Allen v Farrow has been a triggering and emotional watch not only because of the allegations against Woody Allen from Dylan and Mia Farrow, but also how much personal information needed to be exposed to reveal things that were on the public record in 1993.
**TW: Child Sexual Assault/Grooming.**
The third episode of Allen v. Farrow is about the custody battle between the two figures and also everything else surrounding the case—first of all, Woody Allen being able to use the media to say whatever he wanted and fame Mia Farrow as a woman scorned.
This is something I’ve heard even friends of mine mention, because the narrative since we were kids was that Mia was mad about Woody Allen’s “affair” with Soon-Yi. As an adult looking at that sentence, I find it so absurd.
Soon-Yi was Mia Farrow’s daughter. Mia was with Woody Allen for twelve years, and they had one biological child together, with Allen eventually adopting Moses and Dylan. How is that situation appropriate? How does Mia Farrow walk out of that situation the bad guy? This was especially suspect to me because Mia Farrow’s ex husband cheated on her with her best friend at the time. She didn’t accuse him of being a child molester of their young children.
Woody Allen was also allowed to control the narrative because as a New York filmmaker, he was seen as an icon—as a homegrown hero with a shrew trying to take him down. He spoke out often and loudly about the situation while Farrow chose not to. As the primary parent of nine children, one of them who had gone through an alleged trauma, of course she would be more concerned with just taking care of them.
One of the things you’ll see brought up a lot was that Woody Allen was “exonerated” in 1992. The Yale New Haven Child Sex Abuse Clinic did a report, conducted on behalf of the Connecticut police. But the docuseries explains how flawed that report may have been, especially since all the notes around it were destroyed. They questioned Dylan nine times, which, at that age, was a lot for a child.
Dyaln as an adult says, “The more I was asked the same question over and over, the more I began to wonder, ‘What do they want from me?'” That report is where we got the lines that Dylan’s account was “unreliable, untrustworthy and/or that Mia Farrow was a fabricator of this incident,” and were “likely reinforced and encouraged by her mother Mia Farrow, who was enraged with Mr. Allen.”
Connecticut state prosecutor Frank Maco, however, did not “exonerate” Allen, as he was the only person who could do so. Based on evidence in the Connecticut investigation, it was recommended arrest warrants be issued against Allen on first degree and fourth degree charges of sexual assault. They found Allen to be “inconsistent” and that Dylan was credible.
However, because the entire case would be based on Dylan’s testimony, he didn’t prosecute Allen because he was concerned about “the further traumatization of the child.”
Then we get to the custody battle itself, where the judge denied Woody Allen custody and said his behavior with Dylan was inappropriate.
What shocked me was that … it was all there. A rejection of Mia Farrow was a vengeful woman, the judge saying the Yale New Haven report was “sanitized and, therefore, less credible,” and finally, that “we will probably never know what occurred on August 4, 1992…[but] Mr. Allen’s behavior toward Dylan was grossly inappropriate and…measures must be taken to protect her.”
All of this has been part of the public record since 1993. So why don’t people care? Why is Woody Allen still being defended? Why is Mia Farrow still seen as a vindictive ex? Why did a documentary have to come out (and be criticized as one-sided) over information that has been readily accessible for nearly 30 years?
Because it is not about the truth. It is about which public image is more fulfilling to the audience—who they want to be good and who they want to be bad. That’s frightening because it only serves to highlight that all it takes is a popular persona to make people treat dubious facts as more reliable than clear public record and full testimony.
Mia Farrow doesn’t need to be a perfect mother or person for this to be true. But because she is neither, it has been easy for her to be framed as evil, wicked, manipulative, and vindictive over a man who seduced and then married his ex-girlfriend’s daughter.
(via Rolling Stone, image: HBO)
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