Woody Allen’s Adopted Son Moses Farrow Defends Father From Sister’s Sexual Assault Claim
By Carl Samson
Moses Farrow, the adopted son of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, has defended his father from the sexual assault allegation launched by his sister, Dylan Farrow, and the public backlash that ensued thereafter.
Back in 2014, Dylan, who was also adopted, penned an open letter that accused Allen of molesting her when she was seven.
“He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.”
The director has since denied the allegation, which had been put under a Yale investigation that proved his innocence.
However, Allen was back under fire in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, when dozens of women came forward to accuse the producer of sexual assault or harassment.
Moses, 40, spoke out for the first time to affirm his father’s innocence in a 4,600-word essay published on Wednesday.
“I’m a very private person and not at all interested in public attention. But, given the incredibly inaccurate and misleading attacks on my father, Woody Allen, I feel that I can no longer stay silent as he continues to be condemned for a crime he did not commit.
“I was present for everything that transpired in our house before, during, and after the alleged event. Now that the public hysteria of earlier this year has died down a little and I have some hope that the truth can get a fair hearing, I want to share my story.”
In striking detail, Moses recalled that he had his eyes on Allen the day he allegedly molested Dylan, making such accusation simply impossible.
“As the ‘man of the house’ that day, I had promised to keep an eye out for any trouble, and I was doing just that. I remember where Woody sat in the TV room, and I can picture where Dylan and Satchel were. Not that everybody stayed glued to the same spot, but I deliberately made sure to note everyone’s coming and going. I do remember that Woody would leave the room on occasion, but never with Dylan. He would wander into another room to make a phone call, read the paper, use the bathroom, or step outside to get some air and walk around the large pond on the property.”
Moses, whom Mia adopted as a single parent in 1980, claimed that he was acting on his mother’s orders.
He accused her of being abusive, recalling one incident when she slapped him for unknowingly keeping a tape measure on his bed.
“When I didn’t give the answer she wanted, she slapped my face, knocking off my glasses. She told me I was lying and directed me to tell my brothers and sisters that I had taken the tape measure. Through my tears I listened to her as she explained that we would rehearse what should have happened. She would walk into the room and I would tell her I was sorry for taking the tape measure, that I had taken it to play with and that I would never do it again. She made me rehearse it at least a half-dozen times.”
According to Moses, that marked the beginning of Mia’s “brainwashing,” which he pointed as the source of Dylan’s allegation.
“That was the start of her coaching, drilling, scripting, and rehearsing – in essence, brainwashing. I became anxious and fearful. Once, when I was given a new pair of jeans, I thought they would look cool if I cut off a couple of the belt loops. When Mia saw what I had done, she spanked me repeatedly and had me remove all my clothing, saying, ‘You’re not deserving of any clothes’ and making me stand naked in the corner of her room, in front of my older siblings who had just returned from dinner with their father André.”
Moses said that Dylan’s open letter is a “precise and compelling narrative,” but the fact that the attic — where Allen allegedly molested her — had no toy trains is a “major problem.”
“It’s a precise and compelling narrative, but there’s a major problem: there was no electric train set in that attic. There was, in fact, no way for kids to play up there, even if we had wanted to. It was an unfinished crawl space, under a steeply-angled gabled roof, with exposed nails and floorboards, billows of fiberglass insulation, filled with mousetraps and droppings and stinking of mothballs, and crammed with trunks full of hand-me-down clothes and my mother’s old wardrobes.
“The idea that the space could possibly have accommodated a functioning electric train set, circling around the attic, is ridiculous.
“Now, whenever I hear Dylan making a public statement about what allegedly happened to her that day when she was barely seven, I can only think of that imaginary train set, which she never brought up during the original investigation or custody hearing.”
He then referred to the result of the six-month investigation conducted by the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale/New Haven Hospital, ordered by the Connecticut state police, which severed all criminal charges against Allen.
“It specifically concluded that ‘Dylan was not abused by Mr. Allen,’ that her statements had a ‘rehearsed quality’ and that they were ‘likely coached or influenced by her mother.’ Those conclusions perfectly match my own childhood experience: coaching, influencing, and rehearsing are three words that sum up exactly how my mother tried to raise us.”
In response, Dylan claimed that her brother is “troubled” and that his claims attempt to “deflect from a credible allegation made by an adult woman.”
“As I said when he last made these claims, this is an attempt to deflect from a credible allegation made by an adult woman, by trying to impugn my mother who has only ever been supportive of me and my siblings. It’s easily disproven, contradicts years of his own statements, is beyond hurtful to me personally, and is part of a larger effort to discredit and distract from my assault. My brother is a troubled person. I’m so sorry he’s doing this.”
Featured Images via (Left, Collaged) Wikimedia Commons / Adam Bielawski (CC BY-SA 4.0) and (Right) Instagram / Moses Farrow
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