In an op-ed scheduled to run in Sunday's New York Times, and released online this evening, Woody Allen responds to the allegations that he abused his daughter Dylan Farrow.
It's a piece in turn sad, bitter and angry, and in which Allen lays the blame for the allegations with his former partner, Mia Farrow.
Allen revisits some of the evidence in the case, criticizes both the Connecticut prosecutor and the judge involved, and wonders why Farrow declined to take a lie detector test.
Here are some of the key points:
Allen says he did not originally take the charges seriously:
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.
He's critical of the conclusions of Judge Wilk:
Justice Wilk was quite rough on me and never approved of my relationship with Soon-Yi, Mia’s adopted daughter, who was then in her early 20s. He thought of me as an older man exploiting a much younger woman, which outraged Mia as improper despite the fact she had dated a much older Frank Sinatra when she was 19. In fairness to Justice Wilk, the public felt the same dismay over Soon-Yi and myself.
He addresses whispers that Ronan Farrow could be the son of Frank Sinatra:
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. ... Again, I want to call attention to the integrity and honesty of a person who conducts her life like that.
He says that he believes Dylan now sincerely believes she was abused:
If from the age of 7 a vulnerable child is taught by a strong mother to hate her father because he is a monster who abused her, is it so inconceivable that after many years of this indoctrination the image of me Mia wanted to establish had taken root? Is it any wonder the experts at Yale had picked up the maternal coaching aspect 21 years ago?
He says he was unlikely to have gone into the attic where the molestation allegedly happened:
Even the venue where the fabricated molestation was supposed to have taken place was poorly chosen but interesting. Mia chose the attic of her country house, a place she should have realized I’d never go to because it is a tiny, cramped, enclosed spot where one can hardly stand up and I’m a major claustrophobe.
And he says he is being falsely accused:
No one wants to discourage abuse victims from speaking out, but one must bear in mind that sometimes there are people who are falsely accused and that is also a terribly destructive thing.
Allen also wrote that this will be his final word on the subject and that no one from his camp will respond again.
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