[Added May 5, 2014. As Jim noted yesterday, if this is your topic you should see: "TV: Another idiot for the idiot box" and "The award for best self-created drama goes to Mia Farrow (Ava and C.I.)" and "Dylan whines to Maureen Orth who passes it on to Janet Malcolm." The first one listed, when Ava and I wrote that it pretty much shut down the nonsense from Camp Mia because it served as a reminder of what I know and how I haven't said even half of what I could say. A casual reference/teaser in that piece especially alarmed Mama Mia.]
I've known Mia Farrow for years, I try to be kind here. During the Bully Boy Bush years when she was screaming for war on Darfur, I tried to draw the same line I'd drawn with her on abortion: We can disagree.
Mia, for those who don't know, is hugely, vastly anti-choice. To the point that she's honestly become a bigot on the subject. But I look the other way.
I'm tired of looking the other way.
'The flower child' never was. Flower children weren't married to elderly millionaires the way Mia was to Frank.
Watching Husbands and Wives, the last film Mia made with Woody Allen, was very hard to do. Not just because Judy Davis walked away with the movie and what scenes she didn't steal Sydney Pollack did. Mia was a drab little mouse. Who somehow, someway, got all the men in the world to leave whomever for her.
In other words, with Husbands and Wives, Woody finally wrote about the real Mia.
Realizing that wasn't the most uncomfortable thing.
Watching the film and realizing that Mia was so desperate that she would play this true but insulting version of herself made me very uncomfortable.
This is a woman who was obviously desperate to hang on to a relationship that was ending.
Watch the film and you'll see it all there -- and I've only seen the film once, it was too difficult to sit through that one time.
They were supposed to make Manhattan Murder Mystery together, Woody and Mia.
They didn't.
Though she was willing to make the film, Woody didn't want to make it with her. She had discovered his affair with Soon Yi-Previn. And Woody was moving on.
Woody and Mia had --
I don't know how to write this. This is why I'm writing it. Mia's being a fraud and a fake and I just don't have the time.
Woody and Mia are the parents of Satchel Farrow who now calls himself Ronan. (He was named after some baseball player -- I'm not a sports buff but Mia was more than fine with going along with Woody on the name.) Then there's Dylan who's also been Eliza and Malone and who knows what name she'll take next -- we'll just call her Dylan for this piece. Dylan and Moses were adopted. Mia wanted Woody to be the legal father of the two.
Then it was a nightmare when she found out Woody and Soon-Yi were a couple.
At this point, suddenly comes an announcement that Dylan's been molested by Woody.
Maybe she was.
But molesters aren't usually a one-time thing.
Iraq War supporter Nicholas Kristof has posted Dylan's letter at the New York Times.
What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should
know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and
led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house.
He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric
train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did
it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret,
promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I
remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its
circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at
toy trains.
Here's the thing, when Dylan was a child and her story never made sense? I didn't doubt it. I stopped seeing Woody's films. I had a number of them on VHS -- remember those days? -- and I'd still pop in Broadway Danny Rose or Sleeper or Love and Death. But I didn't question Dylan, I didn't question the narrative.
I was Mia's friend.
But here's the thing, Dylan. Your story makes no sense.
It doesn't in your letter and it hasn't over the years and, frankly, I'm bored to death with it.
Here's another little detail: I was sexually molested as a child.
He stuck his finger in me and that hurt and didn't apparently please him so he focused on his penis from then on. I was made to touch his penis, he smeared it against my face and pulled my hair until I opened my mouth and sucked him off. He was sleepy then, after he came. I used that moment to grab the dinner knife and stab him like a stuck pig -- repeatedly -- before fleeing the motel room, attempting to figure out where he had taken me and how I was going to get home.
People respond differently to abuse.
But why is it that in all the years she's told her tale, I've never believed it?
Especially the statement (which sounds like Mia, not like a 7-year-old) that Woody told her he would take her to Paris and make her a movie star?
Maybe he said it but he's never said that to women he's wooed so why the hell would he say it to a seven-year-old child?
Wouldn't he be more likely to offer toys or ice cream?
Who thinks like that besides Mia who always dreamed of Paris as a child. Woops. Did we all forget that detail?
Why is that she doesn't speak in any of the many ways that survivors of abuse speak?
She's had therapy.
But even now, she's designing some story, she's creating some acting 'moment' and it never rings true and the wrong things are detailed, the wrong things are emphasized.
Now maybe Dylan was molested -- maybe by her Uncle John.
That's Mia's brother who is now behind bars for sexually molesting several children.
I must have missed Mia's Tweet on that.
Or Dylan's wordy narrative about that.
He's serving a ten year sentence for sexual molestation of children -- plural.
I'm going to repeat what I said earlier, sexual molestation is a pattern. It's not a one-time thing.
Maybe Uncle John was the molester?
If anything happened.
I've been online nine years and never felt the need (or had the desire) to note at this site that I was molested as a child.
I long ago learned not to share it because I learned how many other people were sexually molested as children. And I can't help everyone, I'm sorry.
Right before Dylan's alleged assault, was the last time I ever spoke of it in a semi-public setting. I was at a friend's home overlooking the ocean, at a table with a friend who wanted me to share to a mutual friend because she'd just found out her boyfriend had sexually molested her child. The woman felt tremendous guilt and much more but she was mainly concerned with what that meant for her daughter. So I opened up a vein and talked about it. Noting. for example, that you can live through it, you can put it semi-behind you, it does effect you in other ways, some good, some bad. Blah blah blah. (Sorry, I'm not in the mood to open a vein tonight.) So we finish up that conversation and I'm thinking great, hopefully it helped her, I'm going to go shopping and find books and music and other things to distract me for the rest of the day.
Then ______ calls my mobile phone (that's what we had before cell phones). We know each other loosely. At the time, he's an up and coming actor on a top twenty TV show. We had nodded to one another at the party but I was, obviously, focused on other things and hadn't exchanged any words. He wants to meet up to talk. I'm headed home. Great, can he come over?
He stays for a month and a half.
I'm not insulting him in any way with these comments.
As soon as he sits down he starts shaking and explaining that he heard the discussion at the party and he was -- and he was -- and he was --
He's crying and gulping -- not gasping -- for air.
Molested?
By your mother?
He can only nod to what I'm asking.
I can always tell who was molested by a parent -- and which parent -- and who was molested by a relative, who was molested by a trusted non-family figure and who was molested by a stranger.
Elaine loves to tell -- I believe she's blogged on this twice at her site -- about when she was dating Dr. ____ who was a clinical director at a youth residential treatment center and she was asked to consult on something at the last minute and does she dump her friend in from out of town or does she leave her boyfriend in a fix? I tell her I'll tag along and busy myself in some way while she takes all the time she needs to do the consultation.
And then I'm waiting and some man (I didn't know these people, it was a doctor) starts talking to me and at some point wants me to look at a piece of artwork by a teenager. It's a pencil and paper sketch.
Detailed.
I look at it and start to hand it back saying it's interesting but then I start picking apart the details, whoever drew identifies with the person in the sketch, they're on the roof, they're closer to the edge of the roof, there's something they've said that they regret, a they're hiding something, they're hiding something from their parents, it's a boy, a boy drew this, he's -- he's gay and he's in the closet., he's gay and he's in the closet and he's got a boyfriend but he's saying the boyfriend raped him, he's saying that because of the parents and because of --
And I went on like that about the drawing for about 8 minutes.
And the concern that man had?
I didn't know it when I was evaluating the drawing but the boy who drew that picture was saying that his male roommate raped him. Turns out, they had consensual sex. It was easier to say rape for that young male than to say, "I'm gay."
That was all in the drawing, it was in the heavy pencil marks, it was in the light pencil marks, it was in the shading and the position and the point of view. All the signs were there if you knew how to see them.
I'm often accused of being psychic but I'm not. I just know the signs.
And whenever I speak of being molested, to a woman's group or a group of friends, someone always comes forward. They've sat on it for years and now they want to talk and now they want help. And they also want me as a sounding board or mentor or shoulder to lean on. Maybe because my message is that it didn't destroy me?
For four weeks, I went to the set with the TV friend every morning. I helped him find a doctor who could address his issues. (This should be obvious, but maybe just to those of us who have been molested, the six weeks he was living in my home, he had his own bedroom, we did not have a sexual relationship.) After the four weeks, he worked a little at transitioning back to his own place. When, months later, he and his doctor were planning the session where he was going to confront his mother, he moved back into a guest room and probably stayed a week before the confrontation and at least two weeks after.
I'm not a nice person, I don't claim to be. I'm not a saint. I need my sleep when I can get it. (I got three hours of sleep early Friday morning and haven't been to sleep since. I can't take the nightmares right now -- of Iraq and all the violence -- that video of the military just standing there while the Sunni man was being burned alive . . .)
Talking about the subject can help others. I know that. If I feel the calling, if I feel someone needs me to bring it up, I will. But my life is very full and I don't have time to try to help everyone. Again, I'm not a nice person, I don't pretend to be.
As I have many times in the many years I've lived, I helped someone who needed help on this issue -- in part because who knows how much my own sharing -- whether to them or overheard -- acted as a catalyst. And as a result -- again, I'm no saint -- I try to be very careful around this topic. It is not something that everyone who knows me knows because I don't make it a point of daily conversation. Jim, for example, is going to read this and think, "We're best friends. Dona and I lived with her for several years and I never knew this." And Jim and I have been friends now for a decade and shared many stories of our lives -- good and bad -- but there's never been a reason to bring this up.
Along with not having time today to 'mentor' or whatever people like my TV friend, it's also true that I love drama on the screen, I love on drama on the stage, but I don't care for drama in my home. It bores me real damn quick.
And now we have Dylan providing us with drama.
When I see drama, if it's from someone who's been molested or raped, I can be understanding -- even me. But I can do that because I can see the trigger.
It happened to you at ____ so ___ reminds you of it. He/Her name was ____ so the fact that you are now working with someone named ____ is bringing up those issues. The incident occurred in ____ and it's now that time of the year.
I'm sorry, what's the triggering incident for Dylan that's caused these two or so months of drama.
It's not the season or the month because the alleged events didn't happen in winter.
So what is it?
Some might say it's him being honored but he's been honored for the last decades.
So what's the trigger?
It's not Uncle John getting convicted of child molestation because that was month's ago. Sentencing was months ago too.
Here's the reality, I don't believe it anymore. I'm not going to pretend I do. The need to turn this into a public spectacle, an embarrassing piece of trash -- I'm referring to all the events, not just Dylan?
I don't believe it. I think more people are starting to disbelieve as well.
Dylan may have been molested.
She may even have been molested by Woody.
But I don't believe it anymore.
I don't know what happened and I'm not going to take the word of someone who is clearly being dishonest -- I mean Dylan. I think she's being dishonest but I don't know why.
And thing is, I don't give a damn why.
I've had quite enough of this trashy spectacle.
Mia embarrasses herself, her dead parents and a widow by claiming that Ronan might be Frank Sinatra's child.
Might he be?
If so, Mia's lied to friends for years and years.
And she also lied to Woody.
I don't like Barbara Sinatra. I'm friends with Nancy and I think it's known the two don't get along (and didn't when Frank Sinatra was alive).
But Barbara is his widow.
And I don't know why you would toss out that someone's dead husband might be the father of your adult child.
How the f**k does that become a topic of conversation for an interview?
How damn trashy are you now, Mia?
How desperate for attention are you?
As I noted, it was hard to watch Husbands and Wives because Woody had captured, in the character he wrote for her, every negative aspect people had ever noted of Mia. The manipulation, the home wrecking, all of it was there. And she was willing to play it.
Dylan thinks she can throw out an appeal, "I was wronged! Believe me!"
Why?
What have you done to be truthful?
You're supposed to be a victim of molestation.
Well, here's one thing a victim might do: Talk about abusers -- especially ones in their own family that just got convicted and sentenced.
Let me be really clear, I know John Farrow. Didn't think highly of him or lowly of him. But when he admitted (2013) to sexually molesting children, I felt intense rage towards him. I immediately called up people I knew whose children might have been around him to make sure they knew what had happened in case they needed to address any issues with their children or now adult children.
Dylan grew up around him.
If she was a victim of molestation at the hands of Woody, I don't understand why she wouldn't be expressing something with regards to her Uncle John right now. Why she wouldn't be offering, for example, an open letter about how the adult males in her life -- plural, not just Woody -- had betrayed her, one who sexually molested her and one who sexually molested other children (plural)?
At her age and with all the years that have passed, she surely should feel the need to look out for others. But she's still self-obsessed.
Like many who were molested as children, I have low self esteem.
I can advocate on behalf of anyone but you will never find me advocating on behalf of myself (unless Elaine's scolded me over the phone about it). .
Yet Dylan who doesn't speak of the alleged assault in terms one would expect for a victim and for a victim who has had years of therapy is perfectly comfortable making demands -- personal demands -- on others.
There is no set response to molestation.
But what the letter does is crystalize the problems I've always had with this story.
Again, I no longer believe it. I don't know what happened.
As such, it's not my job to shun Woody Allen or to think that he did what Dylan's accusing him of and what the New York City judicial system didn't find suspicion of -- forget guilt, it didn't even rise to the level of suspicion.
How sexually inappropriate is or was Mia?
Questioning your child's paternity in a magazine interview?
How desperate for publicity is she?
She's clearly not desperate for the truth. Nancy could provide DNA in an instant that would determine whether or not Ronan was Sinatra's son.
If you want to know the answer, that's what you do. (Tina Sinatra would also provide DNA. I would assume Frank Jr. would but I really don't know him.)
If, however, your stalled career needs publicity, might you instead just raise it in a magazine interview in a desperate attempt to get attention?
Not unlike when you cut your hair off because Frank wouldn't take you to the party -- a reality you lied about in What Falls Away?
These are harsh words, I don't deny it.
And without all this self-created drama and nonsense, I probably would be silent right now.
But the drama's not what made me write this.
Reading Dylan's self-righteous babble, I had to grab the Vanity Fair story (well written by Maureen Orth as usual) that I had ignored because I was humiliated for Mia.
And there was the known victim.
I don't know what happened to Dylan and honestly I find her presentation so off putting that I'm no longer interested.
Who I feel sorry for is who I felt sorry for in the beginning.
Soon-Yi.
Mia hasn't raised a family, she's raised a mob.
Soon-Yi's mistake was falling in love with Woody Allen.
Why couldn't they be together?
Because Mia and Woody were a couple?
Well, according to Mia in Vanity Fair, she was f**king Frank Sinatra throughout her relationship with Woody.
So Mia can cheat on him but he can't cheat on her?
Mia can lie to Woody that Ronan's his son when she thinks it might be Frank?
Soon-Yi was Mia's daughter. She wasn't Woody's daughter.
Mia pushed him to do things with her. Soon-Yi was a shy young woman.
Who does that?
The affair comes out -- I don't remember, I'm going to guess it was on or around January 13, 1992 -- when Mia finds photos of Soon-Yi.
And everyone turns on Soon-Yi.
Sorry to break it to you, that's not a family. That's a mob.
And Mia, head of the mob, wasn't acting like a concerned mother.
Mia slapped Soon-Yi, Mia told the others to tell Soon-Yi she loved her. After she hit her. After she announced she couldn't be around her daughter.
Instead of addressing the issue -- Mia who's so comfortable with professional analysis -- sends Soon-Yi off to a summer camp?
The whole family is attacking her, they have turned against her, her mother has slapped her and cursed her and then makes it clear that she doesn't want to be around her.
Mia claims now that she was f**king Sinatra during this, so why the hell does it matter if Soon-Yi is having an affair with Woody? It's not like Mia's playing exclusive.
But she's attacking her daughter and, worse, she's making public statements basically saying that Soon-Yi's brain doesn't function 'normally,' that she's challenged.
Be Soon-Yi for just one damn minute.
You're a young woman, inexperienced, who falls for a man who takes you seriously. Who among us hasn't been there? The man's involved with your mother. But he was also supposedly sleeping with Dianne Weist in the 80s and Mia looked the other way on that. And that alleged affair, for those who missed it, is why Dylan didn't include Dianne Weist in the names of people she's trying to shame into supporting her. Dylan knows that and the children who were teenagers at the time of the alleged affair knew it as well.
Mia didn't end it with Woody over the affair that she's sure happened.
Soon-Yi may have thought this would be a brief affair.
Mia has a hissy, to this day, that Soon-Yi was getting calls from Woody at the camp and that Soon-Yi left with Woody.
I'm sorry, what young woman wouldn't?
You're family has rejected you.
Mia handled Soon-Yi all wrong.
She attacked her physically, she then put up walls to prevent any reconciliation, she's then sent her off. Exiled.
What it really reminds me of was how Mia used similar manipulation tactics to isolate Dory Previn after cozying up to her but before stealing her husband Andre Previn.
Which is why I'm writing this.
"She does not exist."
That's what the 84-year-old Andre Previn tells Maureen Orth about Soon-Yi.
He adopted her in 1978 and discarded her in 1992.
Today he says "she does not exist."
It would appear to me that he was unfit to adopt.
Nothing Soon-Yi did with Woody Allen had a damn thing to do with Andre Previn.
He's supposed to be her father. Considering that he cheated on Dory with Mia and then cheated on Mia when he was on tour and Mia was home in England, it's really amazing that he wants to disown his daughter over an affair.
Who the hell is he to judge?
A child was entrusted to Mia and Andre. They legally adopted her. He adopted her and because she had an affair, he wants to disown her.
Soon-Yi may have had an affair that wasn't an affair that started under the best conditions. But she and Woody have been together longer than Mia was with Woody -- and longer than Mia was with Andre -- and longer than Mia was with Frank -- and way longer than Mia was with John Phillips -- the affair she lied to Frank about and part of the reason they broke up.
It's funny -- unless you grasp her personality -- how nothing's ever Mia's fault. It was because she wouldn't do The Detective with him that Frank divorced her.. (Really? And not because of the affair in NYC with ____ while shooting Rosemary's Baby?)
Considering the messed up life Mia openly lived -- I'm referring to the men in and out the door and I'm talking about men other than the names noted here, I'm talking about the cinematographer, for example -- and considering that she brought children into one scandal after another -- such as when she thought Woody was screwing her sister Tisa -- yeah, get the kids upset about their aunt -- and then later, when Woody wrote Hannah & Her Sisters, insisting this was proof that Tisa and Woody slept together?
Here's the deal, Mia. Your life where adopted children are real children, where you're sleeping with everyone but Anthony Perkins (but mainly there because the two of you hate each other the whole time you're doing Romantic Comedy on Broadway) and the children see this, where (like Joan Crawford) you try to make every boyfriend part of the family?
Live and let live, Mia.
Until you stop practicing what you've presented as core values.
If an adopted child is a real child, a true member of the family (I happen to believe they are), then anger over being replaced by a younger woman doesn't give Mia the right to cut out Soon-Yi.
She's not cancer, she's Mia's daughter.
If Mia ever loved her, Mia would either attempt to reach out for real (not, "Let me slap you, then isolate you, then exile you") or Mia would love her enough, even now, to stop the petty insults of her and let Soon-Yi live in a peace with the only family who accepts her. .
Soon-Yi has made a life, a family and a home with Woody Allen. They've been together over two decades now, they have two children.
Two adopted children.
Somewhere inside of Soon-Yi, she believes that adopted children are real children.
She learned that from Mia who could talk the talk. Mia just couldn't walk the talk.
What it looks like today is that the accusations that Mia adopted children to make herself look better are true. It looks like Mia continues to manipulate. She looks bitter and stupid because she can't shut up about Soon-Yi.
If she ever loved her daughter, you'd think she'd at least be glad Soon-Yi made a life for herself -- something she was forced to do when her family tossed her aside.
Why do things always end so badly with Mia?
Whether she's destroying an ashram in Rishikesh or a marriage, it's never her fault.
If my brother was a convicted child molester, I'm not really sure I would be accusing others. But if I were, you can be damn sure I'd be talking about my brother's actions as well.
And if my daughter was actually sexually molested, I don't think I'd be advocating for Roman Polanski.
Roman's a great director. When I knew him, I cut him slack like everyone else (because of Sharon Tate's violent murder). But when you give a young girl drugs and alcohol and then force yourself on her? There's not an excuse for that. As a victim of molestation, I will never, ever defend Roman on that.
But Mia does. She defends him and makes excuses.
Yet she wants us to believe that her daughter was molested. And she wants us to grab torches and go storming through the village or at least Central Park West.
It doesn't add up.
Mia turns 69 in a matter of days. At what point does she plan to take responsibility for her actions?
And how much more mud does she intend to drag her family name through?
At this point, they're making the Loud family look reticent.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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