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The Times gives Woody Allen a forum in the Sunday Review section to respond to the accusations made by his daughter Dylan in last weekend's paper. "Twenty one years ago,"
he begins, "when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn’t give it a second thought."
We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn’t even hire a lawyer to defend myself. It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer.I naïvely thought the accusation would be dismissed out of hand because of course, I hadn’t molested Dylan and any rational person would see the ploy for what it was. Common sense would prevail. After all, I was a 56-year-old man who had never before (or after) been accused of child molestation. I had been going out with Mia for 12 years and never in that time did she ever suggest to me anything resembling misconduct. Now, suddenly, when I had driven up to her house in Connecticut one afternoon to visit the kids for a few hours, when I would be on my raging adversary’s home turf, with half a dozen people present, when I was in the blissful early stages of a happy new relationship with the woman I’d go on to marry — that I would pick this moment in time to embark on a career as a child molester should seem to the most skeptical mind highly unlikely. The sheer illogic of such a crazy scenario seemed to me dispositive.
Notwithstanding, Mia insisted that I had abused Dylan and took her immediately to a doctor to be examined. Dylan told the doctor she had not been molested. Mia then took Dylan out for ice cream, and when she came back with her the child had changed her story.
It goes on like that. He details the investigation that ensued, the conclusions and how life went on for everybody, except that he was cut off from Mia Farrow's children except for Moses, now 36, who backs Allen in this family conflict. "Of course, I did not molest Dylan. 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." Allen says this will be his last word on any of it.
Allen also does comment on the whole Frank Sinatra might be Ronan's father situation.
Is he my son or, as Mia suggests, Frank Sinatra’s? Granted, he looks a lot like Frank with the blue eyes and facial features, but if so what does this say? That all during the custody hearing Mia lied under oath and falsely represented Ronan as our son? Even if he is not Frank’s, the possibility she raises that he could be, indicates she was secretly intimate with him during our years. Not to mention all the money I paid for child support. Was I supporting Frank’s son? Again, I want to call attention to the integrity and honesty of a person who conducts her life like that.
* Update: And then Maureen Orth posts at Vanity Fair what she calls 10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation — not friendly to Allen — and the link to the judge's 1992 report &mdash: decidedly not favorable to Allen.
l nit
