allen movie?
Before you answer
you should know,
when I was 7-years-old
Woody Allen took me by the hand
and led me
into a dim closet-like attic.
He told me
to lay on my stomach
and play
with my brother's electric train set.
Then he sexually assaulted me.
For as long as I could remember
my father had been doing things
to me that I didn't like.
I didn't like it when he would
stick his thumb in my mouth.
I didn't like it when he would
place his head in my naked lap
and breathe in and breathe out.
I would hide under the beds
or lock myself in the bathroom
to avoid these encounters.
But he always found me.
I thought this was how fathers
doted on their daughters.
But what he did to me
in the attic felt different.
I couldn't
keep the secret anymore.
Others are still scared, vulnerable,
and struggling
for the courage to tell the truth.
The message that Hollywood sends
matters for them.
So imagine your 7-year-old daughter
being led into an attic by Woody Allen.
Imagine she spends a lifetime
stricken with nausea
at the mention of his name.
Imagine a world
that celebrates her tormenter.
Now what's your favorite
Woody Allen movie?
I had gone for two decades
feeling like I was alone in this.
One of the first things that happened
within days of the essay being released
is that so many separate people
from my life
contacted me and talked
about what happened to them.
I think the gift that they
didn't realize they were giving me
was that I wasn't alone, or I
wasn't as alone as I thought I was.
And part of that,
there was something very reassuring,
but also devastating.
Because now I know
that so many people in my life
were suffering silently
the same way I was.
Imagine my sadness when not
only did Dylan not want to see me,
but instead wrote an open letter
saying I molested her.
The openness is important,
as the strategy behind going public
is not to resolve anything
but to smear me, her mother's goal.
I have so much respect for Dylan,
of who she is,
and what she had to do,
and how she did it.
To see Dylan claim herself,
her whole self,
and that meant going back
and getting little Dylan
and making her a part of this,
I just told her
how proud I was of her.
But inside I just crumple up,
because I know it's
I know he's going to attack me,
because he can't really
you know
How can you attack her?
She was a child.
So you can only attack me.
I'd always hoped
when Dylan grew up
she would somehow realize
how her mother had used her,
taking full advantage of her age
and vulnerability
to deprive her of her father,
knowing it was the surest
vengeance toward me.
Film director Woody Allen
promises to fight renewed
allegations of child molestation.
The Times
published his lengthy rebuttal,
blasting the allegations as false,
and blaming former girlfriend,
Mia Farrow, for manipulating Dylan.
"I love her",
he writes of his daughter"
and hope one day she will grasp
how she has been exploited
by a mother more interested
in her own festering anger
than her daughter's well-being."
He writes,
"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 be a strong mother
to hate her father,
the image of me Mia
wanted to establish had taken route.
It was very difficult
to have come forward
with something so deeply personal
and be told that
not only are the things
you're saying not true,
but that you don't have the authority
to speak about your own experiences.
Welcome back. Tonight another child
of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen
is speaking out in defense
of Woody Allen.
Moses Farrow's interview
is in the new issue of People Magazine.
He says his sister Dylan's
renewed allegations
that Allen molested her when
she was seven are flat out made up.
I got a call from my mom
saying that there was
a reporter from People Magazine
who was talking to Moses,
and he was accusing me
of lying about my abuse,
and accusing my mom
of abusing him.
Moses goes on to say
that during his childhood
he was physically harmed,
really horrible person
- Physically harmed by
- By Mia.
He really goes to great lengths
to paint a portrait of his childhood
that was nothing short of horrific.
I shared a bedroom with Moses.
I never saw anybody
dragged downstairs,
I never saw anybody hit
or locked in closets
I have no idea
why he would do this.
He is suddenly speaking ill
of my family, of my mom.
The was the typical grounding,
yelling when we did something wrong.
But nothing abusive.
- Nothing at all.
- No.
The things he accuses her of
are just ludicrous.
I absolutely would've remembered
if she locked us in barns
and smacked us
and screamed at us.
I saw his rapport with my mother.
My mom was devoted to Moses.
She was kind and gentle to him.
And all through my childhood
and much of my adult life
Moses stood by my sister
and my mother.
MOSES HANDWRITTEN CARD
TO MIA WHEN HE WAS 29
I am forever grateful
of the love you offered and shared.
You are an extraordinary woman
and I love you and our family.
Love Always
Moses + Kim + baby too!
He told numerous people in his life,
including his ex-wife,
that he believed Dylan.
We love and miss Moses,
and it's been really devastating.
When I received that phone call
I just remember bursting into tears
like
It was like I'd been told
that this person
that I knew,
and loved, and trusted was gone.
He says the incident in question
that Dylan outlined in her letter,
the incident in the attic
with the train set,
couldn't have happened
by his own memory
and he himself was a child
because on that day
they were all in public rooms,
and so there's simply
no way it could have happened.
In a 2018 blog post, Moses stated:
"As the 'man of the house' that day,
I had promised to keep an eye out
for any trouble
I deliberately made sure to note
everyone's coming and going."
Records show that in 1992,
Moses told police that he wasn't aware
of Dylan's whereabouts at all times.
Moses stated that he saw Dylan
leave the room.
He did not see Dylan after that, until
his mother came home from shopping.
According to Woody Allen's
1993 testimony,
Moses was not with Woody Allen
for much of that day.
ABRAMOWITZ: Did you spend time
with Moses on August 4th?
ALLEN: No
He was present on August 4th.
But he was off by himself.
He was in an angry mood.
disputed Dylan's account of her abuse,
questioning her memory
of a train set in the attic:
" there was no electric train set
in that attic"
did somebody
suggest to the adult Dylan
that such a specific detail
would make her story more credible?"
New to the story
was a fresh creative touch.
Something thar never came up
a single time
during the months of investigation
in any of Dylan's numerous interviews.
That is Dylan suddenly claiming
she was molested
while she stared if the electric trains
in the attic going round and round.
In August 1992, three detectives
observed a small train set
assembled in the attic crawl space
and documented its location
in a detailed drawing
Toy Train Track
Dylan mentioned the train set
in at least seven interviews
with her pediatrician
an key investigators in 1992.
Mother's attic has a train.
She stated that she was playing
with a train set
She said "To play with the trains."
They went into the "attic"
to play with the train.
I was now
the real-life protagonist
of a drama about an innocent person
wrongly accused.
Of course, unlike Hollywood,
no Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda
emerged suddenly to take my case
and right the wrongs.
But in real life some rose
and were fearless enough
to take a principle stand.
You accepted an award recently
for Woody Allen.
- Did you have any trepidations?
- No, of course not.
You have to look at my life
this way.
He gave me my opportunity
to be here and talk to you.
It's all because of Woody Allen.
Alec Baldwin
was one of the very few
with the courage to speak out
bravely and clearly on my behalf.
Alec Baldwin continued to defend
and battle direct to Woody Allen
who has been accused of sexual abuse
by adopted daughter Dylan Farrow.
Javier Bardem said he has doubts
about the longstanding allegations
of sexual misconduct
against the filmmaker.
Actor Adrien Brody recently weighed in
on the sexual assault allegations
against filmmakers Woody Allen
and Roman Polanski.
People make mistakes in lives,
and, you know
Gotta forgive?
It's not for me to delve into.
It's not really my place.
I think that's a family issue and I
hope they can resolve it, I really do.
So there seemed to be not
a coordinated effort exactly,
but a series of commenters
defending him in a way
that I found kind of perplexing
and that seemed
to be repeating
a lot of the same talking points.
There is a very strong fact
in Woody's column, and that is this:
that a team of experts concluded back
then that Dylan was not abused.
Yale-New Haven
determined after six months
where everybody was interviewed
that it didn't happen.
You believe she believes it
because this idea was
The fact that the Yale New Haven
report is still cited
is evidence
of just how powerful it is
when a PR machine plants an idea
into the public narrative.
I at the time was in the media
and was getting the emails
from Leslee Dart and Woody Allen's
powerful PR team.
There were dozens of reporters from
major news outlets on those emails.
She basically positioned this as,
"Here's this way you can attack
this young woman's credibility.
Here's a validator you can put on air
to say that she's brainwashed."
And when you have Leslee Dart
on your payroll,
that is someone who can say,
"You'd better print this
or I'm going to withhold my clients
from you in the future."
Leslee Dart reps a lot of really big,
important celebrities.
She's known for being one of the people
who might blackball a journalist
for covering something in a way she
didn't like, which bears itself out.
When Ronan wrote an article for the
Hollywood Reporter about his father,
and Leslee Dart banned the Hollywood
Reporter from coming to the luncheon
that was celebrating the release
of Allen's new movie.
It does tell us a bit
about how Hollywood works though,
right, that these publicists
are very powerful.
They are out there
to create a narrative around
their influence around their client.
There is a culture
of transactional access journalism
where powerful PR people trade stories,
and plant stories,
and put into the public consciousness
whatever their clients want.
Is it a story? Is it a fantasy?
Dylan Farrow
had likely been coached.
- She had been coached
- had likely been coached.
Dylan may have been affected
by a product of Parental Alienation,
the ugliness between the spouses.
There have been cases
of Parental Alienation,
where one parent wants to turn
the child against the other parent,
and therefore may begin coaching
them as to a sexual abuse
that perhaps did not happen.
Since Woody's Allen's high profile
use of Parental Alienation
as a defense strategy in 1992,
it has become widely publicized
by the media
an extensively
and used in family courts.
Parental Alienation spread like
wildfire across the United States.
I'm in family court all the time.
I read about this in the case law,
and it's absolutely ubiquitous
that that claim
will be made in family court.
It's made almost every day
in every state across the country.
It got a hold in the court system
because it was easier
to blame a mother than to blame
a father for being an abuser.
It was way more believable
that a mother could be
hysterical, and angry, and upset
than a father could be an abuser.
In 98% of cases, when accused fathers
claimed Parental Alienation,
family courts did not accept the child
sexual abuse accusations as true.
From a study of published
family court decisions in the U. S.
over a 10-year period.
Meier (2020) Journal of Social
Welfare and Family Law
Not only do courts
not believe abuse
when it's alleged
by mothers against fathers,
women lose custody
for alleging abuse against fathers.
And they particularly lose custody
when they allege child sexual abuse
and child physical abuse.
Concerned parents protested this
very issue recently in downtown LA.
What do we want? Children protected.
When do we want it? Now.
We reported abuse
and I lost my grandchild.
I reported abuse and lost my son.
I reported abuse and lost custody.
The culture has to understand
the family courts
have been not only not protecting,
but really sending children to abuse.
Every year, custody courts require
an estimated 58,000 children
to have unsupervised contact
or live with a parent
who's been accused of abuse.
Silberg (2008) The Leadership Council
on Child Abuse Interpersonal Violence.
After being put in the custody
of their alleged abuser,
88% of children
reported new incidents of abuse.
These children never recover.
They have an increased rate
of suicide attempts.
They have severe
mental-health difficulties.
They have dissociative disorders.
For so many victims of incest
the long-term impact is devastating.
It feels isolating
to be a survivor of sexual abuse.
It doesn't go away.
It doesn't vanish overnight.
It's a lifelong sentence.
And this is not just my story;
there are still so many of us
out there who feel unseen,
who feel unheard,
who feel disbelieved.
It's the story of everyone who has
come up against a powerful figure
and had to hold their own
against ridiculous odds.
Allegations of sexual assault
made by a dozen actresses
against Harvey Weinstein
appeared online in early October.
And joining us at the table,
Ronan Farrow,
who investigated Weinstein
for ten months
and published this chilling New Yorker
story about alleged assaults and rapes.
We are in this moment where women
are coming forward one after another
in industry after industry, telling
the hardest stories of a lifetime.
As he interviewed women making
accusations. Dylan was on his mind.
She made a very brave choice
to go public
because she thought
it could help others.
Dylan Farrow
says she's speaking up again
to have her voice included in the
Time's Up and Me Too conversations.
With so much silence
being broken,
it was important
to add my story to theirs.
Woody Allen was never charged
with a crime in this case.
But as we know
there was probable cause
determined by the Connecticut State's
attorney in '93,
but he didn't go through
with prosecution.
Frank Maco thought Dylan was
too fragile to face a celebrity trial.
Connecticut
I wished that I had testified or that
I had just been put up there anyway.
I don't wish that Frank Maco
had disregarded my mental health,
but I wish that I had been stronger,
that I hadn't crumpled so much
under the pressure.
I, to this day, feel like
I was given an opportunity to be brave
and I turned it down.
In Fall 2020,
Frank Maco and Dylan
met for the first time
since his 1993 decision.
When I made my decision back in 1993
not to prosecute
I told your mom at that time
that if at some point you wanted
to find out what I did, why I did it,
I would certainly meet with you and
answer whatever questions you had.
My mom made it known to me that I had
a lot to be very thankful to you for,
that I'd been spared
the circus of a courtroom
and all of that madness,
and probably trauma.
But a part of me really,
really wishes that I could've done it,
and that I could've
had my day in court.
You have every right to have
whatever feelings you have.
But I can tell you right now,
my fault because there was never
a chance that I would do that to you.
To just put you on the stand,
have you freeze,
is something
that's incomprehensible.
But I never want
to hear that you blame yourself.
I made the decision.
And do I think about it?
Of course.
That case - as many cases
as I've tried,
as many cases of sexual abuse
as I've tried,
as many murder cases
as I've tried,
what's the case
that's going to be with me
for the rest of my days?
My decision
in this investigation.
I wasn't exactly sure
what I wanted to say.
I guess I needed to hear that.
Thank you for everything!
About two months
after the allegations against Weinstein
Dylan wrote another op-ed,
this time for the L.A. Times,
and asked explicitly,
"Why hasn't the #MeToo movement
toppled Woody Allen yet?"
And in it she links the way
that Hollywood had protected
other predators to the way
people had protected her father
and renewed
her allegations against him.
I'm tired of not being believed,
and being told that
that I'm wrong about something
I know 100 percent for fact.
I'm tired of being told
that my experiences don't matter.
I'm tired of feeling
like he matters more than me.
I'm tired of this whole argument
of separating the art from the artist
so that you can feel better about it.
The #MeToo movement has forced the
country to take a second look at art.
- We've known for a long time that art
- not all artists are nice people.
Caravaggio murdered somebody.
Charles Dickens
was an anti-Semite.
The list goes on, right?
The question is, at the end
of the day is it still good art?
What do we do with great art
made by bad people?
How is the work altered by our
knowledge of their badness?
Do we keep consuming it?
Do we not consume it?
What about Michael Jackson?
It's a slippery slope,
the whole idea
that we need a spotless moral
character for any artist,
because no one's going
to pass that test.
- Bill Cosby.
- I can't listen to it now.
- You can't?
- I can't separate it.
- You can't?!
- I can't.
To me it's a
Because there's love there.
There's love there.
When you look back at men
like Picasso
putting out his cigarette
on woman's cheek,
it's not, like, you know,
there was, like, a rising up
to argue
that we shouldn't buy Picassos.
If anything, those behaviors
burnished their images.
So there was this way
in which for a long time
these really aggro male behaviors
were part of the artist's image,
and part of maybe even
what made people interested in them.
The big question is what
do you do with these things
that are out there
and that mean something to you?
Do you never revisit them, or do you
revisit them and learn from them?
I think the mistake women make
is we fall in love with the artist.
- You are you listening?
- Yes, I'm listening.
- We fall in love with the artist
- I don't think that's a mistake.
I think she's right.
You can't separate!
When you write about Woody Allen
and you talk about Woody Allen,
and you don't speak
in the most glowing terms,
there tends to be response
from in particular male fans
who sort of argue with
the whole premise
that there might be
a biographical case
to be made
against Woody's work.
But I actually think that acknowledging
the biographical element,
withstanding it, and still continuing
to consume the art,
is a stronger argument
for the endurance,
and the beauty,
and the importance of art,
rather than pretending
that the biography doesn't touch it.
It's so much easier when nobody's
making any money, isn't it?
Wagner's not getting any money
when we perform his operas.
In the process
of spending all this time
understanding the mind of someone
who I thought of as abusive,
and kind of understanding
how his mind worked,
and what made things tick,
it was giving him box office,
giving him press,
giving him more power.
And by writing about his movies
and contributing to his movies
I was increasing the power
that he was able to abuse.
And for me that was the line.
So I wrote an article
in the Hollywood Reporter
about how I wouldn't watch
anymore new Woody Allen films.
I had to turn off all my notifications.
I've never gotten so much hate mail.
I just, like, tried to be offline
for a while after I wrote this.
I haven't seen
a new Woody Allen film since,
and I probably
won't until he's dead.
I got an interview
with Roland Pollard.
Oh my gosh, that is amazing.
And it's on campus?
It's in Manhattan.
So one of the earliest actors to say
they wouldn't work with him again
and they wished
they hadn't in the past
was Griffin Newman who had shot
scenes for Rainy Day in New York.
He said he wished he hadn't done it,
and he donated his salary.
Several other people followed.
Rebecca Hall, and Timothee Chalamet,
and Selena Gomez,
all of these people started
donating their salaries as well.
When the first messages of support
actually came I was kind of shocked.
It was presented to actors
that these were people
who it was okay to work with.
But now of course I feel I can
just say I shouldn't have done.
Greta Gerwig Regrets
Working with Woody Allen
I think what they did took
a lot of bravery in and of itself.
And it's really helped me to
to reclaim some of my own
sense of self-worth.
And every message of support
that I've received has been a gift.
Over the past weeks several celebrities
have voiced their support for Farrow,
including Natalie Portman, who spoke
out on CBS Sunday Morning.
I believe Dylan. I want to say that.
I believe you, Dylan.
I do think
that my sister's ferocious courage
in insisting that she speak out
again as an adult
was part of a set of circumstances
that catalyzed more women
feeling empowered to speak.
And you can chart
how different the reaction was
when my sister spoke in 2014
and then when she again spoke in 2018.
The culture changed in that window
in a significant way,
and we are for the first time
hearing stories like hers,
and not spin and counternarrative.
The press lump me with any number
of men who were charged,
convicted, or admitted
to sex crimes or harassment
of large numbers of women
on numerous occasions,
despite the fact
the accusation against me
had repeatedly been found
not to have occurred.
Schools stopped giving courses
on my films.
I was cut out of a documentary
about the Carlyle Hotel.
I was cut out of a series
on poetry by PBS.
My completed film,
a Rainy Day in New York,
lay around undistributed in America,
though mercifully the rest of the world
was not so nuts.
A Rainy Day in New York grossed
more than $22,000,000 internationally.
Throughout her relationship
with Woody Allen,
Soon-Yi has remained mostly silent
but now the 47 year old is speaking out.
Previn told
New York Magazine quote,
"What's happened to Woody
is so upsetting, so unjust."
We should point out
that Woody Allen
was present for much of that interview
and he weighed in periodically.
Soon-Yi says Mia Farrow
had a tendency
of slapping and spanking Soon-Yi
or calling her stupid and moronic.
Mia's other children
have all contradicted Moses
and Soon-Yi's claims
that Mia was abusive.
This is a very pointed piece.
It's out there because Woody Allen can't
make the movies that he wants to make.
Actors, actresses are apologizing
for having worked with him,
perhaps refusing to work with him.
It looks like his latest film
has been put on the shelf.
This is a calculated move
in a media war.
He's weaponized two of my children
that he's turned against me.
They are all people I loved
with all my heart, all of them.
And they're all people that I would
have laid down my life for.
And I love Soon-Yi.
It took me six years to throw away the
Christmas stocking I knitted for her,
thinking she would come back.
But she didn't.
When Dylan wanted to confront it
or Ronan did, or whatever,
I was always there to say
"You do what you need to do
and I'll be really proud of you,
whatever it is.
If you decide never to talk about it,
believe me I understand.
If you decide you need
to talk about it, I'm there with you.
I'm there with you.
And I'm super proud.
If that's part of an evolution,
oh my gosh, that's wonderful."
And then I would go home
shaking and thinking,
my God, I hope she doesn't.
Because I knew what would come,
and I'd be so scared.
I was so scared of him.
Are you still scared of him?
That shouldn't go with my strong
package that I'd like to present.
What makes you fearful?
I don't know. I'm just scared.
I'm scared of him, you know, of
A person who has no allegiance
to truth will do anything.
A person who will do anything
is somebody to be scared of.
And so I worried that when
this documentary comes out
he will be on the attack again.
He'll do whatever he has to do
to try to save himself,
from the truths,
from the mess he made.
If I could take it all back I would.
I wish I'd never met him, of course.
That's my great regret of my life,
to bring somebody like that
He should never have been
in the family.
Hello! Hi there!
- Do you want a cup of coffee?
- Always.
I know my daughter!
- Do you want milk or cream?
- Cream?!
- Cream?!
- I thought I did but I
My mind goes back
on what should I have done.
And I know what I should've done.
And then it's why didn't I?
And then who
was I that didn't do those things,
when I should have?
And I know
that I should have now.
Do you ever feel angry at me
for somehow letting this happen,
bringing this person in the house,
bringing this person into a family?
You very easily could have
chosen not to believe me,
to take his word over mine,
and just, you know I mean,
and I've talked to other survivors
that say to me,
"The difference in our story
is that my mom didn't believe me,
and my mom didn't protect me,
and my mom was not there for me.
She was not willing to fight for me."
Whatever other mistakes you made,
I just feel like
you were there when it mattered.
So this is the photo album
that I made for my daughter,
following in my mother's footsteps.
I made a photo album.
I kept all my cards
from my baby shower,
a couple four-leaf clovers that I found
within a week of each other.
Just maybe they're good luck.
Pictures of me all glowing,
and pregnant, and happy.
The second I found out
I was having a little girl
I was overjoyed,
but I was also terrified.
And there are moments when
I look at my daughter
and I see little flickers
of little Dylan in her,
and I get what my mom did for me,
how hard it was.
Hi!
I came to you with
we came here.
You came here, you did.
I'm so glad to see you.
Mommy can catch it.
Look, see what she did?
There's so much
about what I've been through
that I'll never be able
to fully explain.
I think that the best gift
that I could've given my daughter
is that she has a really
wonderful father.
Honestly sometimes when I watch
my husband and my daughter together
I actually feel a little jealous.
But it's bittersweet
because I know I'm paying it forward.
Dylan Farrow released her debut
She is currently working
on a sequel.
Mia Farrow continues to work
with the International Rescue Committee
to address malnutrition
in South Sudan and Chad.
Woody Allen completed
It was filmed
and released in Europe.
He and Soon-Yi Previn are still married
and have two children.
Neither Woody Allen
nor Soon-Yi Previn
responded to requests for interviews.
Moses Farrow
declined to be interviewed.
Woody Allen denies
ever having been sexually inappropriate
or abusive with Dylan.
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