‘WOODY IS INNOCENT’
Twenty-five years after her controversial relationship with Woody Allen was exposed, Soon-yi Previn accuses Mia Farrow of abuse
Soon-yi Previn speaks out against Mia Farrow
After decades of speculation about her relationship with husband Woody Allen, Soon-yi Previn has revealed how she fell in love with the filmmaker after years of alleged abuse by her mother, Allen’s former girlfriend, Mia Farrow.
Speaking with New York Magazine, Previn gives a harrowing account of growing up as Farrow’s adopted daughter. “Mia wasn’t maternal to me from the get-go,” Previn says. She claims the Oscar-winning actress abused her physically as a child, slapping her on the face, hitting her with a hairbrush and, on one occasion, throwing a porcelain rabbit at her.
Previn recalls an occasion – soon after being adopted in Korea in May 1978 by Farrow and her then-husband, composer André Previn – when her mother tried to teach her English and threw wooden alphabet bricks at her when she got her letters wrong. Previn also alleges Farrow shouted, “I should send you to an insane asylum” and called her “stupid” and “moronic”.
The 47-year-old says she was prompted to speak out in the wake of Farrow’s adopted daughter Dylan’s renewed accusation in December 2017 that her dad, Allen, molested her as a child.“What’s happened to Woody is so upsetting, so unjust. [Mia] has taken advantage of the #Metoo movement and paraded Dylan as a victim. And a whole new generation is hearing about it when they shouldn’t,” she said.
Dylan and her journalist brother Ronan, whose work on uncovering Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexually abusive behaviour helped prompt the #Metoo movement, issued statements condemning Previn’s interview. Dylan said the piece includes “multiple obvious falsehoods” and “bizarre fabrications about my mother”. She added, “I continue to be an adult woman making a credible allegation unchanged for two decades, backed up by evidence.”
Ronan wrote, “I owe everything I am to Mia Farrow. She is a devoted mum who went through hell for her family all while creating a loving home for us. But that has never stopped Woody Allen and his allies from planting stories that attack and vilify my mother to deflect from my sister’s credible allegation of abuse … I’m angry that New York Magazine would participate in this kind of a hit job.”
While six of Dylan and Ronan’s other siblings issued a joint statement in support of their mother, Moses Farrow has remained silent. In May, he published a critical blog about his mother’s behaviour, repeating some of Previn’s claims and explaining why he didn’t believe his sister’s abuse accusations.
Previn says her affair with Allen began in the autumn of 1991 in the US, when she was 21 years old. Farrow learnt about the affair at the beginning of 1992, when she discovered nude photos Allen had taken of Previn.
The following August, Allen was accused of abusing Dylan. He wasn’t charged and denied the claims, saying they were concocted by Farrow to punish him. He sued for custody of Dylan, Ronan and Moses, but lost the case in June 1993 and the decision was upheld two more times on appeal.
Previn – who has two adopted daughters with Allen, Bechet, 19, and Manzie, 18 – admits to feeling guilty for what her relationship with Allen did to Farrow. She acknowledges the “huge betrayal” and explains how she was desperate for affection after her unhappy childhood. “I know this is no justification,” she explained. “But Mia was never kind to me, never civil. And here was a chance for someone showing me affection and being nice to me, so of course I was thrilled and ran for it.”
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