Dylan Farrow Accuses Father Woody Allen of Sex Abuse

[taf2002]

I have that book on my kindle. It was a great read although the part about her brother was disturbing. And apparently to this day people try to tell her to make up with her brother which is bs. She doesn't sound bitter or angry & she recognizes her brother's mental issues but until he addresses them she plans to continue to distance herself.

 

[Jasmar]

Then it's odd that Temamzepam and its sisters are prescribed to chemo patients to get them to eat.

That's totally inaccurate. It's prescribed occasionally to help with nausea, which could help a chemo patient regain some of their normal appetite. It is not an appetite stimulant.

Apologies for the thread hijack. This kind of ignorance is just so irritating.

OTOH, when I was working with an organization that hunted down pedophiles, that is exactly how they reacted. They acted like the charges against them were ludicrous without offering any actual explanation or evidence as to why they were not to be taken seriously. We were just to take their word. And they often lashed out inappropriately towards the children involved.

This is so true. Woody Allen's body of work makes him look like a creep of this kind to me. All the stuff he has actually admitted to (with Soon-Yi) adds to the picture.

This whole false/planted memory thing is incredibly overstated. Anyone with a real interest might take a look at an excellent book called "Memory and Abuse." It's exceedingly well written, researched, and footnoted.

 

[overedge]

I am a teacher, one of the five year olds in my school will start spending the weekends with her dad who divorced her mom last year, he left her but I don't know why.

According to the child's babysitter, a teacher's aide, mom has already told the child "don't let daddy touch you". and "tell me if daddy hurts you in any way.". There was never any question of the father being inappropriate with his daughter but mom has been bad mouthing the father since they separated.

It sounds like that mom might be (sadly) laying the groundwork to possibly have something to get back at the dad with.

But in Allen's case, there was some evidence before the alleged assault of him being inappropriate with Dylan (e.g. his alleged obsession with being around her, caught with his head in her lap).

 

[OliviaPug]

But in Allen's case, there was some evidence before the alleged assault of him being inappropriate with Dylan (e.g. his alleged obsession with being around her, caught with his head in her lap).

And this can't be stressed enough.

Allen's relationship with Soon Yi was not a romantic accident. Allen is a predator with some deep, dark issues, IMO.

O-

 

[Deleted member 19433]

Another interesting and disturbing article, that goes a lot to show Ziggy's point and my fundamental belief that people aren't monsters, aren't all good or all bad. That's something most people have trouble seeing and admitting, because it makes people uncomfortable. The author's father is apparently both a cancer researcher and child molester.

http://gawker.com/woody-allen-is-not-a-monster-he-is-a-person-like-my-f-1518291644

 

[overedge]

I'm not sure what your point is. Assuming that Allen did what he is accused of, that doesn't mean he is a monster or that he doesn't do ordinary day to day things, or that he doesn't contribute anything to the world. I don't see anyone claiming otherwise
I think he's a horrible person because of the hurt he caused and his refusal to accept any responsibility for it.

 

[Deleted member 19433]

I think he's a horrible person because of the hurt he caused and his refusal to accept any responsibility for it.

If he did molest Dylan then that was a terrible act, but I guess I'm more reluctant to declare a whole person "horrible." How would you judge the father from the article above who works to cure cancer and molested a child? He might look wonderful in one light but horrible in another, and IMO the reality is almost always somewhere in between.

 

[my little pony]

if molesting a child can't get someone downgraded to horrible, there's not much left

 

[Deleted member 19433]

if molesting a child can't get someone downgraded to horrible, there's not much left

I don't think everyone is equal in good or badness, and such a selfish act is a serious, serious moral failure that would be difficult to forgive. I found Jesse Ryan Loskarn's story linked in the article to be really, really upsetting. He made a bad mistake but I find it tragic that he found himself worthy of death for it, and this is why I'm reluctant to jump down people's throats and declare them horrible people, because you never know what that kind of judgment could push someone to do. I believe everyone can change and improve and every life should be salvageable.

 

[my little pony]

if calling someone horrible makes them commit suicide, they were already very disturbed

i cant imaging any kind of a sex crime against children, including pornography, being described as a bad mistake. not wearing a seatbelt is a bad mistake.

 

[Deleted member 19433]

if calling someone horrible makes them commit suicide, they were already very disturbed

Clearly Jesse was disturbed and it's not surprising given his history of abuse. Thankfully I've never been through anything like that and probably would've ended up even more messed up than him if I had given my tendency to think too much about everything and to be very hard on myself. I know how hard it is to feel like a "horrible person" when I focus on one or two tiny areas of myself, even though I logically know that I'm not a horrible person in almost every other way. When other people are as hard on me (in a personal way) as I can be on myself it can be tough to take, especially if I'm already in a depressed mood. I know how fragile things can feel in a depressed state and can only imagine how much worse it would be for a person already on the verge of suicide (thankfully I've never quite been there), so I try very hard to make any criticisms of people to be of the behavior and not the person.

i cant imaging any kind of a sex crime against children, including pornography, being described as a bad mistake. not wearing a seatbelt is a bad mistake.

Not wearing a seatbelt is a mistake but that's apples to oranges, since it's more of a practical mistake, not something I would consider a moral mistake. Would you? Do you believe in moral mistakes? Just curious.

 

[michiruwater]

A moral mistake is telling a white lie, or maybe a grey lie that doesn't cause too much damage. Child molestation is a moral travesty.

 

[Deleted member 19433]

A few quotes from the comment section of that article that I found interesting and/or profound:

Woody Allen is a person, but if these allegations are true, he is also a monster. The horrifying beasts of childhood fairy tales aren't real; all we have are the plainclothes monsters who go about their days, innocuous to the casual eye, but all the while making choices that horribly redefine and pervert the lives of others who have done them no wrong.

I'm sure your father had his compulsions, and as you mention in your article, you have yours, but the difference is that he made a choice to act on those compulsions. We often act as if a heinous act like abusing a child is some huge choice, a jump off a ledge leading to a fiery inferno. The truth is that most roads to hell are long, slow slopes paved with tiny, excusable choices, which together amount to a series of monstrous acts.

Empathy is not the point. Most abusers aren't people who live in vans and snatch kids off the street. Most abusers are parents, siblings, babysitters, friends, neighbors, cousins, etc. if we teach people to be on guard for monsters, we leave kids and parents unable to watch for and understand real abusers.

Take Barbara Walters recent comments, to the effect that she knows Woody Allen and he's a nice guy, and therefore didn't molest Dylan. She's looking for a monster, and sees someone who isn't a monster. People don't really understand who abusers are, so we can't detect them.

Thank you for this.

I dislike terming anyone a "monster." I routinely make this point on the death row letters and related stories. We're all human beings. Some aren't as good at it as others, but as soon as we start painting with a broad brush, we risk getting painted ourselves.

If Woody Allen is now written into history as a monstrous child molester, child abuse is more likely to continue. Because if we are unable to stomach the fact that Woody is not a monster but a human being who did something monstrous, we will continue to stoke the fires of archetype, perpetuating the notion of the picture-perfect pedophile, the one whose evil shines through like a 100-watt black lightbulb.

I disagree. At least prior to Soon-yi, Woody Allen was, for many of us, a respected figure who made movies about women we loved. If he is capable of such a heinous act then anyone - no matter how respectable, caring or enlightened they appear - could be. Which is of course, the truth about child abusers.

ETA: This one too, wow:

I studied modern European history, and one of the most truly frightening conclusions that came out of it for me was that the Nazis were *not* monsters, nor demons, nor wild beasts. They were by and large, as Christopher Browning titled his magnificent book on the topic, ordinary men. They had families, they had children, they had headaches and drama and the flu. And they killed millions of human beings.

It's easy to call the Nazis monsters, to speak of Hitler as exercising a demonic seduction over the German people. And by focusing on a small subset of the perpetrators as monsters, Europe has largely managed to avoid confronting the complicity so many had in the regime. It's a lot harder to ask why they gained power, and why, in Germany and in the countries they conquered, so many of the local inhabitants turned against their neighbors with such avarice and brutality. It's a lot harder to honestly consider if we ourselves might have gotten swept up in the torchlight, the streetfighting, the uniforms and the marches, if we had been there.

The truly frightening thing about evil is not that it's monstrous, it's that it's human. And by making it monstrous, we let ourselves off the hook for the evil that surrounds us, the evil that's inside of us, the evil we try so desperately to ignore.

Thank you for writing this, Mr. Warwick. You're in my prayers

 

[overedge]

If he did molest Dylan then that was a terrible act, but I guess I'm more reluctant to declare a whole person "horrible." How would you judge the father from the article above who works to cure cancer and molested a child? He might look wonderful in one light but horrible in another, and IMO the reality is almost always somewhere in between.

The reality is that molesting a child is a horrible act. There's no in-between about it. And the person who did it is horrible if they can't or won't acknowledge what they did, or take steps to make amends for the impact of what they did. I have no trouble calling that person a horrible person. The author of the article does. That's their choice.

Woody Allen may hold the door for the next person going through it, or give big tips to waiters, or make movies that people enjoy (I find them nearly all of them tedious and self-indulgent, but I realize not everyone feels that way). That doesn't make what he did to his daughter any less horrible.

 

[MacMadame]

I think it's more disturbing that people aren't able to label a horrible act as horrible if the person does anything else remotely worthy. So someone does cancer research. Okay, that's their job. Just because your job contributes to the betterment of the word, doesn't mean that you are a wonderful person. Do you think only wonderful people work for charities? If that were true, then we wouldn't have so many scandals where charities weren't spending their money on entertaining their employees instead of on the charity.

People need to understand that someone can do something that brings good to the world and still be a sucky person.

 

[Deleted member 19433]

I think it's more disturbing that people aren't able to label a horrible act as horrible if the person does anything else remotely worthy.

The act is absolutely despicable and I've already said that much. I don't get why people seem to have such a hard time understanding what I'm saying. Child abuse is one of the worst ****ing acts a person can commit. But thinking of people who do it as some monstrous "other" does no good for all kinds of reasons outlined in the article and quite profoundly in the comments I quoted above. The people who do it are normal and even good in other areas of their life, and I'm sure very few of them think of themselves as evil people which is how they are able to rationalize their way into committing awful acts. The first quote from above struck me as particularly profound in that way. For me it's truly tragic to see someone like Ariel Castro (discussed in the comments) or Jerry Sandusky and wonder how another human being was able to go so wrong. With the amount of abuse that does happen, clearly there's a problem in the prevention stage. If the mostly normal people with psychological issues that could lead them to become abusers are trained to think of abusers as some monstrous "other" then they won't see themselves as part of that group and might not seek help for their issues, which can lead them to slowly rationalize their way into despicable behavior and become abusers. If they sought help before their issues manifested themselves in abuse, we could probably prevent a lot of abuse from ever happening.

 

[overedge]

The act is absolutely despicable and I've already said that much. I don't get why people seem to have such a hard time understanding what I'm saying.

I understand what you're saying. And I don't agree with it.

Child abuse is one of the worst ****ing acts a person can commit. But thinking of people who do it as some monstrous "other" does no good for all kinds of reasons outlined in the article and quite profoundly in the comments I quoted above.

That's the author's opinion. I don't agree with it. I agree that everyone is redeemable, but if someone does a horrible thing *and* takes no responsibility for it, then focusing on the other good things they do minimizes the impact of their actions and gives them an excuse to continue in avoiding responsibility.

If the mostly normal people with psychological issues that could lead them to become abusers are trained to think of abusers as some monstrous "other", then they won't see themselves as part of that group and might not seek help for their issues, which can lead them to slowly rationalize their way into despicable behavior and become abusers. If they sought help before their issues manifested themselves in abuse, we could probably prevent a lot of abuse from ever happening.

And if they are "trained" to think that the good things they do outweigh or justify the bad things, or if people around them have that perspective, then they may never seek help at all. And the abuse or other horrible behavior will continue.

 

[Deleted member 19433]

And if they are "trained" to think that the good things they do outweigh or justify the bad things, or if people around them have that perspective, then they may never seek help at all. And the abuse or other horrible behavior will continue.

No good thing about a person can ever "justify" an act of child abuse. That wasn't my point at all so I don't think you really do understand what I'm trying to say.

Doing something as horrible as abusing a child and taking no responsibility for it is a very, very serious matter and would be a "dealbreaker" for me personally in wanting to associate with someone regardless of any other good qualities the person might possess. Unfortunately, where accusations haven't been legally proven it's understandable why someone accused of abuse would deny it, because it leaves room for reasonable doubt that the friend, family member, or admired person, did such a thing. Woody Allen is not much a part of my life-- I've never even seen any of his movies-- so my personal judgment of him isn't that important but the public debate about how to treat the situation IS very interesting and enlightening, and I think there are good points made on both sides and enjoy hearing all perspectives, as long as people don't get personal about it (not referring to you here, overedge, just that people can sometimes get so impassioned about arguments that they throw accusations at the other side and having been the recipient of that recently I know how much that hurts and how unproductive it is to any kind of rational argument).

 

[my little pony]

this reminds me of when my german neighbor would remind me of all the awesome roads hitler built

 

[taf2002]

this reminds me of when my german neighbor would remind me of all the awesome roads hitler built

Yes, this is the point that RFOS is missing. There are some things that are considered beyond the pale to some people. I personally know a pedephile who molested my niece when she was 8 yrs old. (She never told until many years later so he was never prosecuted.) To this day he makes excuses for what he did - he was young too (16), he was molested himself, it was just play that went "a little" too far. If he ever completely took responsibility & said "I was wrong" without any qualifiers it would be much easier not to view him as a monster.

 

[overedge]

Unfortunately, where accusations haven't been legally proven it's understandable why someone accused of abuse would deny it, because it leaves room for reasonable doubt that the friend, family member, or admired person, did such a thing.

There are plenty of people who *have* been convicted of child abuse who still deny responsibility for what they did - s/he led me on, s/he lied, the judge was unfair, the other side could afford a better lawyer, etc. etc. Prisons have treatment programs for child abusers but those programs are largely ineffective because the participants have to be there (e.g. to get parole) and/or they're in denial. A legal conviction has very little to do with whether someone admits what they did or does something about it.

 

[kwanfan1818]

Katie McDonough wrote this piece in salon.com in which Allen is discussed briefly:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/13/a_n..._tarantos_demented_balance/?source=newsletter

 

[Deleted member 19433]

Yes, this is the point that RFOS is missing. There are some things that are considered beyond the pale to some people. I personally know a pedephile who molested my niece when she was 8 yrs old. (She never told until many years later so he was never prosecuted.) To this day he makes excuses for what he did - he was young too (16), he was molested himself, it was just play that went "a little" too far. If he ever completely took responsibility & said "I was wrong" without any qualifiers it would be much easier not to view him as a monster.

You don't need to talk about me like I can't hear you. I'm very sorry about what happened to your niece. There's never any excuse or reason that can justify the abuse of a child, and I'm sorry your niece's abuser hasn't taken responsibility. I don't know how he can live with himself. If he was abused himself that doesn't justify his actions but does show the damage such abuse can do and that the cycle can be hard to break once it has started. It's nothing short of a tragedy. The challenge is to keep it from starting in the first place, which clearly as a society and world we aren't doing a very good job at. I hypothesized that maybe emphasizing that abusers can be otherwise seemingly "normal" people who go astray, and not some evil "other" might help in getting people to recognize potentially abusive tendencies in themselves and get help before they hurt anyone. I don't know for sure whether it would work but obviously what we've already been doing hasn't worked very well either.

Because I'm very self-critical and see gray areas pretty much everywhere I have so much anxiety about doing anything bad that it prevents me from taking risks. I have sort of a phobia of drinking alcohol and have never tried drugs or had any interest in doing so, because I know how it can have negative effects. I've never been in a relationship or had sex because I'm afraid that even suggesting interest to someone might make me a tiny bit like a predator or creepy person if it made the other person uncomfortable. I haven't laid a hand on anyone since I was a little kid, but it still eats me up sometimes that I hit my younger sister once when I was very little. I have no idea what possessed me to do that. And I've always been anxious about being judged for my thoughts and opinions and tastes so I tended to keep those to myself. It hurts to be judged when you're already self-critical and I'm fearful of doing anything approaching being a judgmental person who could make someone feel bad that ironically sometimes I have ended up offending people. My attempt being objective and rational about everything (which I CERTAINLY don't achieve and isn't possible, but is what I strive for) can and has been misinterpreted, and has been recently and occasionally has resulted in comments that felt very personal, like being accused of "blaming the victim" or "perpetuating rape culture" and have me questioning myself again and whether I'm really a good person, despite the fact that I find rape and abuse SO repugnant (how can anyone ever feel entitled to "use" someone else's body like that?) that I'm literally ashamed to be a heterosexual male sometimes. I think that yes, I'm mostly a good person, but have flaws like everyone else. When I get in a depressed mindset sometimes those flaws and mistakes, sometimes those flaws are all I can see. I feel ashamed admitting that I hit my sister because I feel like that might just make me a "horrible person" too. I think I've changed since then and always strive to keep improving myself. As I said, I think everyone can improve and is potentially redeemable.

A couple of other interesting articles:
http://ideas.time.com/2014/02/12/woody-allen-believe-the-victim-and-feminism/

http://ideas.time.com/2014/02/04/when-bystanders-are-as-bad-as-abusers/

 

[mag]

Just going to chime in here and say that the articles that say we SHOULDN'T call otherwise normal appearing people who do terrible things (eg. Child molesters) monsters, IMHO have it all backwards. Of course we should! It is the fallacy that normal appearing people couldn't possibly do such a thing that helps perpetuate the attacks - yes they are attacks. Teaching children that monsters come in all shapes and sizes and are both male and female, young and old, is the only way to protect them. I don't understand how something someone does in one part of their life (working on a cure for cancer) in any way cancels out or ameliorates something they do in another part of their life (molest children.) There are plenty of so called upstanding citizens - doctors, lawyers, coaches, priests, who are monsters. There are some things in life where there are no grey areas.

 

[overedge]

(long post snipped)

RFOS, I'm sorry if you would feel uncomfortable or badly affected if someone called you yourself "horrible" or something of that nature. But that doesn't mean that no one ever anywhere shouldn't be called out on their bad behavior, or criticized for their actions. I think you need to separate how you personally would react from how someone else might react, and not assume that everyone would have the same reaction as you.

And as far as Allen goes, even if he didn't do what he is accused of (and FWIW I think he did do it), he isn't handling the accusations in a way that makes me think he is serious about wanting to resolve the underlying issues - and that to me makes him a bad person.

 

[Deleted member 19433]

Katie McDonough wrote this piece in salon.com in which Allen is discussed briefly:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/13/a_n..._tarantos_demented_balance/?source=newsletter

Yikes, that one sure has an accusatory tone. God, that makes me mad.

I'm sure I'm perpetuating rape culture by citing other studies that question that you're more likely in a given year to be killed by a meteor or comet than to be falsely accused of rape in the U.S. One site says that there actually NO confirmed human deaths from meteors or comets, and even the prominent Russian meteor that was a major story last year and injured people doesn't seem to have killed anyone, and that wasn't in the U.S. The blog gives an actuarial estimate that 91 people per year would be killed (and that's worldwide, not just in the U.S.), but that includes the risk of all of humanity being wiped out, which obviously has never actually happened, so it's at best very very misleading to unquestioningly cite that estimate.

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2013/02/just-how-many-humans-have-space-rocks-killed-anyway/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

I can't vouch for the complete accuracy of the numbers in this article, but it seems like the 1 in 2.7 million chance of being falsely accused of rape is at best very, VERY questionable also:
http://ideas.time.com/2014/02/12/woody-allen-believe-the-victim-and-feminism/

It looks like she probably picked the highest estimate of being killed by a meteor or comet (which again is an actuarial estimate, not an indication of ACTUAL occurrences of which there are few or none confirmed) out of and the lowest estimate of the probability of false rape accusation. And calling someone a "caveman" misogynist definitely makes you look objective (I know nothing about this Taranto guy and he seems like kind of a jerk at least on this issue, but name-calling isn't the best way to make an argument). But I guess that's her idea of "balance." I also don't understand why she thinks it would be an appropriate "balance" for those accused NOT to have a chance to defend themselves. I can appreciate that Woody Allen is a rich and powerful person so he has more means to get a defense of himself published than others would, and that's worth at least questioning. But I don't accusing the media outlets who let him respond to accusations of essentially supporting rape is fair at all. If anything, I think those with less means should have more of an opportunity to respond to accusations laid at them.

Look, I do think it's an important point to be made on her side that actually incidences molestation and rape ARE much more common than false accusations or false memories of such events, and for that reason as I've stated before I do strongly suspect that Woody Allen did engage in abusive behavior. I think it's more likely he did than he didn't. But to act like he shouldn't be able to defend himself and accuse others who even question that he MIGHT not have done it of essentially supporting rape is absolutely uncalled for. That's not to say that there aren't many problems with our culture that DO need fixing, because there absolutely are.

OTOH, I hadn't heard the allegations against Bill Cosby before and am sorry to hear them. She's absolutely right that as a individuals and a society we should listen to the accusers/likely victims in any such case and take their allegations seriously, and not instantly assume that they're lying because we've already formed a positive opinion about the person against whom the accusation are laid. However, that position is not implied by the simple act of letting the accused defend themselves. I also fundamentally disagree with the premise that by giving the accused any benefit of the doubt means that you think the accuser is a liar. Maybe those who tend to think in black and white see it as a 0% belief or 100% belief, but I don't. I see nothing inconsistent with giving both some DEGREE of benefit of the doubt. I give Dylan moreso.

 

[overedge]

IMHO yes, there are false accusations of abuse, and the accused should be given some benefit of doubt because of that. However, in an unbalanced situation where the accused has more power and resources than the accuser, the accused has to demonstrate why the accusations are flawed. All Allen has done is make flimsy excuses and blame everyone and everything else. He's had the benefit of the doubt and he's blown it.

 

[Deleted member 19433]

IMHO yes, there are false accusations of abuse, and the accused should be given some benefit of doubt because of that. However, in an unbalanced situation where the accused has more power and resources than the accuser, the accused has to demonstrate why the accusations are flawed. All Allen has done is make flimsy excuses and blame everyone and everything else. He's had the benefit of the doubt and he's blown it.

Sorry if this seems like a dumb question, but what would Woody hypothetically be able to say that would demonstrate to your satisfaction why the accusations were flawed (if they are or were flawed)?

 

[overedge]

Something to prove that he wasn't in the place where it allegedly happened - and sorry, but "I'm claustrophobic so I would never be in an attic" doesn't cut it - or wasn't there at that time. Or a justifiable reason for his creepy obsessive interest in her. Or a reasonable explanation for the events without the unnecessary digs at Farrow or at Ronan's parentage. Or an attitude of conciliation and willingness to work on the underlying issues - and "I would love to hear from her any time" doesn't cut it either.

 

[IceAlisa]

this reminds me of when my german neighbor would remind me of all the awesome roads hitler built

Some elderly Russian ladies reminisce about the awesome silk stockings available during the Stalin years.