Tag: Woody Allen

  • Corrupt persuasion

    Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza points out at the Atlantic that celebrities are allowed to tamper with witnesses in order to avoid prosecution for sexual assault.

    The aplomb with which Kelly was received recalled the Golden Globes’ celebration of Woody Allen two weeks before. Actress Diane Keaton accepted a lifetime achievement award on the director’s behalf, heedless of recent Vanity Fair articles adding further detail to long-standing allegations that Allen repeatedly molested his seven-year-old daughter with actress Mia Farrow.

    Kelly and Allen have successfully relied on two different versions of the same celebrity strategy to escape the possibility of criminal consequences: legalized witness tampering. Our federal witness-tampering statute applies to anyone who “corruptly persuades” a witness to influence or deter communications and testimony. But the line between acceptable and “corrupt” persuasion becomes very fine when the accused is a celebrity.

    Maybe it’s for the greater good, eh? We need our celebrities, we love our celebrities, our lives would be shabbier and duller without our celebrities, so if a few people have to put up with not getting justice…oh well. Right?

    Not right in my book.

    Woody Allen took a different tack [from Michael Jackson]: He used a “frivolous” custody suit, expert witnesses, and a media blitz that reportedly intimidated his daughter and dissuaded Mia Farrow from pressing criminal charges. On August 5, 1992, Dylan told her mother of her molestation. Eight days later Allen filed his custody suit, hiring expert witnesses to discredit his young daughter. Allen’s side portrayed Dylan as a confused fabulist and former partner Farrow as a hysterical, vengeful ex—allegations that anonymous sources relayed to media to generate headlines like “Mia’s Daughter May Have a Reality Problem” despite a gag order.

    What a mensch, huh? What a loving father, what a fair and generous ex? What an all-round decent guy?

    Allen’s tactics didn’t win him custody or even visitation rights, but his scorched-earth strategy scarred Dylan and deterred Farrow from pressing criminal charges. The custody battle lasted nearly a year. A criminal trial could take even longer and would be yet harder on Dylan and her siblings, especially if their privacy couldn’t be guaranteed. No doubt prospects for a fair criminal trial seemed dim; the challenge of convincing a jury of Allen’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, insurmountable.

    Celebrities are particularly effective at discouraging victims and witnesses from cooperating with law enforcement and prosecutors in cases involving sex crimes against underage victims. Their testimony is critical to securing a conviction, but the alleged victims and their families are understandably reluctant to weather public scrutiny and a high-profile trial indefinitely and at uncertain cost for an unknown outcome.

    You might almost begin to think that’s why they target underage victims – that it’s because they make bad witnesses, and their parents don’t want to put them through a trial, and prosecutors don’t want to put them on the stand.

    Woody Allen. Remember all that bullshit in Manhattan when he’s yelling at the Tony Roberts character for (ha ha HA) betraying him by going after the Diane Keaton character? There’s a bunch of guff about being decent so that people will think well of you, so that you won’t cringe at yourself, all that kind of thing.

    What a joke.

    H/t Gretchen Robinson

  • Inappropriate fatherly behavior

    For those who are feeling guilty and conflicted because they know that memory is unreliable but they don’t want to blame victims, it may help to read the Vanity Fair article from November 1992 – yes, so long ago that a baby born the day it was published would now be an adult of 21.

    There was an unwritten rule in Mia Farrow’s house that Woody Allen was never supposed to be left alone with their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. Over the last two years, sources close to Farrow say, he has been discussing alleged “inappropriate” fatherly behavior toward Dylan in sessions with Dr. Susan Coates, a child psychologist. In more than two dozen interviews conducted for this article, most of them with individuals who are on intimate terms with the Mia Farrow household, Allen was described over and over as being completely obsessed with the bright little blonde girl. He could not seem to keep his hands off her. He would monopolize her totally, to the exclusion of her brothers and sisters, and spend hours whispering to her. She was fond of her daddy, but if she tried to go off and play, he would follow her from room to room, or he would sit and stare at her.

    Ok? That’s creepy. That’s beyond creepy. It’s bad for the child and bad for the other children. The interlude in the attic-like closet room isn’t even necessary for that to be the case. And it doesn’t depend on one person’s memory or experience – it’s behavior reported by people who saw it.

    Dr. Coates, who just happened to be in Mia’s apartment to work with one of her other children, had only to witness a brief greeting between Woody and Dylan before she began a discussion with Mia that resulted in Woody’s agreeing to address the issue through counseling. At that point Coates didn’t know that, according to several sources, Woody, wearing just underwear, would take Dylan to bed with him and entwine his body around hers; or that he would have her suck his thumb; or that often when Dylan went over to his apartment he would head straight for the bedroom with her so that they could get into bed and play. He called Mia a “spoilsport” when she objected to what she referred to as “wooing.” Mia has told people that he said that her concerns were her own sickness, and that he was just being warm. For a long time, Mia backed down. Her love for Woody had always been mixed with fear. He could reduce her to a pulp when he gave vent to his temper, but she was also in awe of him, because he always presented himself as “a morally superior person.”

    And that is why it’s galling that he got a lifetime achievement award, and that he still a cultural hero to so many people. He has for years – ever since he dropped the nebbish persona – presented himself as a morally superior person. He isn’t one.

    You know what he reminds me of? Salinger. Salinger was the same damn thing – a cultural hero who presented himself as a morally superior person, while in fact treating real people – women and very young girls, to be exact – like shit. The PBS series American Masters did an episode on him a couple of weeks ago. It was riveting, and creepy, both.

    Jessica Winter sums it up nicely in Slate:

    By speaking out now, Ronan Farrow and the former Dylan Farrow have put Allen’s alleged actions under a harsh spotlight for the first time in a generation. But while their statements may have shaken the live-and-let-live consensus that formed around Allen not long after the scandal broke, they’ve hardly shattered it. That consensus is especially robust in Hollywood, where Allen is likely Western society’s most prominent beneficiary of compartmentalization. A-list actors never stopped clamoring to work with him, not even in the 1990s, and never will. At times during the Golden Globes tribute to Allen, it seemed hard to spot anyone toward the front of the room who hadn’t been in one of his movies.

    Well, you know, who is more important – some woman nobody’s ever heard of or the great Woody Allen? Who matters more for the career, Mia Farrow’s daughter or the great Woody Allen? Who you gonna believe, some chick or the great Woody Allen?