the continuing character assassination of woody allen part 1

Es­ti­mated reading time is 3 min­utes.

I JUST STUM­BLED over an ar­ticle ti­tled “The Woody Allen Story We Need To Stop For­get­ting” by Kelsey Miller for the Refinery29 web­site. (Jan­uary 13, 2014). First, if you are going to read this posting of mine, please click on over to Ms. Miller’s ar­ticle and read it in its en­tirety first. Then come back here and read. So now, the piece opens with this statement:

“In Sep­tember 1993, Con­necticut state’s at­torney Frank Maco de­clared that he would not pros­e­cute Woody Allen in court for the charges of sexual abuse of a child. He did, how­ever, pub­licly de­clare that he had both prob­able cause and ev­i­dence that such abuse had taken place.

Ac­cording to The New York Times, the de­ci­sion was made to pro­tect the child in ques­tion from the pub­licity and trauma of a court ap­pear­ance. After all, Dylan Farrow, who’d re­cently told her mother and pe­di­a­tri­cian what had hap­pened in the fam­i­ly’s attic, was only 7-years-old.”

Ms. Miller then pro­ceeds to as­sume Al­len’s guilt and then wring her hands over her liking of Annie hall. The ar­ticle is rife with as­sump­tion and er­rors. I re­sponded with this comment:

Um, as the old man in Moon­struck de­clared, “I’m con­fused.” I went to the ar­ticle in The New York Times (“Con­necticut Pros­e­cutor Won’t File Charges Against Woody Allen” by Melinda Hen­neberger from Sep­tember 25, 1993) linked to by Kelsey Miller in her ar­ticle above and here is what it says:

“Mr. Allen was ac­cused of sex­u­ally abusing his daughter last Au­gust at Ms. Far­row’s house in Bridge­water, Conn. Six months ago, a team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors at Yale-New Haven Hos­pital con­cluded that NO SEXUAL ABUSE HAD TAKEN PLACE [em­phasis mine] but said both Mr. Allen and Ms. Farrow had dis­turbed re­la­tions with Dylan.

Ms. Alter [Mia Far­row’s at­torney] had dis­counted the re­port, saying it was in­com­plete and in­ac­cu­rate. Mr. Maco [the state at­torney men­tioned in Ms. Miller’s piece above] said he had re­quested the hos­pital study, which de­scribed Dylan as a dreamy child who ‘had dif­fi­culty dis­tin­guishing fan­tasy from reality.’

But [Maco] dis­counted its find­ings, saying his own re­view of in­ves­tiga­tive re­ports and med­ical eval­u­a­tions had con­vinced him that he did have enough ev­i­dence to take to trial.”

So, if I am reading cor­rectly, the state at­torney calls in the ex­perts and doesn’t like their find­ings, so he dis­misses those find­ings, drops the case—what at­torney wouldn’t with the ex­perts saying that NO SEXUAL ABUSE HAD TAKEN PLACE?—and then an­nounces to the press that the ac­cused is guilty anyway?

The ar­ticle con­tinues: “Mr. Ma­co’s re­marks about the case were crit­i­cized by some legal scholars, who said it was an un­fair at­tempt to have it both ways by claiming vic­tory without taking the case to trial.

Stephen Gillers, a pro­fessor at New York Uni­ver­sity Law School and an ex­pert on legal ethics, crit­i­cized Mr. Maco, saying, ‘You don’t de­clare the man guilty and then say you’re not going to pros­e­cute, leaving him to de­fend him­self in the press.’ ”

So, did anyone else bother to ac­tu­ally read Ms. Hen­neberg­er’s article?

PS: Yale-New Haven Hos­pital is con­sid­ered one of the top or­ga­ni­za­tion’s in the country in the field of child abuse.

PPS: Woody Allen was never Soon-Yi Previn’s legal step-father. 

It should be noted that the ac­cu­sa­tions against Allen by Farrow and the rev­e­la­tions from the child did not occur until AFTER Farrow and Allen had broken up ac­ri­mo­niously and Farrow learned of Al­len’s af­fair with Soon-Yi. Did you know that many non-Western cul­tures in the world do not have a word for “co­in­ci­dence” be­cause the con­cept doesn’t exist for them?

Fi­nally, for some­thing a bit more pleasant con­cerning Mr. Allen, click on over to “john ford and woody allen.”

The character assassination of Woody Allen

This ar­ticle is the first in a se­ries of ar­ti­cles lumped to­gether as “the char­acter as­sas­si­na­tion of woody allen.” Here are the parts so far:

1.  the char­acter as­sas­si­na­tion of woody allen in the media con­tinues as ig­no­rance and opinion trump facts
2.  if you’re not with me, then you must be against me
3.  the mia-dylan nev­erending story
4. 
why mariel hem­ing­way’s new rev­e­la­tion doesn’t matter

 

EveryoneSaysILoveYou dancers 1500

HEADER: The photo at the top of this page is a scene from Everyone Says I Love You. Dis­missed by many upon re­lease and since, it is an­other gem, filled with music and goofi­ness and beau­tiful women and love—more or less what we ex­pect from a Woody Allen movie. It fea­tures Alan Alda, Goldie Hawn, Ed Norton, Tim Roth, Julia Roberts, Na­talie Portman, Billy Crudup, and Drew Bar­ry­more, all of whom are ex­pected to sing. In this scene, Allen looks sur­pris­ingly like Groucho; Goldie Hawn un­sur­pris­ingly does not.

 

 

 

7 thoughts on “the continuing character assassination of woody allen part 1”

  1. Just vis­ited “The Woody Allen Story We Need To Stop For­get­ting” by Kelsey Miller on the Refinery29 web­site. I posted a com­ment there and signed it as “i’m­con­fused” (which I re­alize that I did not tell you be­fore). Any way, my com­ment calls at­ten­tion to the fact that the source Ms. Miller cited (the NYT piece) stated clearly that NO ev­i­dence was found that the boy girl had been abused by anyone. Need­less to say, not a single letter writer let alone the ar­ti­cle’s au­thor re­sponded to my comment . . .

    Reply
  2. “Boy”? Which “boy” are you re­fer­ring to? The fact that you didn’t even know Dylan is a girl shows that you are in fact, con­fused, and bi­ased in Al­len’s favor. . . . I think it’s un­con­scionable that so many people are giving Allen the ben­efit of the doubt, but when it comes to Dylan, no such cour­tesy is granted...not even now. Here’s a sug­ges­tion for you, don’t base every­thing solely on one ar­ticle; do some research.

    Reply
  3. Dear JFT11: Thanks for the re­sponse! I typed the “Just vis­ited” com­ment above after being up all night—and I made an error. As you can see, it has been cor­rected. Thank you for that. Of course, if you had read my main piece (“the char­acter as­sas­si­na­tion of woody allen . . .”) you would have seen that I had pre­vi­ously iden­ti­fied Dylan as female.

    A shame that you see giving the ac­cused “the ben­efit of the doubt” to be “un­con­scionable.” That’s called innocent-until-proven-guilty. Dylan was in­ves­ti­gated by what is con­sid­ered to be per­haps the best or­ga­ni­za­tion in the country in this field and NO ev­i­dence was found of ANY kind of phys­ical abuse.

    The el­lipses (. . .) in your com­ment was in­serted by me: I edited out the other 400 words. I re­ally am not in­ter­ested in turning my site into a plat­form for the “Dylan-supporters” or the “Allen-haters.” There are plenty of other places to go for that. When ac­tual ev­i­dence of a crime ap­pears (you know, facts), come on back and we can chat.

    Why do you as­sume that I have read only one ar­ticle? I have fol­lowed this since it began! I read all the news­paper ar­ti­cles way back when. Nothing has changed ex­cept the Allen-haters ap­pear to have grown more vir­u­lent and less able to read the facts (or lack thereof). Fi­nally, here’s a sug­ges­tion: don’t base every­thing solely on one typo; do some re­search . . . NEAL

    Reply
  4. Wow, fan­tastic weblog struc­ture! How lengthy have you ever been blog­ging for?
    you make blog­ging glance easy. The full look of your web site is
    won­derful, let alone the con­tent material!

    Reply
  5. ALEXAN­DRIA Glad you enjoyed.I have been blog­ging since July of last year. Please tell me what in par­tic­ular you liked so thai I make cer­tain that I keep on keepin’ on doing it! Thanks for the input! NEAL

    PS: I have been a pub­lished au­thor since 1985. The In­ternet is fun but books are funner!!!

    Reply

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