Is Hollywood finally listening to the daughter who accuses Woody Allen?
As the Weinstein scandal means sex abusers are being called to account ...
American TV viewers have grown used to the sight of tearful young women pouring out their hearts about sexual abuse they’ve suffered at the hands of powerful Hollywood men. Yet they couldn’t have missed the especially acute sense of despair and anger in the voice of Dylan Farrow this week. not only because her alleged abuser was not a casting couch predator but her own father — but also because her tale has been told again and again to a film industry that wasn’t listening.
as the adopted daughter of the actor and director Woody allen pointed out, she has been saying for more than 25 years that he molested her when she was seven — and yet it neither dimmed his cachet in Hollywood, nor made actors and actresses pause for thought before signing up for his films.
many of those same actors, Farrow noted in an interview with CBS on Thursday, are now rushing to condemn other film industry predators and join the vociferous anti-harassment movements Time’s Up and #meToo.
it’s easy to understand her frustration as other men are named and shamed — often by anonymous accusers — for alleged offences that, frankly, pale by comparison to what she says the 82-year-old director of manhattan and annie Hall did to her as a child.
The question now is whether, after the downfall of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, the mood of recrimination will mean Woody allen finally becomes a pariah, too.
a number of stars have been falling over themselves to announce publicly that they regret working with allen. Some have even pledged to give their earnings from the films to anti-sexual harassment groups.
They have so far included the British actress rebecca Hall, ellen Page from the X-men films, Oscar-winner natalie Portman, and mira Sorvino, who won an academy award for her role in allen’s 1995 film mighty aphrodite.
Hall, 35, starred in allen’s 2008 film Vicky cristina Barcelona and is in his new film, a rainy Day in new York. She said she has now thought ‘very deeply’ about working with allen, and has become convinced she’d erred after ‘reading and re-reading’ Dylan Farrow’s accounts of her abuse.
Yesterday colin Firth, who starred in allen’s 2014 film magic in The moonlight, said: ‘i wouldn’t work with him again.’
Other veteran stars such as Kate Winslet — who is in allen’s 2017 film Wonder Wheel — and alec Baldwin, have stood by him.
THE problem Dylan has faced for years is that it has been almost impossible to disentangle her claims from the vicious break-up that raged between Woody allen and her adoptive mother mia Farrow. The director has long argued Dylan was just a pawn in mia Farrow’s campaign to destroy him.
although they never married, allen and Farrow had a 12-year relationship and she starred in 13 of his films including The Purple rose Of cairo, and Hannah and Her Sisters. But it all ended dramatically in 1992 after she discovered he had naked pictures of Soon-Yi Previn, a Korean orphan she had adopted with ex-husband andre Previn.
Farrow learnt that, despite their age difference, allen, then 56, and Soon-Yi, 20, had recently begun an affair. On august 4 that same year, allen — by then estranged from mia Farrow — was visiting her connecticut country home. allen had adopted Dylan eight months earlier with moses, 14, another orphan Farrow had added to her family. She and allen also had a biological son, ronan, then five.
This week, in her first TV interview about her shocking allegations, Dylan recalled how, while her mother was out, allen took her to an attic space. There, he told the fair-haired child to play with her brother’s toy train.
‘He sat behind me in the doorway, and as i played with the toy train, i was sexually assaulted,’ she told CBS presenter Gayle King. ‘as a seven-year-old i would have said he touched my private parts — which i did say.’
a babysitter later claimed she had seen allen kneeling with his face in Dylan’s lap. When questioned by her mother, Dylan told her what had happened. Two of Farrow’s nannies compounded suspicions by admitting Dylan had briefly gone missing that day and had been found at one point without any underwear.
mia Farrow took her to a paediatrician and, embarrassed, Dylan initially indicated allen had just touched her on the shoulder, she told CBS. But when Farrow took her back, she told her what she had told her mother, and the paediatrician alerted the authorities.
Woody allen, who was told about Dylan’s allegations four days after his visit, insisted this inconsistency suggested mia Farrow had brainwashed their daughter into thinking she had been abused, and coached her in what to say.
Dylan, now 32 and the married mother of a 16-month-old girl, denies this — as allen denies molesting her. The CBS presenter this week played Dylan a recording of allen telling a TV documentary it was ‘insane’ to suggest he would come up to a ‘house full of enemies... at the height of a very bitter, acrimonious custody fight’, and ‘choose this moment to be a child molester’.
in fact, allen was wrong — he didn’t begin custody proceedings over Dylan and the other children until a week after the alleged sexual abuse incident.
Dylan burst into tears after watching the allen TV excerpt. ‘i’m sorry, i thought i could handle it,’ she said. ‘He’s lying and he’s been lying for so long. it’s difficult for me to see him and to hear his voice.’
The attic incident was just the final straw, she said, in allen’s endlessly inappropriate behaviour towards her. ‘He would follow me around. He was always touching me, cuddling me and if i ever said, you know, like i want to go off by myself, he wouldn’t let me.’
When her interviewer wondered if this wasn’t just the behaviour of a doting dad, she shot back: ‘except he wasn’t this way with [her brother] ronan.’
allen has never been charged, though connecticut police asked the child Sexual abuse clinic of a local hospital to investigate. it concluded there had been no sexual molestation.
a paediatrician cited inconsistencies in Dylan’s account, judging she had either been coached by her mother or was emotionally disturbed — possibly both.
HOWEVER, the judge at the couple’s custody trial disagreed, finding no evidence mia Farrow had coached Dylan. He also questioned the reliability of the abuse clinic’s report. The judge wouldn’t even give allen visiting rights to Dylan, let alone custody, saying she had to be protected from ‘grossly inappropriate’ behaviour.
in the contradictory findings that have dogged this case, a separate 14-month investigation by the new York social services department also found no evidence of molestation. However, Frank maco, the lead prosecutor in the case, sparked controversy when he questioned the methodology of reports clearing allen.
He said there had been ‘probable cause’ to charge allen in 1993 but — in agreement with mia Farrow — considered Dylan too ‘fragile’ to handle a celebrity court case.
irked by acclaim for a new Woody allen film four years ago, Dylan detailed her claims in a letter to the new York Times. ‘For as long as i could remember, my father had been doing things to me that i didn’t like,’ she wrote.
allen returned fire in the same newspaper, saying: ‘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.’
He once again insisted his innocence following this week’s CBS interview, accusing the Farrow family of ‘cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time’s Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation’.
as for ronan, he has always sided with his mother and sister Dylan. His role in this drama has taken on a new significance in recent months after his devastating expose about the behaviour of Harvey Weinstein in The new Yorker magazine did so much to bring down the producer.
That has only served to remind the public of the allegations against his own father, which he is convinced are true.
Woody allen has weathered successive attempts by the Farrows to revive the controversy, but many in Hollywood now believe the tide has finally turned and his film-making career, nowadays filled with more misses than hits, is irreparably damaged.
if that is the case, then the question must be asked: is it a coincidence that — as happened with Harvey Weinstein — the industry is turning on Woody allen only now that his star has waned?