Andy Thibault

Woody, Mia and Frank Maco
The Litchfield County state's attorney thought he'd seen it all - and then he ran into Mia Farrow and Woody Allen.
BY ANDY THIBAULT
Connecticut Magazine, April 1997

Frank Maco might just as well have been Zelig, the Woody Allen character who appears out of nowhere in the maelstrom of historic events.

A career civil servant, Maco made his mark in the state criminal justice system by grinding out cases and staying out of the limelight. Early on, he became known as a quiet but effective crime fighter.

As a young prosecutor in the 1970s, Maco tried cases before Judge Nicholas Cioffi in Bridgeport.

"Frank is very reflective, extremely reflective," says Cioffi, the former Superior Court judge and public safety commissioner. "He's a very calm, level-headed guy. He's not flashy, but he surely gets the job done; his style is not to become the focal point, but just to present the case to the jury."

Nevertheless, Maco has been in the international spotlight for nearly five years, ever since he began directing the child abuse investigation of Woody Allen. Now the Litchfield County state's attorney faces possible suspension or disbarment for his handling of the case. It's a situation - the celebrities, the tabloid media, the controversy - seemingly at complete odds with his upbringing and his early career. And now it just may do him in.

Frank S. Maco, now 50, grew up on Bridgeport's East Side. He moved to Stratford as a 9-year-old, to the house where his parents, now in their 70s, still live.

His father Frank J. Maco, a member of the famed Blue Devils 88th Army infantry division, raised his son on sports and history.

"He acquired a sense of history by living it; the Blue Devils invaded Italy a full month before Normandy," Maco says of his father. "My dad wanted to impress this sense of history upon me." Like many teen-age boys of the 1950s and '60s, young Maco idolized Mickey Mantle and John F. Kennedy.

"Say what you will about President Kennedy, given the recent revelations about his character," Maco says, "he got people like me, and a lot of my generation, to say, 'Hey, look, let's get involved in public service - that's not a bad life.' Some say we were the last generation that had heroes."

Maco still treasures his correspondence, in 1966 and 1967, with then U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy. As president of Fairfield University's College Democrats, Maco had invited the New York senator to speak on campus. Kennedy could not make it to Fairfield, but he wrote Maco two kind notes.

Pictures on the recreation room wall at Maco's parents' house trace his career, from his swearing-in as a prosecutor in 1972 and as Litchfield County state's attorney in 1988 all the way up to the Woody Allen case. His dad also keeps a series of scrapbooks from first grade to Maco's visit to President Kennedy's grave.

"It's like therapy for me," says the elder Maco, who retired after 30 years as a factory foreman and has worked the last 20 as a deputy sheriff in Bridgeport Superior Court.

Father and son have worked the court system simultaneously. "He gets to see, day in and day out, people I grew up with in the system, lawyers and cops," says Maco of his dad. "He enjoys that."

Maco's mother Theresa, known to her friends as Tess, is the consummate old-style mother who insists on dinner at the table on time. "She wants her family to be healthy and strong - that's what her whole life has been," he says.

Maco, his wife of 24 years Nancy Lou, and their teen-age son Frank Jr. live just a few miles away in Stratford. "My parents and I have been exceptionally close, and that's the toughest part about going through what I've been going through."

Maco is now in his 25th year as a prosecutor in Connecticut. After Bridgeport, he served as head of the racketeering unit for the chief state's attorney's office. Along the way Maco drew the notice of the late state Supreme Court Justice T. Clark Hull, who recommended him for a post as a state's attorney. "He is the smoothest prosecutor who has ever
appeared before me," Hull said.

Among Maco's early triumphs was the arrest and conviction of Edward Palmer, a man who became known as Bridgeport's bumper rapist.

It was December of 1980. The women of Bridgeport dressed like men and drove with dogs in their cars. They carried knives and unlicensed guns.

"The word was out," says retired Bridgeport police inspector Anthony Fabrizi. "Women were in a panic because there had been nine known attacks by this guy."

Two of the women were attacked after their cars were struck in the rear, leading police to brand the culprit the bumper rapist. The rapist wore a mask and blindfolded his victims. Obstacles to solving the case seemed insurmountable. But Fabrizi developed a plan with then assistant state's attorney Frank Maco: Two Bridgeport police officers, a husband-and-wife team, would be set up in a car as decoys.

Palmer took the bait, rear-ending someone he thought was just another woman driver. But when he approached the car with his gun exposed, the male officer hidden in the back seat shot at him, prompting an exchange of gunfire. Cops were later able to trace the bullets Palmer fired to a gun he stole from a University of Bridgeport security guard.

"Frank made sure we didn't have any entrapment problems," Fabrizi says, "I wanted to kill the guy, but Frank said, 'You can't do that, Tony; we'll salt him away forever.'"

Maco told Superior Court Judge Martin Nigro, "This man should never be allowed to live outside prison walls." Nigro obliged.

Palmer received the longest sentence in Fairfield County history: a minimum of 77 years in prison, and a maximum of two life terms plus 57 years.

When Maco arrived in Litchfield in 1988 as state's attorney for Litchfield County, the Northwest Corner seemed more like the Wild West than a retreat for New York artists and literary types.

Roy Duntz laughed after he burned down the Salisbury town garage in 1982 to cover the theft of some chainsaws. Why not? He had the closest thing to diplomatic immunity in Northwest Connecticut. The shield was his older brother Richard - known to police as the cocaine kingpin of the region in the 1980s - who intimidated law enforcement officials and witnesses alike.

Richard Duntz had escaped jail time despite being convicted of shooting out the window of a state trooper's house.

"He always walked and he was feared by everyone," says James Hiltz, a retired state police lieutenant who headed the Major Crime Squad in western Connecticut. "But Frank stood up to him."

Before Maco could put Roy Duntz in jail for the garage fire, Duntz burned down the Salisbury Town Hall. His accomplice in the town hall torching, Earl Morey II, confessed to the crime, but he was so scared of Richard Duntz, he asked police to "slap him around so he would look like he was beat up" and forced to confess.

Morey's fears were well grounded. On Oct. 23, 1986, Richard Duntz shot him three times in the back of the head and killed him. Maco convinced a jury in 1990 that Richard Duntz executed Morey for daring to cross him by linking his brother to the town hall fire.

Roy Duntz was sentenced to 25 years for the town hall fire; Richard Duntz was sentenced to 60 years for the murder of Earl Morey.

"Lawlessness can be put down if good people come forward and testify," Maco said after convicting Roy Duntz the first time.

Richard Duntz gained a retrial in 1994 because of errors by the trial judge in admitting some of the evidence. Duntz was convicted again, by Maco's assistant, David Shepack, and died in jail.

Maco had planned to handle the retrial himself. But he was forced to withdraw from the case on May 6, 1994. Woody Allen had seen to that.

The Mia Farrow-Woody Allen relationship first exploded in January 1992, when Farrow found photos of her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, posing naked in Allen's New York City apartment. Later that year, in August, Allen was accused of molesting and sexually assaulting his 7-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan, at Farrow's Bridgewater home.
Initially, the complaint was filed with New York authorities, but they took no action. Paul Williams, a Caseworker of the Year for New York City's Human Resources Administration, tried to bring the case to Family Court (against the orders of his superiors) and was fired for "unethical conduct." Seven months later he was reinstated as a supervisor, a position he still holds.

Maco first learned of the case in August 1992 when he got a call at home from a prosecutor in his office, David Shepack. On vacation, Maco initially thought Shepack was harassing him with a bad joke.

Then, about a week later, Allen held a press conference at a New York hotel announcing that he was the subject of a child abuse investigation.

"I told the state police to acknowledge that there is an investigation, but to make no further comment," Maco recalls. "We didn't identify the nature of the investigation or any of the possible charges."

Maco refused to talk about specifics of the investigation, limiting his comments to elements that have made their way into the public record.

Interviews with dozens of law enforcement officials and mental health professionals familiar with the case, as well as a review of court documents and other records, show the range of the case against Allen.

Allen fellatio

On Aug. 4, 1992, a babysitter claims she saw Allen kneeling in front of Dylan, who was sitting on a couch in the den of the Bridgewater home. Dylan was wearing a dress, but no underpants. She stared blankly at the TV screen. The babysitter told authorities she noticed that Allen's head was between the girl's legs, very close to her crotch.

Over the course of the following 13 months, Dylan would tell her mother, psychologists, doctors, social workers and police that Allen touched her - with the tip of his right index finger - several times that day.

After the couch incident, the child's account has Allen taking her up to the master bedroom and into a crawl space for some father-daughter time to play with a train.

"He put his finger in my vagina. He made me lay on the floor all ways, on my back, on my side, my front. He kissed me all over."

"I didn't like it," she continued. "Daddy told me not to tell and he'd take me to Paris, but I did tell."

Police found hair fibers in the crawl space consistent with Allen's, but forensic specialist Dr. Henry Lee, chief of Connecticut's state crime laboratory, believes the evidence could not conclusively place Allen in the attic.

"We found hair in the attic, but what does it prove?" Lee says. "It doesn't necessarily prove guilt."

Woody Allen would rebuff efforts by Connecticut state police and Paul Williams of New York to interview him. Just a few weeks after the Aug. 4 incidents, Allen tried to set preconditions for an interview with the state police. One of the preconditions was that any statements made by Allen could not be used to impeach him. The state police did not comply.

Allen's lawyers also asked Maco to be present for his statement. Maco declined, fearing he would then be a witness and have problems if he took the case to court.

Then on Jan. 6, 1993, Allen appeared at the state police barracks in Litchfield for a three-and-a-half-hour interview. He denied assaulting Dylan. He denied ever having been in the crawl space.

But Allen did say he might have reached into the crawl space on occasion, either to grab one of the children or to give them a soda. State police reminded Allen that to reach into the crawl space, he would have had to enter a small closet first. Allen vehemently denied entry to the crawl space.

But when state police told Allen they had taken fingerprints from the crawl space, he said it was possible that his prints would be found there. State police characterized Allen's statements as inconsistent.

During the Allen investigation, Maco received a warning from a high-ranking state police official.

"He [Maco] was told," says a retired officer, "that the Allen people were hiring private detectives to try to get some dirt on us."

One of their key targets was Sgt. John Mucherino, a primary investigator for Maco. They wanted to know if Mucherino was a drinker or a gambler, if he had any marital problems.

Allen's private detectives were compartmentalized, hired by different lawyers and subcontractors working for him, police say. The private detectives included former FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents, even former state cops who were friends with Mucherino.

One private investigator says he met with Allen's top criminal lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz. "Abramowitz had an aura about him; he was very charismatic," the detective said. "I worked for Woody Allen, but I have a personal code."

The detective said he alerted Mucherino to the nature of the inquiry, then he filed a report and received a substantial fee.

Abramowitz has denied meeting with private detectives on the case, although he acknowledged 10 or more worked for Allen. "We didn't go into any kind of smear campaign against the police," he says.

The prying took its toll on Maco. "It was after that that I saw a big change in him," says investigation team member Frank D'Amico, a retired police officer. "He was tense for a long time. He just took more precautions with everything he did."

"They were just trying to disrupt the case. We all know today, in light of O.J., that if you have nothing to go on, you go after law enforcement."

D'Amico says the Allen team played a number of dirty tricks. Other law enforcement officials suspect that they had something to do with the false rumor that a top police investigator on the Allen case was trying to sell a videotape of Dylan to the tabloid media.

The state police immediately began an internal affairs investigation of this trooper, who was cleared. Former Chief State's Attorney Austin McGuigan said the allegations had to affect "the investigator's ability to do his job."

"The investigation closed down for about 10 days," Maco recalls. "About this time, I was told there was a campaign to disrupt the investigation and discredit the investigators, being orchestrated out of New York."

"If anyone was watching me or following me," he says, "I'm sure it was one of the most boring assignments they ever had. But just the thought concerns you, that somebody somewhere might be watching what you're doing after you leave the office."

"The word on the street was, 'Maco's office is beyond reproach, but we have Maco covered.' I took it as someone saying I could have been dirty. That stays in your mind. That made it more important for me to explain my decision so people would know it was not based on by being dirty, but on a methodology that is proven."

Leventhal

Woody Allen proclaimed his innocence on the steps of Yale University in March 1993. A panel of experts from Yale, headed by pediatrician Dr. John Leventhal, concluded no abuse had taken place.

The conclusion itself was an anomaly. The standard practice in the field is to state whether the subject's behavior is consistent with having suffered sexual abuse.

"Concluding guilt or innocence is not the role of a mental health team - that's for the court," says Dr. Diane Schetky, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, co-author of the widely used textbook Child Sexual Abuse and co-editor of Clinical Handbook of Child Psychiatry and the Law

Maco had commissioned the Yale study with instructions to determine whether Dylan was a viable witness who could stand up in court. He said that enlisting Yale's assistance was the biggest mistake he made in the case.

"Regardless of what the Connecticut police wanted from us," Leventhal said in an April 1993 deposition, "we weren't necessarily beholden to them. We did not assess whether she'd be a good witness in court. That's what Mr. Maco may have been interested in, but that's not necessarily what we were interested in."

Yale, Maco says, "took the case and ran away with it. I gave their report very little weight."

An examination of the Yale report and court documents shows:

· The Yale team used psychologists on Allen's payroll to make mental health conclusions. "That seems like a blatant conflict of interest; they should have excluded themselves," Schetky says.

· Custody recommendations were made even though the team never saw Allen and any of the children together. "I'd sure want that information," Schetky says.

· The team refused to interview witnesses who could have corroborated the molestation claims.

· The team destroyed its notes. "I don't know why they would," Schetky says. "They shouldn't have anything to hide, unless there's disagreement."

· Leventhal, the only medical doctor on the team, did not interview Dylan. "How can you write about someone you've never seen?" Schetky asks.

· The night before Leventhal gave a statement to Farrow's attorney, he discussed the scenario with Abramowitz, the head of Allen's legal team, for about 30 minutes.

· The team interviewed Dylan nine times. For three consecutive weeks, she said Allen violated her sexually. In several of the other sessions she mentioned a similar type of abuse. When Dylan did not repeat the precise allegation in some of the sessions, the team reported this as an inconsistency.

The nine interviews were "excessive," Schetky says. "The danger is the child feels like she's not believed if she's asked the same questions over and over."

Leventhal himself later admitted, in sworn testimony in the custody case, that he made several mistakes during the course of the investigation. One of those was his false characterization of Dylan's active imagination as a thought disorder.

In the Yale report, Leventhal cited what he called "loose associations" by the child. He said she talked about looking in a trunk and seeing "dead heads." When advised that Mia Farrow had a trunk in her attic in which she kept wigs from her movies on wig blocks, Leventhal acknowledged this was not evidence of a fantasy problem or a thought
disorder.

The pediatrician also attempted to categorize Dylan's banter as "magical thinking," citing her vivid description of a sunset. However, after being advised that Mia Farrow described the dark sky upon leaving New Haven in the evening as "the magic hour," Leventhal said he was "less concerned" about the incident as an example of "loose thinking."

"This guy Leventhal never left his office, never talked to the child, but he gave a wonderful account and said, 'I exonerate you, Woody,'" D'Amico says. "Boy, I wouldn't want to carry that flag around - 'Leventhal says I'm OK.'"

A Yale Spokeswoman says the hospital stands by the report and Leventhal's national reputation.

On Sept. 20, 1993 state police detective Bea Farleakas and Dylan Farrow sat on the floor of Maco's office, surrounded by stuffed animals. It was not an unusual scene. Children, sometimes victims, were regular visitors to the office, which is just a few doors from the renowned West Street Grill off Litchfield's town green.

Joining Farleakas, who was the primary detective in the Allen probe, and Dylan was Michelle Prindle, Maco's secretary. Dylan handed out the stuffed animals and they played for about an hour.

Maco, D'Amico, and state police Lt. Charles McIntyre looked on as Farleakas, Dylan and Prindle finished their play session. Maco then got down on the floor and played and talked with Dylan for about half an hour.

"We talked about kid stuff," Maco says. "It was like being with my own kid. We were having fun - until the button was pushed. I tried to discuss the incident. I saw her saying to me with her blank stare, 'This is the last place I want to be. I can't deal with this. Is this Yale? What are they doing to me?'"

Detective sees damage

Maco backed off. "I saw complete withdrawal any time I tried to discuss the incident. This was complete withdrawal and regression. At the time she was so fragile and damaged I knew she would not be a good witness. I knew she needed healing. I was not going to interfere with her recovery."

Days later, Maco held a press conference in which he said state police had compiled enough evidence to charge Allen with a crime, but that he'd decided not to approve an arrest warrant in order to spare Dylan the trauma of a trial.

Allen objected strongly to Maco's characterization of him as a criminal who would never get to refute the charge in court. So strong were his objections, in fact, that in October he filed an ethics complaint against Maco with both the Statewide Grievance Committee - a lawyers' disciplinary group - and the state Criminal Justice Commission, which hires and fires prosecutors. While the Criminal Justice Commission exonerated Maco that December, the Statewide Grievance Committee voted 6-5 with two abstentions to investigate Maco for alleged misconduct in his handling of
the case. The vote overturned a ruling by Maco's local committee, which had found in his favor.

Susan Levine of Litchfield, a member of the local grievance committee, recalls the deliberations over Maco's actions.

"We ruled that even though Maco was close to the line, he didn't cross it," said Levine, who is also the top borough official in Litchfield. "We were very surprised when statewide overturned it. Why empower local grievance committees and then take away the power? If Maco had acted inappropriately, that's the way [our] ruling would have gone. Maybe they just wanted to see Woody Allen."

Levine's comments were echoed by Superior Court Judge Raymond Norko, who characterized the Statewide Grievance Committee's actions as "star driven, sloppy and careless."

One of the members of the statewide panel, Bridgeport attorney Daiga Osis, had been an opponent of Maco in a vigorously contested arson case in Bridgeport - the burning of the Town Fair Tire store on Boston Avenue in the 1980s. Osis had argued an appeal against Maco and lost.

"The name of the prosecutor did not concern me; I have no personal relationship with Maco," Osis says. But she cast what could have been the deciding vote in the 6-5 decision to investigate Maco. Hiltz, a retired state police lieutenant, called her action "sour grapes" and "payback."

"I did nothing illegal, unethical or immoral," Maco says. "I'll go anywhere to defend that."

These days, Maco awaits the final word from the Statewide Grievance Committee, which could vote to remove him from his job. Maco says he has rejected offers of a settlement from the Allen camp, which would require him to apologize for his accusatory statements.

He credits his family with the support that has enabled him to endure. "I've gained strength from Nancy Lou, from my son and of course, from Mom and Dad. Whatever strength I have comes from them."

In one particularly intense period, his son Frank Jr., then 9 years old, pulled him through. Allen had branded Maco dishonest and a coward during press conferences after Maco's announcement that he was closing the case.

"Frank saw the news article, and all I could do was tell him that given the nature of my business, I'm sure I've been called a coward and dishonest before, but I don't think I've ever been called both of those at the same time," Maco recalls. "He laughed, but then he had some fear for my job, so he assured me he had a friend, another young boy whose dad was in the insurance business. He said, 'Don't worry, Dad, I'm sure we can always get you a job in insurance.'"

Back to Top

March 20, 1993

Woody Allen Tells of Affair as Custody Battle Begins

By RICHARD PEREZ-PENA

ith Mia Farrow watching from a few feet away, Woody Allen testified yesterday about the disintegration of the couple's relationship, his affair with her daughter and his own views on children.

The former couple's custody battle went to trial with Mr. Allen saying Ms. Farrow cut his head out of family pictures after she learned of the affair, made threatening phone calls to him in the middle of the night and once left a note on a windowsill saying, "I jumped out the window because of what you've done to my children."

Yesterday was one of the rare occasions in which Ms. Farrow and Mr. Allen appeared in open court together since their bitter dispute began, a dispute that has focused extraordinary attention on the former lovers and shattered the carefully guarded privacy of their years together.

Mr. Allen, 57 years old, said that when he embarked on a sexual relationship with Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, 22, who was adopted by Ms. Farrow and her former husband, Andre Previn, he had hoped to keep it secret from Ms. Farrow and their three children. He also admitted giving little thought to how the affair would affect the children.

"At the very outset, it didn't occur to me that this would be anything but a private thing," he said.

Mr. Allen described Ms. Farrow, 47, who has 11 children, as a woman obsessed with motherhood, who would become fixated for a time on one child to the exclusion of the others. When their relationship crumbled early last year, he said, she would fly into rages, destroying pictures of him and Ms. Previn in front of the children. First Day of Trial

Ms. Farrow refused to speak to reporters outside the courtroom. Her lawyer, Eleanor B. Alter, would say only, "It wasn't impressive to me, but I'm biased, and I'm not the one that matters."

Mr. Allen is scheduled to return to the witness stand Monday, when he is to be cross-examined by Ms. Farrow's lawyers.

The trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan began the day after Mr. Allen said a team of investigators at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Conn., had cleared him of Ms. Farrow's charge that he molested their 7-year-old daughter, Dylan O. Farrow, at her Bridgewater, Conn., home last year. Ms. Alter called the team's report "incomplete and inaccurate," insisting that Mr. Allen's affair with Ms. Previn had done psychological damage to Dylan.

The report was presented on Wednesday to Frank S. Maco, the Connecticut State's Attorney for the Litchfield judicial district, who must decide whether to prosecute Mr. Allen. In a statement released yesterday, Mr. Maco said he would give the report "due consideration," but he stressed that the findings of a state police investigation and other factors would also weigh in his decision.

Mr. Allen said the report agreed with his suspicion that the allegation might have been concocted by Ms. Farrow as vengeance for his affair with Ms. Previn, and in his statement, Mr. Maco agreed that the Yale-New Haven team did raise questions about "the involvement of the adoptive mother." But, he added, "There has been no evidence presented in the state police investigation that suggests that Ms. Farrow acted in any way other than that of a concerned mother."

The rift between Ms. Farrow and Mr. Allen became public last August, when she first leveled the molestation charge and he filed for sole custody of Dylan and their adopted son, Moses A. Farrow, 15, and the couple's only biological child, Satchel O. Farrow, 5. Ms. Farrow later filed a separate suit in Surrogate's Court to void Mr. Allen's 1991 adoption of Moses and Dylan.

Mr. Allen testified that his affair with Ms. Previn began a few days after Christmas 1991, when she was home from her first year in college, and Ms. Farrow learned of it on Jan. 13, 1992, after finding nude photographs of Ms. Previn in Mr. Allen's apartment.

When asked by Acting Justice Elliott Wilk whether he thought of the effect it would have on the other children, Mr. Allen said, "I felt nobody in the world would have any idea."

Justice Wilk asked, "Wasn't that enough, that you would know that you were sleeping with your children's sister?"

Mr. Allen answered: "I didn't see it that way. I'm sorry."

After Ms. Farrow discovered the relationship, "She called me a dozen times a night, raging and screaming into the phone, threatening to kill me," he said. "In any number of these calls, I could hear the children in the background, and I said, 'Please don't do this in front of the children.' "

Relationship Sours

Long before then, he said, his relationship with Ms. Farrow took a turn for the worse. In 1987, when she was pregnant with Satchel, he said, she told him, "Don't get too close to him, because I don't think this relationship is going anywhere." After the boy was born, Mr. Allen said, Ms. Farrow stopped sleeping with him, shunted Dylan aside and spent all her time with the new baby.

Mr. Allen conceded that he originally had no interest in children, while he said Ms. Farrow thought of little else. Paraphrasing, he said she had told him, "You have your work, and my big aim in life is having copious amounts of children."

But when Ms. Farrow adopted Dylan as a newborn in 1985, he said, it transformed him. "At that point, I just became what I consider a wonderful, wonderful father to Dylan. It became the single most important thing in my life."

Return to "More on Mia Farrow"

Woody Allen

Speaking of deviant, one can’t help but wonder where all the fanfare and sensationalism was when Woody Allen was accused of molesting his own biological daughter and stepdaughter.. Though the press reported on it, the spin of these allegations were that they were primarily the claims of an angry, bitter Mia Farrow, his then lover, during a rather heated and very public custody battle. There weren’t seventy officers bum-rushing his home. There wasn’t a huge media circus swarming around him after nude pictures were found of Ms. Farrow’s adopted daughter in his apartment, a young woman he later married.

I don't know if she was a minor. But I suspect the "attraction" began a lot sooner than it was expressed.

I bet in the back of her mind, she worries for the children she has already had or will have with the creep.

She ought to, anyway.

Meanwhile, Allen's famed neurosis should be upgraded to psychosis.

14 at time

I think Sun-Yee was 14 at the time the affair started.

Woody is rich and privileged.

You all do the math, connect the dots, whatever, for yourselves.

I do like his films, though.

Roman Polanski is still hiding out in France.

But for all their experience and "independence" - Allen and his inner circle refused any interviews - neither author has produced a brilliantly insightful account, on par, for example, with Patricia Bosworth’s haunting "Montgomery Clift"; still, Meade delivers an enjoyable and interesting romp through Woodyland. Both books serve up some delectable dish, though much of it is familiar.

Allen masturbates

In Baxter’s case, the dish is mixed, with mind-numbing technical detail and bizarre errors. Allen’s perfectionism is proven over and over - it’s as if every time he reshoots a scene, Baxter needs to describe it, and in merely serviceable prose to boot. The narrative bops back and forth between Allen’s real and celluloid lives, so that one minute we’re reading about Farrow’s distaste for his masturbatory habits, and the next, we’re plunged into "Stardust Memories," and its contemptible anti-hero Sandy Bates: "You can’t control life … Only art you can control. Art and masturbation."

The Paris-based Baxter records Allen’s move to Central Park East from his place on East 79th just off Sixth Avenue, quite a feat, since neither address exists. Amid this annoying hodgepodge, it’s hard to decipher any coherent picture of the man, except to conclude that he’s far tougher than his schlemiel persona, but we already knew that.

Meets Su Li at 8

Woody Allen met his wife Soon-Yi Previn when she was eight. She was the daughter of his girlfriend, Mia Farrow, with whom he had children. Previn had known Allen in a stepfather role for more than a decade before they began a sexual affair.

Allen, Woody. Neurotic pedophile who took up with his wife's adopted daughter and betrayed the esteem millions held him in; still literally cannot understand what the problem is. Linked with Diane Keaton & Mia Farrow; had affair with teenager during filming of Manhattan

Taboo Romance Looms over Woody Allen Visitation Denial
Concerns Raised over Emotional Effect on Children
Volume 1, Issue 3 -- Published: Wednesday, Jan 1, 1997 -- Last Updated: Monday, Mar 11, 2002

Farrow gets custody

In June, 1993, a court awarded custody of Moses, Dylan and Satchel to their mother, Mia Farrow, denying custody to their father, Woody Allen. Moses, who was then 15 years old, and unwilling to visit with his father, was not required to do so. Supervised visitation was ordered for Satchel, who was then five, for two hours, three times per week. Visitation between Mr. Allen and his daughter, Dylan, then seven, was to commence within six months, unless it interfered with therapeutic treatment or was "inconsistent with her welfare."

With the consent of both parties, a psychiatrist, Dr. Donna Moreau, was engaged as a neutral evaluator to make recommendations with respect to visitation. In her report of August 16, 1994, she concluded that Mr. Allen's severance of his sexual relationship with Ms. Farrow's daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, was an "absolute precondition for even beginning to think of the possibility of contact" between him and Dylan. She asserted that Mr. Allen was blind to the effect his affair had on Dylan.

Allen wants visits with Dylan

In November, 1995, Mr. Allen moved to modify the order of visitation, requesting, inter alia, unsupervised visits with Satchel and phased-in visits with Dylan. In response, Dr. Hector Bird, who treated Dylan from 1993 to 1995, advised against forced visitation with Dylan, claiming that it would "at the very least generate an emotional upheaval to which [she]...should not be subjected and which may set her back in the gains she has made." He stated that Dylan remains adamant in her negative feelings toward Mr. Allen and in her desire not to see him, and that it stemmed from her perception of her father having, as she referred to it, a "boyfriend-girlfriend" relationship with her sister. Dr. Bird expressed concern that Mr. Allen had failed to acknowledge or consider this "critical factor" in her development. Mr. Allen then retained Dr. Paula Kernberg to assess the situation and recommend a visitation arrangement.

Satchel molested abused

In a December, 1995 letter, Dr. Leonard Diamond, who has been Satchel's treating therapist since March, 1995, reported that Satchel dreaded visitation with his father, and was suffering from nightmares and stomach aches in anticipation. The doctor believed that Satchel's unwillingness to visit with Mr. Allen stemmed from anger toward him for disrupting his family (because of his relationship with Soon-Yi) and for memories of abusive behavior toward him by Mr. Allen. He concluded that Mr. Allen's physical absence didn't seem to be having any ill effect on Satchel's development while his presence did. In January, 1996, Satchel's teacher expressed concern over his mood and its effect on his ability to focus on his work. Dr. Diamond and Dr. Kernberg both agreed that Satchel's visits with Mr. Allen should be temporarily suspended.

Dr. Kemberg, in her May, 1996 report, concluded that the absence of Soon-Yi in Mr. Allen's home "in the structuring of visits is deceitful and causes more problems than it solves." She stated that both children are healthy enough to resume visits with Mr. Allen immediately, and without supervision.

Mr. Allen's request for a hearing was granted; it commenced on May 23, 1996. Dr. Kernberg's testimony was consistent with her report. Dr. Diamond's testimony reaffirmed his December 1995 conclusions. At the hearing, Mr. Allen suggested that with no more than one month of preparation, Satchel and Dylan, together, should visit him on alternate weekends without supervision and in the presence of Soon-Yi.

Held: Visitation with Satchel is to be resumed, in the presence of Dr. Diamond, in his Connecticut office, once per week, for one hour, for four consecutive weeks. The Court concluded that "he is resilient enough to resume visitation and articulate enough to express some of the reasons for his discomfort." But the Court denied Mr. Allen's request for visitation with Dylan. Said the Court, "Her therapeutic situation is still too fragile and unsettled to enable me to determine if or how contact with Mr. Allen should be initiated." In reaching his decision, Judge Wilk stressed the fact that Mr. Allen's suggestion of Soon-Yi being present during visitation "confirms that Mr. Allen still has little understanding or empathy with respect to the emotional well-being of his children." Said the Court, he "continues in his inability to acknowledge his role" in contributing to his children's suffering.

Dr. Welner's comments: Considerable attention has been devoted to the terrible consequences of incest on the victim. What about its impact on the victim's siblings? Incest is almost always furtively perpetrated, or is unknown to uninvolved siblings.

Not so in this very public case with its peculiar relationships. Unusual here is the vitriol with which Allen children reject him. Both of the younger Allen children are in therapy, and Dylan is described fragile. Is this the outcome in every divorce, even where one parent may have been abusive? Certainly not.

The explanation for Dylan may rest in her therapist's observation that she perceived her father as having "boyfriend-girlfriend' relationship with her sister." A court appointed evaluator concluded, "Mr. Allen blindness to the effect of his affect on Dylan" was "narcissism at its opaque and destructive worst." To what extent has Mr. Allen's choice inflicted permanent emotional damage on his children?

{ Note: Mr. Allen's attorney, Mrs. Sheila Ginsberg Reisel of New York and Ms. Farrow's attorney, Mr. William Beslow, also of New York, have reported to The Echo that Judge Wilk's decision has been appealed and will be heard by the Appellate Division in late March.}

Can't see kids since 1992

One interesting footnote: I noticed for the first time yesterday that Woody's new production company is called Moses Productions. This is obviously a tribute to the son Allen adopted with Mia Farrow but has been unable to see since 1992 — along with adopted Dylan and biological son Seamus. How heartbreaking that this bizarre situation has been allowed to continue and flourish

I know that the older boy and the little girl, Dylan, were adopted but he & Mia did have a biological son together. He's apparently something of a genius. He was admitted to college at around 12-13 years old. He was originally called Satchel but Mia changed his & Dylan's names after the Soon-Yi/Woody scandal. Dylan is now called Eliza and Satchel is called Seamus

Woody Allen's 11-year-old genius son in college
Mitchell Fink
New York Daily News

NEW YORK - Woody Allen's 11-year-old son has already enrolled in college, spokesmen for the boy's mother confirmed yesterday.

However, the celebrated filmmaker, who is estranged from the boy, was surprised to learn that his child with actor Mia Farrow is enrolled at a Massachusetts college for gifted students and has applied to Columbia University.

The boy, Seamus Farrow, lives with his mother in Connecticut and attends Simon's Rock College, in Great Barrington, Mass., a school for gifted high school students. He is the youngest at the college and is taking courses in Latin and biology.

William Beslow, a lawyer for Ms. Farrow, said the boy hopes to begin classes at Columbia next fall.

Mr. Allen learned that his son has already begun college from a reporter. "This is the first I'm hearing of it," he said.

Mr. Allen has neither seen nor spoken with his son for four years, a casualty of his split with Ms. Farrow after he began an affair with Soon-Yi Previn, one of her adopted children. Mr. Allen and Ms. Previn married in 1997 and have a five-month-old daughter.

In 1993, Ms. Farrow gained custody of Seamus and, after a court battle with Mr. Allen, a judge forbade the director from being in the child's company without supervision.

Mr. Beslow said Seamus "is positively phobic" about his father and refuses to see him. "He sees Woody less as his father and more as the man who was having an affair with his sister Soon-Yi."

She wrote this to Seamus when he was about four years old. (At Allen's suggestion, he was originally named Satchel after the baseball pitcher Leeroy Satchel Paige.) Unbeknown to Farrow it was also around this time that Allen began his affair with her 21-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi. In 1992, when Seamus was four, Farrow and Woody's partnership exploded when she discovered Polaroids that he had taken of a naked Soon-Yi. Later she also accused him of abusing their eight- year-old adopted daughter, Dylan;

Two most involved

Since the Allen-Farrow court case in 1992, she has renamed the two children most involved: Satchel is now called Seamus, and Dylan was renamed Eliza for four years, and then became Malone. Farrow has also adopted three other children: Isaiah, who was born in LA addicted to crack cocaine, and is now a shy but personable 10-year-old; Frankie-Minh, the family giggler, who is blind; and the extrovert Quincy, who mysteriously couldn't move her arms at four weeks old when she was adopted, but who is now entertaining us all by brilliantly impersonating everybody, including her mother.

Seamus is scarred

Ask Farrow about her trials and tribulations with Woody Allen, and you'll get a cool response, although she will allude to them indirectly. 'For years Seamus was very frightened of people,' she says. 'He still doesn't trust many people but he's progressed hugely. As for me, I am still continually trusting, although I have no reason to trust anybody. I just can't help trusting people.'

Woody Allen's son can never forgive his father

January 24, 2005, 12:27:21

Woody Allen's son has slammed his father - saying he can never forgive him for marrying his own adopted daughter. .

Seamus Farrow has branded the film director "immoral" after he married Soon-Yi Previn, who Allen's ex-lover, Mia Farrow, adopted when she was seven years old. .

Seamus, Allen's only biological son with Mia, said: "He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent." .

Allen, who is 35 years older than Soon-Yi, justifies his relationship with his young wife on the grounds that she is not his real daughter. .

But Seamus, 18, has blasted that justification, saying that it is an "insult" to other children who have been adopted. .

He said: "I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children."

Mia adopted Soon-Yi with ex-husband Andre Previn in 1980 but they split soon after and Mia began her relationship with Allen.

However, they broke-up in 1992 when she found nude photographs of Soon-Yi, then 19, on the mantelpiece of Allen's Manhattan apartment.

Mia has never forgiven Allen for the affair, once saying: "It was such a sense of betrayal. Soon-Yi was a kid on the streets of Korea. She was seven when Woody met her."

Dylan frightened of Woody

ia Farrow testified yesterday that her 7-year-old daughter, Dylan, was so distraught over the relentless attention of her adoptive father, Woody Allen, that she frequently screamed, "Hide me! Hide me!" when he came to visit her, and twice locked herself in the bathroom to keep away from him.

In her second day of testimony in a custody trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Ms. Farrow portrayed Mr. Allen as a father so obsessed he would "wrap himself around" the girl as they watched television, often ignoring his other children. And she described the child as almost immobilized by the attention Mr. Allen showered upon her.

Ms. Farrow's accusations about Mr. Allen's behavior toward Dylan are at the heart of the trial, in which Mr. Allen is suing Ms. Farrow for custody of their three children. Ms. Farrow has accused Mr. Allen of sexually molesting Dylan last Aug. 4 at her home in Connecticut, a charge that Mr. Allen has vehemently denied. The State's Attorney for the Litchfield Judicial District in Connecticut has brought no charges in the case, but is still investigating.

Under questioning by her lawyer, Eleanor B. Alter, Ms. Farrow said she had long been alarmed by what she portrayed as Mr. Allen's fixation with Dylan and had conveyed her concerns to a psychiatrist whom Mr. Allen and Dylan had both seen. She said the therapist concurred.

'Creep Up in the Morning' Lay in bed

"He would creep up in the morning and lay beside her bed and wait for her to wake up," Ms. Farrow testified, as Mr. Allen sat a few feet away in the courtroom, scribbling notes and tearing pages from a legal pad. "I thought it was excessive. I was uncomfortable all along."

She said that on some occasions she saw Mr. Allen with "his head in her stomach or her crotch" and that Dylan had described to her one instance in which he had placed his hand under her shorts while she was on the ladder to her bunk bed.

During approximately three hours on the witness stand yesterday, Ms. Farrow talked of what she viewed as the bizarre impact Mr. Allen's attentions had on Dylan, whom Ms. Farrow adopted in 1985. Mr. Allen became her adoptive father in 1991.

Ms. Farrow said that over the years, and particularly, as Dylan got older, her daughter was so traumatized by Mr. Allen that in the mornings, she would come into the kitchen on all fours and make animal noises. On many days, when Mr. Allen came to the apartment -- he maintained his own apartment across Central Park from Ms. Farrow's -- Dylan begged her brothers and sisters to hide her from him, Ms. Farrow said.

Hiding in Closets

"They hid her in closets or under their desks," Ms. Farrow said.

"Was this a game?" Ms. Alter asked.

"No. It was strange," Ms. Farrow replied.

On another occasion, Ms. Farrow said, Dylan locked herself in the bathroom for four hours after Mr. Allen showed up, refusing to come out until Mr. Allen instructed her baby sitter to pick the lock with a wire coat hanger. Ms. Farrow described what she considered "this very needy quality he had of beseeching her attention, praising her to the point that she was immobilized."

Ms. Farrow testified that in December Dylan also said that on a visit to Mr. Allen's apartment sometime in the summer or autumn of 1991, she had witnessed Mr. Allen and Ms. Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, on the bed in his bedroom. "She said they were on top of the bed," Ms. Farrow testified. She said Dylan had told her they were "doing compliments" and "making snoring noises."

The timing of that incident, if true, contradicts testimony by Mr. Allen, who said earlier in the trial that his affair with Ms. Previn began a few days after Christmas 1991. Ms. Farrow has asserted that the affair began during her daughter's senior year in high school, which ended in June 1991.

Motives Are Questioned

Allen charges prosecutor

Woody Allen has always claimed that he is innocent of allegations that he sexually abused his daughter, Dylan, when she was seven. The allegations had arisen in the context of a custody dispute with his ex-wife, Mia Farrow.

In 1993 prosecutor Frank Maco told reporters that he had evidence Allen had sexually abused his daughter but was choosing not to prosecute for the girl's sake. Allen lodged a complaint, saying that there was no way to clear his name against these unfounded allegations.

In July this year the Statewide Grievance Committee voted to dismiss the case against the prosecutor, although members were divided on whether to accept a subcommittee's report criticising Maco for his "lack of sensitivity ... to the concept of the presumption of innocence."

Prosecutors

Woody Allen, whose sexual abuse defense apparently employed many typical backlash strategies, brought a grievance against prosecutor Frank Maco due to Maco's press conferences and a letter Maco had faxed to judges presiding over the Mia Farrow/Woody Allen custody/visitation proceedings. On July 17, 1997, following several years of disciplinary proceedings in which prosecutor Maco had been charged with violations of Rule 8.4(d) of the Professional Responsibility Code ("conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice") a Connecticut Statewide Grievance Committee voted 12 to 1 to dismiss the complaint.⁵⁰ However, even though Maco was vindicated and although backlash litigation and/or grievances against professionals who are financially able to defend themselves zealously

In 1992, director/actor Woody Allen faced public embarrassment when actress Mia Farrow (who had a common law relationship with him for many years; she was also once married to Jewish conductor Andre Previn) accused Allen of having an affair with one of their teenage adopted daughters, and that he had repeatedly sexually molested another daughter, a young child. Criminal charges, however, were another story. Allen conceded, and defended, his sexual relationship with the older daughter but denied any other incidents with others. Paul Williams, the New York Child Welfare worker on the case, noted that

"based [on the child's] demeanor and her responses to my questions,

and my conversations with the caseworker in Connecticut, and

my experiences from interviewing hundreds of children who have

been abused, I concluded that abuse did occur and that there was

a prima facie cause to commence family-court proceedings against

Woody Allen. Then the barriers came down. There came a litany of

reasons why we should not go forward. My superior said that Woody

Allen is 'an influential person,' she talked about his films, and his

'position.' As more evidence came through interviews, I insisted that

the case should have been filed. Managers at the Child Welfare Agency

responded that 'pressure [to drop the case] is coming all the way from

the mayor's office [Jewish mayor: Ed Koch]." [FARROW, p. 311]

The case was dropped. A child custody trial featured Allen represented by six different law firms. [FARROW, p. 316] Later, the Connecticut state attorney, Frank Maco, announced that "probable cause" for Allen's arrest existed, but that by then Farrow had decided a public trial would be extremely detrimental to the abused child. [FARROW, p. 329]

Allen hires Jew pyschartrists

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- A team of child sexual abuse experts cleared Woody AllenWoody Allen of Mia Farrow's charge that he molested their adopted 7-year-old daughter, Allen said yesterday. They also recommended that Farrow undergo psychiatric counseling, he said.

The actor/filmmaker said he would seek custody of the girl and his other two children.

Farrow had accused Allen of sexually abusing the child, Dylan, in August at Farrow's Bridgewater home.

Farrow had been Allen's companion and favorite leading lady for 12 years until a bitter split last summer, when he disclosed his romantic involvement with Farrow's 22-year-old adopted daughter.

Allen and Farrow arrived separately yesterday at Yale-New Haven Hospital and were briefed together by three child sexual-abuse experts on a report they compiled as part of a state police investigation of the allegations.

Allen emerged from the 2 1/2-hour meeting and told reporters and photographers that the report found "I never ever used my daughter, that no sexual abuse took place."

Of Farrow's allegations, which came during a child custody dispute, Allen said, "A terrible, terrible crime has been committed against my daughter."

Farrow's only comment was, "I'll always stand by my children."

Her attorney, Eleanor Alter, said Farrow felt the Yale team's findings were "incomplete and inaccurate." Alter said a court will determine "what actually happened."

"The Yale group, despite Farrow's request, declined to meet with people whose information would've been vitally important to their findings, including Farrow's older children," Alter said.

Allen said the investigators indicated that a videotape in which Dylan made abuse allegations may have been doctored.

Farrow, 47, and Allen have one biological child, Satchel, 5, and two adopted kids, Moses, 14, and Dylan.

At the request of Allen and Farrow, the report won't be released to the public. It will be given to Litchfield State's Attorney Frank Maco, whose office has been coordinating an investigation of the allegations.

Allen Loses to Farrow in Bitter Custody Battle

By PETER MARKS

escribing Woody Allen as a "self-absorbed, untrustworthy and insensitive" father, a judge in Manhattan yesterday rejected his attempt to win custody of his three children and awarded custody to their mother, Mia Farrow.

In a scathing 33-page decision, Acting Justice Elliott Wilk of State Supreme Court denounced Mr. Allen for carrying on an affair with one of Ms. Farrow's daughters, trying to pit family members against one another and lacking knowledge of the most basic aspects of his children's lives.

The judge also denied Mr. Allen immediate visiting rights with his 7-year-old daughter, Dylan Farrow. Last summer Ms. Farrow accused the 57-year-old film maker of molesting the child. Justice Wilk said it was unlikely that Mr. Allen could be prosecuted for sexual abuse based on the evidence. But while a team of experts concluded that Dylan was not abused, the judge said he found the evidence inconclusive.

Visiting Rights Under Review

"After considering Ms. Farrow's position as the sole caretaker of the children, the satisfactory fashion in which she has fulfilled that function and Mr. Allen's serious parental inadequacies, it is clear that the best interests of the children will be served by their continued custody with Ms. Farrow," Justice Wilk wrote.

The judge, however, did not entirely close the door on any possible future contact between Mr. Allen and Dylan, ruling that a therapist must be hired within six months to determine whether it would be harmful for Dylan to resume visits with Mr. Allen, whom she has not been permitted to see since August. "A further review of visitation will be considered only after we are able to evaluate the progress of Dylan's therapy," the judge said.

Moses

In addition, while Justice Wilk denied Mr. Allen's request for unsupervised visits with his 5-year-old son, Satchel Farrow, he allowed him to increase the number of weekly supervised visits with the boy from two to three. As for Mr. Allen's third child, 15-year-old Moses Farrow, the justice said he would accede to the boy's wishes that he not be forced to see his father.

In almost every way, the opinion was a repudiation of the parental role of Mr. Allen, who filed his custody lawsuit last August, about a week after Ms. Farrow accused him of molesting Dylan at Ms. Farrow's country home in Bridgewater, Conn. A team of investigators from Yale-New Haven Hospital that was retained by the Connecticut State Police subsequently concluded Dylan had not been abused.

Mr. Allen's lawyers have maintained that the charges were concocted by Ms. Farrow out of anger over Mr. Allen's affair with her adoptive daughter, Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, who is now 22 years old.

Justice Wilk, however, had few unkind words for Ms. Farrow, whom he commended as a caring and loving mother who had tried to protect her children from what he characterized as Mr. Allen's manipulativeness and insensitivity. "Ms. Farrow's principal shortcoming with respect to responsible parenting appears to have been her continued relationship with Mr. Allen," he wrote.

On the other hand, Justice Wilk portrayed Mr. Allen as devious, hurtful and unreliable, a father who did not know the names of his son's teachers -- or even which children shared which bedrooms in Ms. Farrow's apartment. Mr. Allen lived in a separate apartment on the other side of Central Park.

Referring to what Dylan's own psychotherapist called Mr. Allen's inappropriately intense behavior toward the little girl, the justice said it was unclear whether Mr. Allen could ever develop "the insight and judgment necessary for him to relate to Dylan appropriately."

"Mr. Allen has demonstrated no parenting skills that would qualify him as an adequate custodian for Moses, Dylan or Satchel," the justice wrote. "His financial contributions to the children's support, his willingness to read to them, to tell them stories, to buy them presents and to oversee their breakfasts, do not compensate for his absence as a meaningful source of guidance and caring in their lives.

"These contributions," he continued, "do not excuse his evident lack of familiarity with the most basic details of their day-to-day existences."

The justice said he considered Mr. Allen's affair with Soon-Yi Farrow Previn -- and his inability to comprehend the impact the romance was having on the other children in the Farrow household -- further evidence of his deficiencies as a parent. "Having isolated Soon-Yi from her family, he left her with no visible support system," Justice Wilk wrote.

Ms. Farrow also has six children whose father is her former husband, Andre Previn. Of her three children with Mr. Allen, Moses and Dylan were adopted and Satchel is their biological son. Tomorrow, a hearing is scheduled in Surrogate's Court in Manhattan on Ms. Farrow's request to overturn Mr. Allen's adoption of Moses and Dylan.

The judge's ruling came a month after the conclusion of the couple's bitter custody trial in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, during which 30 witnesses, including psychotherapists, family employees and close friends of the actress and the director testified about the fitness of each parent.

Ms. Farrow and her lawyers were jubilant yesterday as they celebrated what they termed their total victory. "You got everything!" Ms. Farrow's lawyer, Eleanor Alter, told her client yesterday morning as she read to her from the ruling over the telephone in a booth in the state Supreme Court building. At a news conference at Ms. Alter's office in Manhattan later in the day, Ms. Farrow, in her first public comments since the trial, expressed her pleasure and relief at the outcome.

"For so many, many months, my family has been living through a nightmare," Ms. Farrow said, her eyes filled with tears. "My children have been ripped apart emotionally. I'm so proud of how they've held themselves together, stood by one another and stood by me."

Appeals Considered

An hour later and about five blocks away, Mr. Allen appeared briefly at a news conference conducted by his lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz. Declining to take questions from reporters, he said he was disappointed with some aspects of the decision, but happy that the judge would allow him, even in a limited way, to see Dylan.

"I'm thrilled I'm going to get to see my daughter again, because she has been withheld from me since last August," Mr. Allen said. He added, however, that he was disappointed that he would not be permitted to see Satchel outside the presence of a social worker during the two-hour visits he will be allowed three times a week. And he expressed hope that at some point, Moses would want to see him again.

Mr. Abramowitz said that as far as his client was concerned, the justice's decision to allow him access to Dylan was a major victory, and the criticisms of his ability as a father were of secondary importance. The lawyer said he was considering an appeal of several aspects of the ruling, including the supervision provisions for Satchel, as well as a ruling by the justice that Mr. Allen's lawsuit was frivolous and that he pay all of Ms. Farrow's legal costs.

While Ms. Alter said she had not yet calculated the fees for Ms. Farrow's side, experts in custody proceedings say the costs could amount to $1 million on each side in the case.

Assessing a Reputation

Mr. Abramowitz said that as a result of the case, Mr. Allen's reputation had taken "an enormous hit." But he said he believed that he had successfully disproved the molestation allegation during the trial. "I don't think any one person could do more to prove that this did not happen," he said.

Justice Wilk, however, questioned the manner in which the Yale-New Haven team carried out its investigation of the allegations, as well as conclusions by two psychotherapists who treated Dylan that she had not been abused. "I am less certain, however, than is the Yale-New Haven team, that the evidence proves conclusively that there was no sexual abuse," Justice Wilk wrote.

The justice said he believed the conclusions of the psychotherapists had been "colored by their loyalty to Mr. Allen." He added that the unwillingness of members of the Yale-New Haven team to testify at the trial, except through a deposition by the team leader, and the destruction of the team's notes had "compromised my ability to scrutinize their findings and resulted in a report which was sanitized and, therefore, less credible."

The circumstances under which Mr. Allen would meet with Dylan remained a matter of dispute yesterday. Ms. Alter said that she interpreted Justice Wilk's opinion as preventing Mr. Allen from seeing Dylan for at least six months, while the evaluation of the girl by a new therapist proceeds. But Mr. Abramowitz said he believed that Mr. Allen would have an opportunity to be with Dylan sooner, in the presence of a therapist.

At the news conference in her office, Ms. Alter said that Dylan had only a vague conception of the battle that has been waged over her and her siblings for months. She said that in the months away from Mr. Allen, the girl has become a happier child. "She has flowered in school and psychologically," the lawyer said.

Ms. Farrow told reporters that she bore no ill feeling toward Soon-Yi, who is still involved romantically with Mr. Allen. "I would dearly love to have a relationship with Soon-Yi," she said. "That has been my fervent wish since this began."

In the meantime, she said, she hopes that the decision will mean a return to some sense of normalcy for her family. "It will be a long road until we wake up to a really normal day," Ms. Farrow said. "We hope this will be a new beginning."

Return to "More on Mia Farrow"

Intimate Strangers

By KATHRYN HARRISON

Mia Farrow's memoir of two marriages, 14 children and a disastrous affair with Woody Allen

More on Mia Farrow from The New York Times Archives

WHAT FALLS AWAY
A Memoir.
By Mia Farrow.
Illustrated. 370 pp. New York:
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $25.

or years before their spectacular breakup, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow inhabited that perturbing limbo between known and unknown, real and fantastic, intimate and stranger. Some of the movies they made together -- ''Hannah and Her Sisters,'' for example -- inevitably, perhaps even intentionally, dismantled whatever boundary exists between audience and voyeur. Now, five years after the flurry of attention around the Allen-Farrow custody battle, itself transformed by the media into entertainment, Ms. Farrow is publishing a memoir, one that will satisfy a Peeping Fan readership.

''What Falls Away'' is the story of a life, Ms. Farrow tells us, that Mr. Allen himself observed would make a great movie -- one filled, a la ''Zelig,'' with events and personages simultaneously magnified and flattened by fame. She builds her story on the Hollywood pedigree of her actress mother, Maureen O'Sullivan, and her writer-director father, John Farrow. At 19 Ms. Farrow meets Frank Sinatra, and later marries him. The epilogue to that brief first marriage is the obligatory 60's flight from Western materialism to an Indian ashram, compromised (or validated, depending on your perspective) by the sudden appearance of the Beatles. In 1970, Ms. Farrow marries the pianist and composer Andre Previn; alongside Vanessa Redgrave, she wheels their twins on protest marches through London parks. By the time she embarks on an affair with Woody Allen, in 1980, the reader has been treated to cameos by a glitterati chorus that the author employs to observe and comment upon her life. Through it all, Ms. Farrow makes it clear that what is most significant to her is the creation of family -- the birth of four children (three fathered by Mr. Previn and one by Mr. Allen) and the adoption of 10. As a vocation, Motherhood eclipses Acting.

''What Falls Away'' begins: ''I was 9 when my childhood ended.'' Ms. Farrow goes on to describe her brief battle with polio, one that seems to have left her with an emotional if not a physical limp. A child who perceives herself as cut off from girlhood, she becomes the waif-woman fascinated with the never-never landscape of childhood, one who decades later (and before the liaison with Mr. Allen) characterizes herself as having an ''inner life of turmoil, fear, loss, loneliness and disillusionment'' -- a frightening void, which, it is difficult not to conclude, she fills with children: 14 of them.

The desire to transform a life, to offer love and security to a destitute and ailing orphan, is not one that requires explanation. But adopting 10 children, added to four of one's own, 10 children whose frailty and need are increasingly equated with their desirability, prompts curiosity. What drives it? When Ms. Farrow writes, ''I watched my children grow, and I collected the memories,'' when her response to periods of upheaval and strain is to fill out adoption forms -- ''Again I placed the bassinet with the patchwork lining beside my bed'' -- the reader begins to suspect that what Ms. Farrow is really collecting is order, solace, meaning, redemption. That she arms herself against her demons with children. Certainly, in a family of such size, it would be difficult to hear oneself think, let alone feel one's loneliness.

Polaroids

Public knowledge of the rupture between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow coincided with reports of an affair between Mr. Allen and Soon-Yi Previn, Ms. Farrow's 21-year-old adoptive daughter. Briefly: On Jan. 13, 1992, just weeks after Mr. Allen had adopted two of Ms. Farrow's younger children, Ms. Farrow discovered on a mantle at Mr. Allen's apartment six Polaroid photographs of (as she describes them) ''a naked woman with her legs spread wide apart.'' The woman was Soon-Yi, the daughter Ms. Farrow had adopted from a Korean orphanage in 1977 while married to Mr. Previn.

The upheaval following the discovery of the photographs was marked by vindictiveness on both sides. Ms. Farrow claimed that Mr. Allen had long been focusing inappropriate sexual attention on their 7-year-old adoptive daughter Dylan. He claimed that her accusation was inspired by vengeance, not fact. She sent him ''a family picture Valentine with skewers through the hearts of the children'' and hung a sign on his bathroom door that read ''Child Molester.'' He continued to see Soon-Yi without conceding that his involvement with her was morally suspect. All of it was ugly and it made great television.

Mia Farrow

There is a grotesque poetic logic to the affair between Ms. Farrow and Mr. Allen, and to its breakup. Opposites do attract, and we understand the mutual fascination between the relentlessly domestic nurturer and the solitary neurotic. A kind of wacky pathos is evoked by Ms. Farrow's descriptions of Mr. Allen's bewilderment at finding himself entangled with a woman who's forced to buy milk and toilet paper in bulk and who tramped across Central Park with seven children in tow, all bearing sleeping bags, for an overnight at his apartment. When the end of their relationship takes the form of her accusing him of the violation of one of the children, we may be sickened, but not exactly surprised.

Throughout her book, Ms. Farrow reports serious traumas, including the death of her beloved older brother, a nearly fatal case of peritonitis and the birth of an autistic child, without a fraction of the anguish inspired by the sexual liaison between Soon-Yi and Mr. Allen. Nothing else, the reader suspects, could have so thoroughly blasted apart Ms. Farrow's carefully constructed redemption than this betrayal, linked by the author to her lingering fear of polio and the disease's perceived destruction of her own childhood: ''I found myself experiencing the same creeping fear I'd had as a child, after the polio: that I had unknowingly brought danger into my family and that I might have contaminated those I loved the most.''

The danger, the contaminant -- the disease -- is Mr. Allen. Recounting a Christmas dinner, Ms. Farrow shows us a Rockwellian feast complete with two turkeys, countless side dishes, punch and eggnog, herself and nine of her children around the table, all presided over by an elaborate carved-angel centerpiece. Mr. Allen arrives and, after making a snide comment (''Pardon me while I puke''), retreats into the kitchen where he turns on the juicer. ''Nobody wants this?'' he asks, holding up the large glass of apple juice he's made.

Of course, given the bounty, no one does, and he pours it down the drain. The point of this story is to reveal a bitter, jaundiced spirit, and perhaps it does. But the average only child, less famously troubled than Mr. Allen, would corroborate that it is acutely uncomfortable to find oneself on the periphery of the Big Happy Family, and that the position rarely brings out the best in a person. And what of the six Polaroid photographs? As Ms. Farrow attests, Mr. Allen knew she would be in his living room; he even telephoned while she was there, so that she would have to pass by the mantle to answer. She interprets his leaving them there as an act of emotional terrorism; but isn't it equally possible to see it as a confession?

The reader would not feel a need to take Mr. Allen's part if Ms. Farrow did not so consistently portray him as cold, disturbed and monstrously selfish, juxtaposing these judgments with evidence of her own sensitivity and spiritual superiority. And while she concedes that it is ''unusual . . . in a memoir'' to include the unabridged court decision that documented their custody battle, it is perhaps not so unusual in an account whose intent, it emerges, is to solicit sympathy in the court of public opinion. (For the record, Mr. Allen was not granted custody, but neither was he found to have sexually abused Dylan.)

Some of Ms. Farrow's writing is simple and affecting. A lot is melodramatic. In contrast to the manipulative passages, what remains genuinely moving is the probably unintended resonance between the portrayal of two young women, one glimpsed at the beginning of ''What Falls Away,'' the other at its end. Each finds herself entangled with an older man; each remains curiously alone in the storm of controversy surrounding an ill-advised romance. The first is Mia Farrow, 21, perched on a Las Vegas bar stool at 2 A.M., asleep with her head on a table while Frank Sinatra gambles and brawls, constantly on the run from tabloid photographers. The second is Soon-Yi Previn, eerily echoing her mother as she is suddenly thrown into the glare of public scrutiny. Together they make unnerving and apt bookends to a disturbing memoir.

Masturbation

Stardust Memories Quotes (1980)

You can't control life. It doesn't wind up perfectly. Only art you can control. Art and masturbation. Two areas in which I am an absolute expert.

"Don't knock masturbation - it's sex with someone I love"
Woody Allen quotes (American Actor, Author, Screenwriter and Film Director, b.1935)
Similar Quotes. About: Sex quotes, Funny quotes.
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Deconstructing Harry

DIRECTED BY: Woody Allen

REVIEWED: 01-05-98

What I wouldn't give for a large sock filled with horse manure. The Los Angeles Times' grizzled veteran reviewer Kenneth Turan slotted "Deconstructing Harry" into his top ten of 1997, asserting that "it is a scathing look at marriage, adultery and the literary life, Woody Allen's twenty-eighth feature is his most compelling and accomplished in years, psychologically acute, biting [sic] funny and willing to make audiences writhe in fury." I wish I had seen that movie.

Movies of Scatolgy and sex

There's simply not a witty moment in "Deconstructing Harry," and the few jokes that prompt laughter are scattershot cruelties. The easily-pleased may savor the "shock" of hearing the lead character, a blocked novelist named, wouldn't you know, Harry Block, and embodied by the now-creaky and rheumy 62-year-old Allen, call an ex-wife a "world-class cunt." Zowie! That's enough to make me think it's Philip Roth! Some selfish, sex-mad Jewish writer! Unless of course, I'd actually read Philip Roth, whose little-regarded 1995 "Sabbath's Theater," for instance, has vim, vigor, anger and bile to spare, as well as a felicitous prose style. Obscenity and scatology are elevated pursuits; Allen's script seems content to have unimaginative swears. He's also got black prostitutes, prominent product placement for Glenmorangie single-malt Scotch and skits that go nowhere, as well as the usual panoply of guest stars-eighteen by my count.

We musn't omit the roster of much-younger women, such as Judy Davis, Amy Irving and Elisabeth Shue, all ready to knock boots with him. But Allen has protested that Harry Block is not Woody Allen. No. Nope. Not at all. (Saul Bellow's crack that "Some writers are better met than read" seems to suit both Block and latterday Allen.) Allen claims that he wrote this script under the title "The Meanest Man in the World" and that every lead actor he offered the role to turned it down, begging off that it didn't suit their schedules.

Let the great man down easy! There was no one to tell him that his pocket-lint style of composition had simply eked out a nice mat for the bottom of the desk drawer. (While we're at it, someone should go out and dig up Fellini and make him answer for what license Allen has taken from his work.) Janet Maslin of the New York Times likes this one, too. "Rancorous brilliance," she booms, "Poisonous, brazenly autobiographical comedy." Earlier this year, Maslin did a wondrous job of provoking Manhattanite fear of impoverished whites with a review that effectively destroyed the distribution of Harmony Korine's rancorously brilliant "Gummo." Now she's kissying up to Woody's no-longer-fine whines, which I found as uninteresting and contemptible as she did the younger man's film. Allen's only champions seem to be his peers-urban, middle-aged, privileged consumers of art and literature whose job it is to regurgitate the work of others. A cobwebby mirror to see oneself reflected back in? Double apostasy it may be, but "Deconstructing Harry

Name at birth: Maria de Lourdes Villiers Farrow

As an actor Mia Farrow will always be remembered for her starring role in Roman Polanski's horror classic Rosemary's Baby (1968) and for her many films with Woody Allen in the 1980s and '90s. As a celebrity she is famous for her controversial two-year marriage to Frank Sinatra (30 years her senior) in the 1960s, her marriage to composer-conducter Andre Previn in the 1970s and her very public break-up with Allen in 1992. Farrow was born into celebrity, the daughter of actor Maureen O'Sullivan and director/novelist John Farrow.

She acted on stage in her teens, then did a two year stint on TV's Peyton Place before making national headlines in 1966 as Sinatra's young, mod bride. The marriage ended when Sinatra famously served her divorce papers on the set of Rosemary's Baby. In the '70s she made a few movies, including See No Evil (1971) and The Great Gatsby (1974, with Robert Redford), but mostly settled down to raise children.

She became romantically involved with Allen in the early '80s and went on to make more than a dozen movies with him, including Broadway Danny Rose (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986, with Michael Caine). In 1992 Allen and Farrow broke up and were involved in a child custody dispute (together they had three children, two of them adopted). The couple had split because Allen had been having an affair with Farrow's 17 year-old adopted daughter, Soon Yi (whom Allen later married). Farrow continues to make movies once in while, but spends most of her time raising a large brood of kids, including several adopted children with special needs. Her other films include John and Mary (1969, with Dustin Hoffman), Widow's Peak (1994) and Miami

Mia Farrow (born February 9, 1945 in Los Angeles, California) is an American actress. Farrow was born Maria de Lourdes Villiers Farrow but has always been known as Mia. She is the daughter of director John Farrow and his wife, actress Maureen O'Sullivan.

Personal

Farrow married Frank Sinatra on July 19 1966. While working on the film Rosemary's Baby with director Roman Polanski, Sinatra served her divorce papers in front of the cast and crew. The divorce came as a surprise to Mia, who did not even know Frank was thinking of leaving her. They divorced in 1968.

Farrow married André Previn in 1970. They had three biological children (Matthew, Sascha, and Fletcher) together and adopted three children, Soon-Yi, Lark Song, and Daisy. They divorced in 1979.

Farrow lived with but did not marry Woody Allen, and by him had one biological son, Satchel (born in 1987, and is now called Seamus Farrow). They also adopted a son and daughter together.

After their separation, Farrow accused Allen of child molestation on a U.S.-televised interview. She claimed to having witnessed Allen abusing one of their youngest adopted children. Allen became infamously tainted for a time afterward, having somewhat confirmed Farrow's accusations by his open relationship with one of her adopted teenage daughters, Soon-Yi Previn.

Farrow continued to adopt children as a sole parent, is active in agencies that encourage adoptions and is a UNICEF Special Representative. By 1994, Farrow had 14 children, 9 of them adopted: 6 from her marriage with André Previn (3 adopted) and 3 from her time with Woody Allen (2 adopted).

Farrow's adopted daughter Tam Farrow died of a heart ailment at age 19 in March 2000.

Trivia

Farrow made her film debut in a 1947 short subject with her famous mother. The short was ironically about famous mothers and their children modeling the latest fashions for families.
Screen-tested for the role of Liesel Von Trapp in The Sound of Music.
Farrow became friends with Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate while filming Rosemary's Baby.
Woody Allen had an affair with Mia's adopted daughter Soon-Yi, and Mia accused him of molesting one of her other children. Woody is now married to Soon-Yi, and has adopted two children with her.
Farrow's son Seamus was enrolled at Simon's Rock College at 11 years of age. He has not spoken to or seen his father since he was 7, and is said to have a phobia of him. He reportedly does not see him as his father, just as a man who had an affair with his sister. Seamus graduated from Bard College in 2004.
Mia's sister, Prudence, became the subject of the Beatles song "Dear Prudence".

Filmography

and the beast

Mia Farrow explains her marriage to the deranged Woody Allen

By YVONNE CRITTENDEN
Toronto Sun

WHAT FALLS AWAY

By Mia Farrow
Doubleday
$34.95

Mia Farrow has lived a surreal life, and not just the years she spent with Woody Allen.

The daughter (fourth of seven children) of Hollywood royalty (director/writer-father John Farrow, mother-actress Maureen O'Sullivan), she grew up in Beverly Hills luxury, a cocoon of privilege, with her own siblings as playmates, as well as celebrity offspring like Charles Boyer's son nearby.

It all fell apart after the untimely death of her brother Michael. Her parents' marriage broke up and the money disappeared when her father died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving a trail of debt.

The fragile-looking Mia, however, is one tough survivor. She overcame polio as a child and she showed the same stamina when she had to go to work at age 17 to help support the family.

Untutored and inexperienced, but with a famous name and her genes to help her, she landed a Broadway role, then a leading part in what would became a hit TV series, Peyton Place, which made her a star.

Both her patrician heritage and her elfin charm drew her naturally into the orbit of celebrity. Farrow became a protege of artist Salvador Dali and his wife, and other famous people like Thornton Wilder, Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, took her under their wing.

A flower child in the '60s, Farrow went to India to worship at the feet of the Maharishi, only to flee with the invasion of the Beatles and an inappropriate pass from the supposedly ascetic guru.

Next in her remarkable life came a love affair with Frank Sinatra (Farrow seems drawn to egomaniacs), who was bewitched and slightly bewildered by the waif-like actress and made her his third wife.

Farrow endured the long nightclub evenings, falling asleep while the Rat Pack around Sinatra gallivanted. She became sisterly friends with Frank's two daughters, who were about her age. The three had pajama parties in Palm Springs! Sinatra divorced her because she would not give up her career but they remained friends.

Next came an affair with married conductor Andre Previn, capped by marriage when she became pregnant with twin boys. Career demands also torpedoed this marriage, but again, they remained good friends.

During her life in England with Previn, Farrow was at a dinner party with the Queen Mother and gauchely (one is not supposed to question royalty) asked her what was the most important thing one could teach one's children? "Manners," replied the Queen Mum after a thoughtful pause. "I believe that manners can get you through anything."

By now Farrow had started to collect waifs from the Third World to add to her family -- orphaned babies and handicapped children from the ravages of Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia. One of them, of course, was Soon-Yi, from Korea, later to become notorious for her affair with Woody Allen.

When Farrow met Allen in 1980, introduced by mutual friend Michael Caine, they became intellectual soulmates, discussing Plato, Jefferson, Dostoyevsky, fine wine, poetry and philosophy. Farrow was entranced. "He was more serious, less humorous, far more confident than in his films, but, I thought, more attractive, more interesting."

The affair lasted 12 years. She wanted to marry but Allen, who had never dated a woman with even one child, had, as he put it, "zero interest in kids." So they developed an amicable arrangement, visiting each other from their apartments facing Central Park, he on the West Side, she on the East.

It was an unlikely match from the start. He was a total hypochondriac with a doctor for every part of his body and had spent 40 years in psychoanalysis, never making a move without his shrink's approval. She loved the outdoors, shunned therapy and considered her large brood -- 14 in all -- the focus of her life.

Despite all her efforts to interest Woody in the kids, and although he saw them almost every day and they all tried, some more than others, to win his heart, Allen barely acknowledged their existence, and one by one they gave up, Farrow writes.

Then came her adoption of baby girl Dylan. Finally, Allen persuaded her to let him become the adoptive father. He developed a sick obsession with the child that lasted until he was ordered by the court to stay away from her.

Allen ignored his own child with Farrow, a boy called Satchel, Farrow says, but would hunt Dylan down when he visited and fondle her. Lying on bed half-nude watching TV, he would stick his thumb in her mouth and so terrorized the child she would scream "Hide me!" to her siblings, and run away from him.

Farrow acknowledges she was wrong to stay with Allen for so long in light of his behavior to her children. She kicked him out when she discovered the famed nude photos of Soon-Yi and learned Allen had been sleeping with her for months.

But until then, she accepted his assurances he was getting therapy to combat his obsession with Dylan and relied on professionals who assured her things would change.

Allen deceived her, Farrow says, and she accuses him of an "unfathomable, uncontrollable need to destroy everything good and positive in his life, so he tried to destroy my family.

"For him to have sex with one of my children, a child he had known as my daughter since she was 8 years old, was not enough: He had to make me see, graphically, what he was doing. What rage did he feel against me, against women, against mothers, against sisters, against daughters, against an entire family?"

It's hard not to take Farrow's side in the whole sordid business, despite Allen's denials. The court awarded complete custody of all the children to their mother, denying Allen's ridiculous counter custody claims. And while it found no proof he had molested Dylan, the court said he had behaved with gross inappropriateness towards her and demonstrated a complete lack of fitness as a parent.

Perhaps most telling of all, both Farrow's ex-husbands came to her defence. Previn testified she was an excellent mother and Sinatra offered to break Woody Allen's legs!

Much has been made of Farrow's decision to adopt so many children. Some think it odd, even obsessive. Reading her book, it seems a natural outgrowth of her own childhood in a large, happy family. With a laudable desire to provide homes for needy children, Farrow has produced a group of happy, healthy and flourishing children against sometimes overwhelming odds.

In a cynical age, this is one movie star who would seem to have her priorities straight

Farrow Says Daughter Became Distraught Over Allen's Relentless Attention

By PETER MARKS

ia Farrow testified yesterday that her 7-year-old daughter, Dylan, was so distraught over the relentless attention of her adoptive father, Woody Allen, that she frequently screamed, "Hide me! Hide me!" when he came to visit her, and twice locked herself in the bathroom to keep away from him.

In her second day of testimony in a custody trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Ms. Farrow portrayed Mr. Allen as a father so obsessed he would "wrap himself around" the girl as they watched television, often ignoring his other children. And she described the child as almost immobilized by the attention Mr. Allen showered upon her.

Ms. Farrow's accusations about Mr. Allen's behavior toward Dylan are at the heart of the trial, in which Mr. Allen is suing Ms. Farrow for custody of their three children. Ms. Farrow has accused Mr. Allen of sexually molesting Dylan last Aug. 4 at her home in Connecticut, a charge that Mr. Allen has vehemently denied. The State's Attorney for the Litchfield Judicial District in Connecticut has brought no charges in the case, but is still investigating.

Under questioning by her lawyer, Eleanor B. Alter, Ms. Farrow said she had long been alarmed by what she portrayed as Mr. Allen's fixation with Dylan and had conveyed her concerns to a psychiatrist whom Mr. Allen and Dylan had both seen. She said the therapist concurred.

'Creep Up in the Morning'

"He would creep up in the morning and lay beside her bed and wait for her to wake up," Ms. Farrow testified, as Mr. Allen sat a few feet away in the courtroom, scribbling notes and tearing pages from a legal pad. "I thought it was excessive. I was uncomfortable all along."

She said that on some occasions she saw Mr. Allen with "his head in her stomach or her crotch" and that Dylan had described to her one instance in which he had placed his hand under her shorts while she was on the ladder to her bunk bed.

During approximately three hours on the witness stand yesterday, Ms. Farrow talked of what she viewed as the bizarre impact Mr. Allen's attentions had on Dylan, whom Ms. Farrow adopted in 1985. Mr. Allen became her adoptive father in 1991.

Ms. Farrow said that over the years, and particularly, as Dylan got older, her daughter was so traumatized by Mr. Allen that in the mornings, she would come into the kitchen on all fours and make animal noises. On many days, when Mr. Allen came to the apartment -- he maintained his own apartment across Central Park from Ms. Farrow's -- Dylan begged her brothers and sisters to hide her from him, Ms. Farrow said.

Hiding in Closets

"They hid her in closets or under their desks," Ms. Farrow said.

"Was this a game?" Ms. Alter asked.

"No. It was strange," Ms. Farrow replied.

On another occasion, Ms. Farrow said, Dylan locked herself in the bathroom for four hours after Mr. Allen showed up, refusing to come out until Mr. Allen instructed her baby sitter to pick the lock with a wire coat hanger. Ms. Farrow described what she considered "this very needy quality he had of beseeching her attention, praising her to the point that she was immobilized."

Ms. Farrow testified that in December Dylan also said that on a visit to Mr. Allen's apartment sometime in the summer or autumn of 1991, she had witnessed Mr. Allen and Ms. Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, on the bed in his bedroom. "She said they were on top of the bed," Ms. Farrow testified. She said Dylan had told her they were "doing compliments" and "making snoring noises."

The timing of that incident, if true, contradicts testimony by Mr. Allen, who said earlier in the trial that his affair with Ms. Previn began a few days after Christmas 1991. Ms. Farrow has asserted that the affair began during her daughter's senior year in high school, which ended in June 1991.

Motives Are Questioned

Ms. Alter's examination of Ms. Farrow began in the afternoon, after a day and a half of questioning by Mr. Allen's attorney, Elkan Abramowitz, who had called Ms. Farrow as a hostile witness. During his examination, Mr. Abramowitz sought to call into question Ms. Farrow's motives for bringing the allegations against Mr. Allen.

In a long series of questions, Mr. Abramowitz tried to ascertain whether money was a factor motivating Ms. Farrow. At the time she made the allegations to a Connecticut doctor, who, in turn, reported them to authorities there, she was engaged in negotiations with Mr. Allen over a custody settlement for their three children: Dylan and another adopted child, Moses A. Farrow, 15. They also have a biological son, Satchel, 5.

Had her lawyers ever mentioned, Mr. Abramowitz asked, that Mr. Allen should pay a multimillion-dollar amount "to keep the allegations quiet?"

"No," said Ms. Farrow.

"Do you have any recollection of a number, 7 to 8 million?"

"No," said Ms. Farrow.

"Five million?"

"No," Ms. Farrow said.

While Ms. Farrow is scheduled to continue to testify on Monday, it is unclear whether either side will call any of the children, including Soon-Yi Previn, to testify. Acting Justice Elliott Wilk of State Supreme Court told the lawyers yesterday that he could not imagine how having any of them testify would "outweigh the negative effect it will have on the family."

Return to "More on Mia Farrow"

Dylan

Mia Farrow, currently fighting a grotesque custody battle with Woody Allen, was asked recently whether she would let Allen have a relationship with Moses and Dylan. (Moses is the adopted son of Farrow; Dylan is the adopted daughter of both, and, according to Farrow, was molested sexually by Allen.) Mia Farrow replied it was up to them. 'They have their therapists,' she said.

The Sunday Telegraph Sunday, May 09, 1993

In 1992, Allen's personal life became very public, when he left his long-term partner Farrow after she stumbled across an envelope containing pornographic polaroid photographs Allen had taken of her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn. Allen had been engaged in a sexual affair with Soon-Yi since before her graduation from high school. As Soon-Yi was an orphan without a birth record, her age is hard to verify^[3]. Estimates of her age in 1992 range from 17 to 22, at least 35 years younger than Allen.

Allen has defended his actions, saying that he never lived with Farrow. In a 2005 Vanity Fair interview, Allen described their relationship as having a "more paternal feeling."

Woody Allen Marries Soon-Yi Previn

By GLENN COLLINS

EW YORK -- But how will it affect his career?

This, rather than questions of ethical propriety or a spontaneous outpouring of wedding felicitations, seemed to be the most visceral reaction of many in New York -- a city notorious for its career-driven populace -- on learning from newspapers and broadcasters Wednesday that Woody Allen had married Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover, Mia Farrow.

Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn in a scene from Barbara Kopple's "Wild Man Blues."

Though the union of the 62-year-old Allen and the 27-year-old Ms. Previn took place in Venice, many spoke of it as a uniquely New York event. The marriage gave rise to video-store debate and street-corner speculation about what it would be like for Allen to have Mia Farrow as his mother-in-law.

Friends, naturally, portrayed the marriage positively.

"This wedding will help his head as well as his career," said Elaine Kaufman, proprietor of the celebrity restaurant Elaine's, who has known the director for decades. "He's clearing up any question that anybody might have about Soon-Yi."

Allen "is happier than I've ever seen him," said Ms. Kaufman, who spent time with him several weeks ago when he shot a scene for his next movie, "Celebrity," at her restaurant.

But others were less charitable. "I think his film career is flirting with real trouble," said Raoul Lionel Felder, the Manhattan divorce lawyer. "People seem to have accepted the fact that the two were living together as one more sick relationship in a sick world. But now the idea of a wedding will infringe on moviegoers' sense of propriety."

The marriage is Ms. Previn's first; Allen was previously married to Harlen Rosen and the actress Louise Lasser.

The couple exchanged I do's in a private ceremony with a small group of friends and family members at Palazzo Cavalli, the Venice city hall, on Tuesday afternoon. Officiating was the city's bearded mayor, Massimo Cacciari, a published philosopher and intellectual gadabout who could easily be a character in a Woody Allen film. And now possibly will be.

After the wedding, the happy couple were hounded down the serpentine streets of the city by paparazzi and television crews, and then traveled on to Paris. "I have nothing much to say," Allen commented when brought to ground.

They were married Tuesday "because the timing felt right for them," said Leslee Dart, Allen's longtime publicity agent. "He's just finished a movie; she's ready to graduate." She added that Soon-Yi expected to receive a master's degree in special education from Columbia University in the spring.

Felder and others saw the decision to marry Soon-Yi as evidence of a new, more publicly assertive Allen, as demonstrated in his newest film, "Deconstructing Harry." The movie is a brazenly autobiographical comedy in which the character played by Allen, the self-serving Harry Block, wreaks havoc among those around him. He is a far cry from Allen's traditional screen persona, the fey, self-deprecating schlemiel.

Allen's long-standing love affair with Ms. Previn seems to have coincided with his longstanding love affair with Venice. The city itself was a character in "Everyone Says I Love You," Allen's 1996 film. For the last five years or so, Mr. Allen has spent Christmas and New Year's there, and was for awhile rumored to be buying a palazzo on the Grand Canal.

"He has done a lot for the image of Venice," said Cristiano Chiarot, press officer for the 18th-century Fenice opera house there. Chiarot said Allen and the mayor of Venice had become friends during restoration efforts for the Fenice, before its destruction by fire in January 1996. Allen threw himself into the cause to raise money for the restoration.

Soon-Yi was 8 years old when adopted by Ms. Farrow and the conductor Andre Previn during a trip to Korea.

Ms. Farrow, who starred in many of Allen's films, was his companion for more than a decade, although, as Allen has pointed out, the couple never lived together, and spent their nights at separate homes. In 1992, the relationship between her adopted daughter and Allen came to light when she discovered nude pictures of Ms. Previn, who was then 21, in Allen's apartment.

The messy aftermath centered on a bitter custody battle for Satchel, the biological son of Ms. Farrow and Allen, and their adopted daughter, Dylan.

During the custody case, Ms. Farrow accused Allen of fondling Dylan. Allen was cleared of all charges, but he was barred from unsupervised visits with the children, whose names have been changed to Seamus and Eliza.

John Springer, a spokesman for Ms. Farrow, said that "of course Mia wouldn't dignify this event with a comment."

The director's marriage to Ms. Previn has produced a convoluted skein of Allen-Farrow relationships that have echoes of family life in a L'il Abner cartoon. For example, two of Soon-Yi's siblings, Seamus and Eliza, have now become her stepchildren.

"After all the problems he's had with the Irish colleen, you'd think he'd go for a nice Jewish girl," said the comedian Phyllis Diller, who has known Allen for 35 years. "But no, he goes for the shiksa."

Moviegoers may be more willing to accept a married Allen, said former Mayor Edward I. Koch. "Like many, I had trouble with the fact that people thought that she was his unofficial stepdaughter," he said. "But with the passage of time, I don't feel that anymore. And I think this marriage will play well."

He added, "Who knows, maybe this marriage means that Woody Allen can get off the psychiatrist's couch."

Others offered chronological analysis. "She's too old for him," said Tony Randall, 77, who is currently starring in "The Sunshine Boys" on Broadway and whose wife, Heather, is 27.

"Will people care? Maybe," said Donni Aron, a Rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College who strolled Wednesday among holiday shoppers on West Fourth Street. "But not as much in New York."

Ms. Kaufman predicted that the marriage would last. But Felder was less sanguine about the future. "I think they're a little like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor," he said. "They're basically trapped with each other, and they'll forever be drifting through time."

Mia Farrow slams Woody Allen in tell-all book

Farrow and kids February 5, 1997
Web posted at: 11:20 p.m. EST

NEW YORK (Reuter) -- Mia Farrow's long-awaited memoir on life with Woody Allen hit bookstores Wednesday, painting the director-comedian as more neurotic than anyone he ever played in one of his films.

Forget Valentine's Day. In "What Falls Away," Farrow wrote a poison pen letter accusing Allen of bizarre behavior culminating in his seducing one of her adopted daughters and possibly sexually molesting another.

But some pages in Farrow's 370-page book read like scenes from a Woody Allen comedy -- such as his early habit of asking his secretary to call Farrow to arrange dates and never directly doing it himself. Alone with her, he could not bring himself to say her name.

Woody Allen

"Woody Allen was connected to his doctors like no one I ever heard of: he had a doctor for every single part of his body. Whenever one of his movies came out he'd have a screening for his doctors and their wives. It was called 'The Doctor's Screening' and the room was always full," she wrote, adding that if Allen felt the least bit ill he would take his temperature every 10 minutes.

"He kept his own thermometer at my apartment. In his pocket he kept a silver box of pills for any conceivable ailment."

A romance gone down the drain

Farrow, whose 1992 child custody battle with Allen made international headlines, said one of their oddest moments together came when he discovered the drain to the shower in her new country house was in the middle and not the side.

"'What happened? I asked, 'What's wrong?' 'The drain is in the middle,' he said, shaking his head dismissively as if I should have known."

Farrow had to build another shower with the drain at the side.

Farrow said that in her years with Allen, "There were three of us in the relationship: Woody, his shrink and me. No decisions were ever made without her. He didn't even buy sheets without talking to her. I know that part of several sessions went into his switch from polyester-satin to cotton."

In the book Farrow described her shock at first discovering Allen had taken pornographic photos of her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn and then that he was having an affair with the 17-year-old.

Farrow also wrote of her 7-year-old daughter Dylan, accusing Allen of sexually molesting her -- a charge Allen strongly denied. He was never charged.

Farrow described Allen as being obsessed with Dylan, saying, "He whispered her awake, he caressed her and entwined his body around her as she watched television, as she played on the floor, as she ate, as she slept. He brought her into bed when he was wearing only his underpants. Twice I made him take his thumb out of her mouth."

The actress, who was married and divorced from Frank Sinatra and conductor Andre Previn, said she cannot explain why she continued her relationship with Allen for so long.

Woody Allen's spokeswoman, Leslie Dart, said he would have no comment on the book. Told that Farrow had used the volume to make numerous accusations against her employer, Dart replied: "I'm not surprised. She's been doing that for four years."

Affair 13 yr old

March 20, 1993

Woody Allen Tells of Affair as Custody Battle Begins

By RICHARD PEREZ-PENA

ith Mia Farrow watching from a few feet away, Woody Allen testified yesterday about the disintegration of the couple's relationship, his affair with her daughter and his own views on children.

"At the very outset, it didn't occur to me that this would be anything but a private thing," he said.

Ms. Farrow refused to speak to reporters outside the courtroom. Her lawyer, Eleanor B. Alter, would say only, "It wasn't impressive to me, but I'm biased, and I'm not the one that matters."

Mr. Allen is scheduled to return to the witness stand Monday, when he is to be cross-examined by Ms. Farrow's lawyers.

When asked by Acting Justice Elliott Wilk whether he thought of the effect it would have on the other children, Mr. Allen said, "I felt nobody in the world would have any idea."

Justice Wilk asked, "Wasn't that enough, that you would know that you were sleeping with your children's sister?"

Mr. Allen answered: "I didn't see it that way. I'm sorry."

Relationship Sours

Return to "More on Mia Farrow"

Mia & Woody's Son

He's the only biological son of actress MIA FARROW and filmmaker WOODY ALLEN, and he was once the subject of one of the most-scandalous custody battles in the country. Now, at age 16, SEAMUS FARROW is talking about his father's infidelity, his political aspirations and attending college -- at age 11?!

"Yes, I started college at 11," he tells international interviewer DAPHNE BARAK on "The Insider" tonight in his first public interview. "I kept complaining to the principal at my grade school that my days were full of fluff. I was bored. Thankfully, my mom let me go ahead. She had to make a huge commitment. She drove me for the first two years!"

Seamus studied Latin and biology at Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, MA. After two years being ferried back and forth to classes by Mia, she finally agreed to let him live on campus -- at age 14.

"I was very fortunate," he says. "No one was mean. People were sweet. The guys were a little parental and the girls were maternal. And then later on, it was more of a normal college thing. When you're 16 years old, it's not as big a divide between [that] and an 18-year-old freshman. So I was able to fit in and get along."

Getting along is something that Seamus' parents have not been able to do, ever since Allen's explosive affair with their 21-year-old adopted daughter became public in 1992. Allen then petitioned for custody of Seamus, who was then called Satchel, along with siblings DYLAN and MOSES. The court rejected Allen's claims that Farrow was an unfit mother and denied his request.

Seamus, whose blonde hair, luminous complexion and delicate features clearly resemble his mother's, says of those events, "I don't feel I've been traumatized. Somehow I've managed to avoid that."

His mother, he says, "really tried her hardest. She has never tried to influence my view of [Allen], which is a great act of restraint on her part, I imagine."

At one point during the legal wrangling, Seamus was quoted as saying that he hated his father, which he now says he regrets. "I made the mistake of speaking about that. Actually I was talking very philosophically about what I felt it meant morally and why I had elected not to have an ongoing relationship. I've looked at the facts and come to my own conclusions. I think the wisest thing is not to talk about it. I'm not angry or twisted in any way."

If Seamus sounds a bit like a diplomat, it could be because he's spent the past eight months as a special assistant to Ambassador RICHARD HOLBROOK and closely followed candidate JOHN KERRY's failed run for president. As a minor, he wasn't eligible to vote, but he says he could picture himself in political office someday.

"Being in politics would be a great way of making an impact for the better and giving voice to the voiceless. We'll see where life takes me after law school."

Yep, he's been accepted to Yale Law School, which he'll attend in the fall, and which he hopes to use to further human rights policies.

"I can't say I'll be completely selfless the way my mother has, giving up her career to raise 14 children, but I can say that I'll devote my life to trying to make a difference for the better."

For more from the fascinating Farrow clan, watch tonight's "Insider"!

Woody Allen's son has slammed his father - saying he can never forgive him for marrying his own adopted daughter.

Seamus Farrow has branded the film director "immoral" after he married Soon-Yi Previn, who Allen's ex-lover, Mia Farrow, adopted when she was seven years old.

Allen, who is 35 years older than Soon-Yi, justifies his relationship with his young wife on the grounds that she is not his real daughter.

But Seamus, 18, has blasted that justification, saying that it is an "insult" to other children who have been adopted.

He said: "I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children."

Mia adopted Soon-Yi with ex-husband Andre Previn in 1980 but they split soon after and Mia began her relationship with Allen.

However, they broke-up in 1992 when she found nude photographs of Soon-Yi, then 19, on the mantelpiece of Allen's Manhattan apartment.

Mia has never forgiven Allen for the affair, once saying: "It was such a sense of betrayal. Soon-Yi was a kid on the streets of Korea. She was seven when Woody met her."