My twitterfeed blew up this weekend about Dylan Farrow’s letter in the New York Times, which shamed Hollywood actors for working with Woody Allen and shamed his fans for liking his work. She says that Allen abused her when she was 7.
And then there was the other side…
What’s the truth?
UPDATE: Read Andrew Sullivan and Maureen Orth’s 1992 article in Vanity Fair.
Apt. 11d 
I’m inclined to believe Allen, for three reasons. Mia Farrow is a narcissistic, amoral woman who clearly would not hesitate to make up stories as part of an emotional vendetta. We learned from the miscarriages of justice in the 80s (as if we hadn’t learned in the 1690s!) that young children are very suggestible and can be induced to repeat quite fantastic stories. Pedophiles generally display a pattern of questionable relationships with children, and an absence of romantic relationships with adult women, a pattern which does not match Allen’s life at all.
I’m not indulging any presumption of innocence here. The chances that Allen is innocent are well above 50%. I think Farrow is a liar and has induced her daughter to believe in a fantasy.
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Pedophiles generally display… an absence of romantic relationships with adult women
This is absolutely untrue. Most the most typical perpetrator who molests girls is one of their own family members–a brother, uncle, father–who everyone trusts because he’s an upstanding, “normal” married guy, right?
The second article is just gross. If people like Woody Allen’s work and think that’s more important than the possibility that he might have molested a child(ren), fine, just own up to it instead of this pathetic grasping for excuses (he couldn’t have done it because he is claustrophobic!).
However amoral and narcissistic Mia Farrow might be, her adult children seem to universally adore her. And, hey, maybe she’s such a strong manipulator that she’s been able to continue to mold their emotional lives at her will well into adulthood or, maybe, they (the people that actually know her best) know that she’s a good person.
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The fact that the initial accusation happened during the great heyday of moral panic over child molestation and recovered memories is evidence against it. Also, Dylan’s age at the time was such that she might easily have false memories. Thirdly, now that I think of it, I think an actual pedophile would have moved in with the family and gotten married and enjoyed playing Humbert Humbert to Mia’s brood. Fourthly, children are often almost invisible or nonexistent in Woody Allen movies. Impressionable teenage girls and young women with a thing for older men are rather more noticeable in his oeuvre.
I didn’t manage to make it through the defense article, as the basic argument seemed to be “Woody Allen is not a pedophile because Mia Farrow slept around.” I don’t buy the bit about the impossibility of molesting a child in a busy household–I’m sure somebody who was obsessively committed to the project could manage it easily.
I lean toward not guilty, but I wouldn’t want a teenage daughter riding in car pool with Woody Allen.
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I didn’t manage to make it through the defense article, as the basic argument seemed to be “Woody Allen is not a pedophile because Mia Farrow slept around.”
You should have kept reading, as that wasn’t the argument at all. I don’t know what happened, but it’s certainly not obvious, nor was this the reasoning for this case at all.
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The fact that the initial accusation happened during the great heyday of moral panic over child molestation and recovered memories is evidence against it.
Huh? Are you saying that we can’t take any accusations of molestation made in the 80’s seriously because there were a couple of instances where groups of children had false memories implanted? Or does that rule only apply to accusations made against celebrities? You do realize that the number of actual molestations during that period far surpassed the number of false accusations due to recovered memories by an absolutely staggering amount.
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It’s a piece of evidence that weighs against the accusations that the accusation was “trendy” at the time. But it’s not proof against the accusation, just evidence.
If there were physical evidence or a second accusation from an independent source (i.e. not a Farrow kid) I’d say case closed–guilty, guilty, guilty.
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That, at the time, there were a few instances of children being implanted with sexual assault related memories is in no way evidence of weighing against Dylan’s Farrow story. It has nothing to do with her story unless you think all accusations of sexual assault against children during that time period are to be questioned.
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Although the existence of false memory stories shouldn’t impact our understanding of Dylan’s story, the false memory *research*in children does impact my interpretation of childhood stories.
I am familiar with the research (one cite is Ceci & Hoffman, 1997). The proportion of children who will report false events after being repeatedly asked about them (and not necessarily in a manipulative way, but just repeatedly asked) is high. For 5-6 year olds, after 9 sessions of questioning about a false event, upwards of 40% of children will report having experienced the false event (ranging from positive — did someone give you ice cream, to neutral, did you see a person on the bus, to negative, did you fall off your bike).
This research post-dates the court cases of the 80’s, and is pretty robust. Now, does it mean that you should just ignore children when they report negative events? Certainly not. That kind of reasoning, the casual dismissal of information from children drove the ugliness, say, of the priest abuse scandals. But, it does require looking for corroborative evidence of children’s reports. They are not very reliable, especially at young ages.
There’s a significant increase in resistance to misreports as children age, and, I think, many brain scientists think that this change is a developmental change in brain structures and memory formation.
(Interestingly, there seems to be an increase in false memories concomitant with the decrease in memory with old age, as well).
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Oh, I also have to point out that eye witness testimony from traumatic events and in low visibility situations is largely thought to be hugely unreliable by psychologists/neuroscientists who study it. Those who study the brain learn to become comfortable with somewhat uncomfortable truths about how we make judgments and decisions.
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FYI, the Daily Beast article was published before Dylan’s letter. I think it’s reasonable to view her letter as a response to the Daily Best article.
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Well, I wouldn’t be willing to leave my children with Woody Allen, and I would be uncomfortable with him. And, as Amy points out that Mia Farrow slept around is completely unconnected to whether Allen is a molester (as are most other reasons why he couldn’t have done it). On the other hand, I also think that young children are suggestible and that memories from 7 (or even current reports) are insufficient to convict someone in a criminal court without some form of corroborating evidence. If I had suspicions, I would start looking for evidence.
Shunning, on the other hand, we decide for ourselves. I decided that Allen should be shunned in the 90’s. The story of what happen with his current wife (the daughter of the mother of his other children) was enough for me to decide that I could no longer feel comfortable with Allen and I’ve largely ignored Allen since then. Now, mind you, I was never a big fan of his movies (and am not a movie goer in general), so ignoring him wasn’t hard. But, even if I knew him personally, I would find the origins of the relationship with Soon Yi difficult to take, even without the allegations of molestation.
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The story of what happen with his current wife (the daughter of the mother of his other children) was enough for me…
That’s pretty much my opinion.
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“And, as Amy points out that Mia Farrow slept around is completely unconnected to whether Allen is a molester (as are most other reasons why he couldn’t have done it).”
I’d add that if Farrow’s household was a big mess with men coming and going, that set-up would actually be rather attractive to a child molester. So the more of a mess Farrow is, the more likely it is that at least one of the men in her life would act inappropriately toward her children. Hence, “Farrow is a mess” is in a way evidence against Allen.
I don’t really know what to do about Woody Allen. He’s made some good comedies over the years and I love Bullets over Broadway and my husband often shows Hannah and Her Sisters for a class he teaches, and I hear Woody Allen has made a couple of good ones recently. However, I can’t feel like you can really separate the artist from the art in this case, because there is definitely leakage going on (think of all the many situations in his movies where a naive, impressionable young woman is being educated by her older lover). I think my current position is that I will watch a Woody Allen movie if I know it’s likely to be good, but I don’t feel duty bound to watch every single Woody Allen movie, just because Woody Allen made it. And if it isn’t as good as advertised (and it often isn’t), click! (That’s another subject, actually–Woody Allen getting the critical benefit-of-the-doubt even when making movies that aren’t very good.)
Likewise, I’d always heard that Roman Polanski was an amazing director, so some years ago my husband and I sat down to watch “Knife in the Water.” Within a few minutes, I was totally creeped out, so we turned it off.
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Oh, and in general, I don’t believe in second degree shunning (i.e. if I chose to shun someone, that everyone I don’t shun must also shun them). So I’m not going to decide to not see Keaton movies.
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“However amoral and narcissistic Mia Farrow might be, her adult children seem to universally adore her.” Not universally, see Moses, and, of course, Soon Yi.
I believe Dylan/Malone thinks she was molested. I don’t believe Woody Allen actually molested her. And the language in her letter was curiously both vague and specific: “He sexually assaulted me.” Rubbing his hand across her pubic area is miles apart from anally raping her.
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“Rubbing his hand across her pubic area is miles apart from anally raping her.”
As someone who unfortunately experienced both as a child, I can tell you that while the second was more physically damaging and resulted in more fear at the time, the first was more psychologically damaging, because it was more confusing about whether I asked for it, encouraged it, liked it, etc.
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Rubbing his hand across her pubic area is miles apart from anally raping her.
Wow.
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What, you think they are the same?
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“The story of what happen with his current wife (the daughter of the mother of his other children) was enough for me…”
If an actor’s or actress’s sleazy sex life stops you from going to his or her movies, you won’t see many movies, and certainly none with Mia Farrow. I think Dory Previn is at least as sympathetic and was wronged at least as much as anyone in the Woody/Mia households.
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But I make my own decisions about what bothers me enough that I can’t stand looking at the person (or listening to them) anymore.
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I found this: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/04/nyregion/doctor-cites-inconsistencies-in-dylan-farrow-s-statements.html
From some internet searches, I found court reports of other cases in which the lead doctor had found abuse. If anything, people were more likely to be accused of child abuse in the early ’90s than today.
I believe Dylan believes. However, it has been shown that memories can be created. http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm
The methods described sound precisely like what Mia Farrow did to Dylan; a trusted family member prompted the child to recall a happening. The story was repeated multiple times, with questions.
The story in Vanity Fair shocks me, particularly the intimate details of her children Mia Farrow felt were appropriate to publish in a national magazine. At the time, Dylan was 7. The sections on Soon-Yi were also particularly vicious.
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Wow. I’m kind of shocked at the support for Allen here.
As a friend of mine said, why is any of this a surprise? Has anyone *seen* Manhattan?
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I saw “Manhattan” (a long time ago). I’ve seen several of his movies, though not all, over the past 20 years. There’s a big difference between adulterous relationships, including relationships with 17-year-olds, and molesting 7-year-olds, and most men who would do the former would never do the latter. No one disputes that Woody Allen slept with and eventually married his girlfriend’s 17-year-old daughter, just as no one disputes that Mia Farrow is a sleazy skank. But neither of those facts has much relevance to acccusations of child molestation.
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I also am surprised at how willing people are to defend Woody Allen. i think it is entirely possible that he did exactly what Dylan said, and that Mia couldn’t really in good conscience bring him to court. I actually totally believe Dylan. I think Mia is a weirdo and I’m not into her “save the world and I’m just a weak, placid lady” shtick, I’ve never liked her as an actor. I happen to love Woody Allen’s movies, notwithstanding her. I love Hannah and her Sisters, I love Annie Hall.
That said, I feel sorry for Dylan and kind of skeeved out when I think about watching Woody Allen again. I honestly think I’m done with him. I believe Mia could totally manipulater her kids: but it would take a total monster to do it this completely and frankly, I think she has other things on her mind than WA and soon yi…who are both really gross. (I actually saw them in person once in Central Park). This article was really interesting, much more so than that horrible article in the Daily Beast. That guy is just awful. Lots of hangers on making a lot of money off Woody. http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/woody-allens-good-name/
The only thing that doesn’t ring true to me about Dylan’s account is him saying he’d make her a star. Really? But he is gross and old and likes the young ladies. I hope Scarlett Johansson is feeling embarrassed today…and Emma Stone too. I wouldn’t be sorry if this was the end of his career, and it hurts to say that but I feel angry!
And honestly, the only Polanski movie I have seen is Chinatown. I can’t bring myself to watch anything by him. I feel the same about awful R. Kelly (no charges there either). I don’t necessarily thing everyone should agree with what I feel, but that is how I feel. Disgusting, horrible men.
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“The only thing that doesn’t ring true to me about Dylan’s account is him saying he’d make her a star. Really? ”
Why doesn’t that ring true? He did that for all of his girlfriends.
His actions reek of predatory behavior not unlike Jerry Sandusky, another guy who no one could believe would do something so horrible, even after they saw him doing it. He gets into svengali-like relationships with women. He makes them stars so they depend on him and he can control them. If Mia is a nutjob, well, why would a predator seek out a sane person to live with and manipulate? They’d see right through him quickly enough. Of course he would prefer someone who was kind of dysfunctional and who has a motherhood complex, regularly bringing kids, mainly young girls, into the house (sort of like Sandusky was involved in mentoring boys–a steady source of prey). As far as I can tell, he has never actually fathered a child biologically (Ronan looks an awful lot like young Sinatra), so how often is he really putting his penis inside women of child-bearing age? He probably justifies his own behavior by telling himself at least he doesn’t have biological daughters and isn’t committing incest, just sharing his “love.”
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That’s a symptom of my thrall to the “Woody Allen is different than other directors” thinking. But you are right, he likely would say something like that. Totally agree with you about Mia, her unusual household and the chaos.
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“I believe Mia could totally manipulater her kids: but it would take a total monster to do it this completely and frankly, I think she has other things on her mind than WA and soon yi…who are both really gross.”
As bj was describing upthread, it wouldn’t have to be conscious manipulation at all on the part of Mia Farrow. Just ask the questions enough times and the child’s memories will be contaminated.
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I’m not a fan of either. I am a fan of the rule of law, and the presumption of innocence.
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I agree with this, but I also think Dylan has a right to her life story, and it is pretty complicated when a question comes down to two people’s memories of what happened at the time. There’s also a big difference between rule of law/being jailed and whether people choose to see a movie, etc.
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I don’t understand the various commentators who conflate having sex with a 17 year old girl (which is perfectly legal and something that most men would have a desire, at least in some sense of the word, to do) with molesting a 7 year old (which is illegal, wicked, and something which most men would have no desire whatsoever to do). I wouldn’t want my 20 year old daughter hanging out with Woody Allen, or Bill Clinton, for that matter, or Ted Kennedy (though he’d probably be safe now), but I wouldn’t put any of them in the same category as a child molester. In fact I’d be happier entrusting a 7 year old to one of them than a 20 year old, precisely because I think that they all have normal male urges.
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Ted Kennedy died in 2009.
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I disagree with your premise that interest in 17 olds is exclusive of attraction to 7 year olds (the Wikipedia entry terms that non exclusive pedophilia).
But my point was that the Soon Yi story was enough to turn me off Woody Allen, with no additional info.
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First of all, what bj said. People who rape children also have consensual sexual relationships with adults.
Second, my point is that Allen’s orientation towards 17 year olds is not one of sexual attraction; it’s about power. He can easily manipulate and control a 17 year old.
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I had some views about what I might comment, then got here and found that y81 and Cranberry had said pretty much everything I had in mind, except that the para from the Wiede article which included “…odd to say the Globe tribute showed contempt for abuse survivors when Mia willfully participated in the festivities by expressly agreeing to the use of her clip, when she had every opportunity to decline. She certainly wasn’t pressured, and we had an alternative version of the montage (sans Mia) all ready to go in case she passed. It seemed Mia either wanted it both ways, or simply assumed no one would ever learn that she was complicit in the tribute…” seems consistent, to me, with Mia being someone who was utterly furious with Woody Allen and wanted to ambush him and draw attention to the injury she feels she has suffered.
Allen’s having taken up with Soon-yi seems icky to me, even worse than, say, Bill Clinton with Monica. As y81 points out, legal. I have no idea whether the abuse of Dylan happened, though it seems clear that Dylan thinks it did. If Mia Farrow did groom Dylan into believing something false about her father, it’s truly vile behavior on her part, and damages any willingness on my part to see her positively. As Wiede notes, this would have been investigated by adoption authorities in determining whether Woody and Soon-yi could adopt, and they decided to let the adoptions happen, so this suggests that people who knew a hell of a lot more about it than any of us Levendees can possibly know thought there was not a problem.
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“If Mia Farrow did groom Dylan into believing something false about her father, it’s truly vile behavior on her part, and damages any willingness on my part to see her positively.”
Mia Farrow might not realize that that’s what she had done.
There’s a very famous case of a calculating horse named Clever Hans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
“Hans was said to have been taught to add, subtract, multiply, divide, work with fractions, tell time, keep track of the calendar, differentiate musical tones, and read, spell, and understand German.”
It was apparently not a fraud. The horse was intuitive enough to be able to sense when he had given the desired answer.
“Pfungst then proceeded to examine the behaviour of the questioner in detail, and showed that as the horse’s taps approached the right answer, the questioner’s posture and facial expression changed in ways that were consistent with an increase in tension, which was released when the horse made the final, correct tap. This provided a cue that the horse could use to tell it to stop tapping.”
This pattern of behavior has apparently also been observed in drug sniffing dogs.
If even a horse or a dog is intuitive enough to sense what the “right” answer is, how much more so a 7-year-old of presumably at least average intelligence.
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If 7 year olds are so easily led to believe things, why should we ever believe anything they say, ever? And doesn’t that mean that a clever person could get away with raping children for a long time, perhaps forever, simply because s/he was able to do it only when the child was alone with him or her? And also doing it in such a way that caused no physical injuries?
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If you had two independent accusations of the same person, I think that’s pretty sound.
But if you have one accusation with no physical evidence, that’s not good enough.
Bear in mind that perverts will often have vast libraries of illegal pornographic material on their computers and in their homes. If there’s a police search that turns up that sort of stuff on the computer of the accused person, I think that plus one accusation is good enough proof. And, in any case, just possession of that kind of pornography is a criminal offense, all by itself.
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Here’s a British story where the police caught a guy with an estimated 1,000,000 items of illegal pornography on his computer, a fair amount of which was his documentation of his own crimes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-25092373
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I forgot to mention phones and browser history on computers and phones.
If a guy’s phone, computer and house are clean of incriminating material, and there’s no further corroborating evidence (for instance, a second independent accusation or physical evidence) I think he has to be deemed innocent.
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Um, do WA’s photos of Soon-Yi naked count?
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How old was she when the pictures were taken?
She was most likely between 19 and 21 when the whole thing blew up in 1992.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mia_Farrow
I was looking for her age, and I came upon this in the Wikipedia article on Woody Allen. This is going to make you hate him a lot more:
“At age 19, Allen married 16-year-old Harlene Rosen.[106] The marriage lasted from 1954 to 1959. Time stated that the years were “nettling” and “unsettling.”[106]
Rosen, whom Allen referred to in his standup act as “the Dread Mrs. Allen”, sued him for defamation due to comments at a TV appearance shortly after their divorce. Allen tells a different story on his mid-1960s standup album Standup Comic. In his act, Allen said that Rosen sued him because of a joke he made in an interview. Rosen had been sexually assaulted outside her apartment and according to Allen, the newspapers reported that she “had been violated”. In the interview, Allen said, “Knowing my ex-wife, it probably wasn’t a moving violation.” In an interview on The Dick Cavett Show, Allen brought up the incident again where he repeated his comments and stated that the sum for which he was sued was “$1 million.””
Where to begin?
Also, how the heck were Woody Allen and Mia Farrow allowed to adopt two children together when they didn’t even live together and Mia Farrow already had six kids?
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Oh, I already know about the teen bride.
I suspect that the reason he got married so young was that he was trying to restrain his urges toward pedophilia. Maybe if he got married, he would find an outlet for his sexual urges. But then that didn’t happen. People report that they were more like brother and sister. I don’t think the sex thing with adult women really works for Woody.
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I hope this ends up in the right place.
You know, 19 seems much younger today than it did in 1950. The median age of first marriage for men was around 22, and for women around 20, in 1950, which means that many couples married at younger ages. So, at the time, it was not “so young.”
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My parents married at 21 and 20 (of course, they were also trying to help my dad evade the draft, so, different times, different reasons), so I’m not one to see young marriage as inherently creepy. But he never quite seemed to stop marrying 17 year olds (or women he started dating when they were 17). Mia is the exception, but then she was bringing in a crop of new young girls on a regular basis, so I’m sure he overlooked the age thing.
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“As Wiede notes, this would have been investigated by adoption authorities in determining whether Woody and Soon-yi could adopt”
Are all adoptions vetted by authorities? How about adoptions by really really wealthy famous people?
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IN a word, there is no such thing as “adoption authorities” unless going through Foster Care. Rules vary by county/state/country. Private adoptions in US just need a homestudy, lawyer and sign off..done. International adoption would need more verification ie: more in-depth homestudy, which you can completely alter to the specifics you give the social worker, there is NO requirement for the SW to “research” your story, FBI background check via fingerprints. If not convicted it has no bearing on your ability to adopt. So yeah, not all adoptions are vetted.
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somewhat off topic,but for the record adults are just as likely as kids to have false memories implanted by suggestion (including negative events)
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“If 7 year olds are so easily led to believe things, why should we ever believe anything they say, ever?”
The statements of 7 year olds, like those of anyone else, should be evaluated by considering the inherent credibility of the statements, the circumstances under which they were made (external indicia of credibility), and the existence or non-existence of corroborating evidence. For example, on the first standard, no matter how many 7 year olds, or 17 year olds, swore to me that their neighbor was a witch, I would never believe it. On the second, as the law has long recognized, excited utterances and admissions against interest have more credibility than accusations of a third party that result from prolonged interrogation. The third standard is self-explanatory, I think. In Allen’s case, the first standard gives no guidance, the second and third point to Dylan Farrow’s accusations being false.
If you have some different set of standards, explain to me how your standards give the correct result in the Salem witch trials and the McMartin preschool case. (Or, if you are really hard-nosed, explain how the defendants in either case were actually guilty.)
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The major themes here are “She’s an obsessed woman scorned and it’s plausible that such a person would do anything to make this stick to him” and “He’s a predatory creep with a pattern of unbalanced relationships with inappropriate young women so it’s plausible that he would be a pedophile”. Second seems less likely to me than the first, but I’m not all that confident, wouldn’t bet money I couldn’t afford to lose.
I’m not going to stay away from his movies.
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I’ve never been much of a fan of WA’s movies (though I did love Midnight in Paris–probably the literary angle), so it’s no big loss to me to consciously stop seeing them. But if I boycotted the movies of every single perverted narcissist sociopath in Hollywood, I wouldn’t see any movies, so I long ago gave up the idea of boycotting anything. Except Tom Cruise movies, but that boycott only lasted until Tropic Thunder.
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Although the emphasis in now on each individual protecting themselves from a rapist, the emphasis could also be on a person protecting themselves from being accused. So, if being in a attic room alone with a little girl was enough to be suspected, then most men would think to themselves, ” I’d better not put myself in a position where I could be arrested—instead of girls being advised, “don’t go there, don’t do that, don’t wear that, don’t drink that, don’t have a mother who might marry a man who might rape you, don’t have a mom who might hire an unsuitable baby-sitter, etc.”
Instead of the victim being told how to not make themselves vulnerable to predators, the predators and the non-predators would be lectured on how not to put themselves in a situation that could ruin their lives, psyches, job prospects.
It would, of course, be a huge burden to some, especially to a lot of boys, teenagers on sports teams and men. But I am willing for them to take on that burden.
I think it would be a fairer world if the burden of proof was on the possible predator to prove their innocent intentions instead of on young children and teenagers to make an absolutely airtight case against their attacker.
The concept of innocent until proven guilty —which seems so logical when applied to many judicial cases— is a weak argument when it is applied to a case of a powerful man attacking a weak, naive child.
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No, it has to apply to all. Accusation cannot substitute for proof.
Even a powerful man has the right to be presumed not guilty of a crime unless and until his guilt has been established. Otherwise, very quickly there would be no safety for any citizen.
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Wow, imagine how a mother of teenage boys would feel if told that any time a girl accused her sons of anything, the burden would be on them to prove themselves innocent.
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Yeah, it must be horrible… uh, wait, no. OK, my son is still only 11, but I am going to have to live with this situation, and I am perfectly fine teaching my son that he has to understand that he has to take responsibility for himself as per cy’s comment.
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Do you think the McMartin case was wrongly decided?
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I didn’t really follow the McMartin case.
This is an interesting article about recurring themes in Woody Allen’s movies:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/dylan-farrow-woody-allen-movies
I never saw Crimes and Misdemeanors, but I know the basic storyline, and you have to wonder if there’s a reason why WA explored the issue of getting away with a terrible crime in one of his movies.
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Wow. I don’t have any sons, but if I did, I couldn’t imagine telling them that. Imagine the toxic fear that would produce. That fear would be worse than any I have experienced as a woman (and I did suffer my share of inappropriate sexual behavior from adults in adolescence). We already have problems with men being looked on with suspicion when they are guilty of nothing–read the free range kids blog. Everyone loses to the extent that this culture of suspicion affects men’s normal behavior around children.
http://www.freerangekids.com/category/eek-a-male-and-stranger-danger/
Also, I can only assume that you have never known or worked with a someone whose mental problems led them to any sort of false accusations, or to filing unfounded lawsuits. I have. It’s terrifying, and it can happen to anyone. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if such a person were automatically presumed to be correct in everything they said.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/why-young-sexual-assault-victims-tell-incoherent-stories/283613/
I thought this was good in the Atlantic, an abuse victim speaks of her own experience telling her story. She comes to the conclusion that she believes Dylan Farrow, but would also not vote, on a jury, to convict Woody Allen.
My thought is that the presumption of innocence only applies in criminal court cases (just like the right to free speech is about the actions of government, not individuals).
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Good article; thanks for posting it, bj. I was struck by this part:
“But the fact that we will never know what really happened in this case does not make me feel neutral. It makes me feel furious. The entire legal paradigm favors adults. Whether or not Woody Allen abused Dylan Farrow, untold numbers of children are sexually abused. And in an overwhelming number of cases, the adults responsible could never be found guilty in any court of law. The deck is stacked against victims from the start. Which, of course, is exactly what their abusers count on in the first place.”
It makes me furious, too. We have an imperfect system of law that enables deep deep injustices to be done, and these injustices are exacerbated when the criminals are the ones who have even more social power on the basis of their age, financial means, and gender.
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Yes, exactly! It’s not that someone should be thrown into jail because of one accusation. It’s that the present rules of the court make it so difficult to get a conviction. That’s something in our justice system that can change and has in the past and will in the future.
One example, that probably everyone is aware of, happened about 30 years ago when courts ruled that a women’s past sexual history was generally not admissible as evidence in rape cases. This was a big difference.
Another change, in the opposite direction, is happening in Afghanistan right now. A man’s relatives will be barred from testifying against him in court. It will now be almost impossible to prosecute a man who injures/abuses members of his family.
Echidne of the Snakes has a post about it here:
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2014/02/meanwhile-in-afghanistan-small-law.html#disqus_thread
Changing what is is admissible evidence in court is not always throwing out all the protections of the law. It can be an attempt to make the system fairer. The “innocent” man might not be so innocent if there were different rules of evidence.
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No, an accusation isn’t and shouldn’t be proof of guilt. I’m very happy with the idea that a person must be proven guilty with evidence, in order to be found guilty in our judicial system.
However, if the assumption is that children lie and their testimony is not credible and there are no eyewitnesses other than the child and the molester–then how will a rapist ever be found guilty?
The assumption seems to be that if there is not photographic proof or another eyewitness, then well of course, you must presume the innocence of the accused –well– that seems to weight the argument too much in favor of the possible abuser.
And, I do have teenage boys, and I sincerely hope they are never accused of rape or assault or any other crime, I guess especially if they are not guilty. That would be a horrifying experience, I agree.
However, I also hope that if they are assaulted, that they could make the accusation and be taken seriously. And that other evidence would be taken into account also.
(I also hope that they feel some responsibility for others, so that if they witness some abuse, say at a party, that they try to stop it or maybe alert someone that it’s going on. I would like them to not only be not the problem, but also part of the solution.)
Also, concerning the McMartin preschool case, the accusations included teachers being able to fly through the air like witches and that there were secret tunnels beneath the school where the abuse was to have occurred. It is unsettling that such a case dragged on for so long. It does indeed make the point that accusations are not truth.
Perhaps a more comparable case would be the Steubenville, Ohio rape trial. Although there was a lot of internet/tweet/eyewitness and even photo evidence, in addition to a credible victim, it took a lot of outside pressure for the town to prosecute it’s star football players.
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I do not see how your suggestion of shifting the burden to the accused (predator) would change the culture that drove the Steubenville case. If anything, I think it would make such places even more protective of their athletes since even allowing the case to move forward at all would result in ruining the lives of the boys in the perception of those protecting them.
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cy and others should stop worrying. It is very possible to obtain convictions of (in this case innocent) men based solely on uncorroborated (and in this case perjured) testimony. I guess we live in the best of all possible worlds, after all.
http://www.volokh.com/2014/01/02/wrongful-convictions-proof-beyond-reasonable-doubt/
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“It is very possible to obtain convictions of (in this case innocent) men based solely on uncorroborated (and in this case perjured) testimony. I guess we live in the best of all possible worlds, after all.”
Oh wow, really? I had no idea.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/
Let me edit my comment above as follows:
“We have an imperfect system of law that enables deep deep injustices to be done, and these injustices are exacerbated when the criminals are the ones who have even less social power on the basis of their age, financial means, and gender.”
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The Onion on this: “New Blog Piece on Woody Allen to Settle Everything.”
http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-blog-piece-on-woody-allen-to-settle-everything,35197/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:1:Default
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