This interview makes me want to go back to bed and hibernate for six months. New York Magazine did an exclusive interview with Soon-Yi Previn, Woody Allen’s wife. Soon-Yi was the adopted daughter of Andre Previn and Mia Farrow, and she was – she claims – in college when her affair with Woody began. Soon-Yi rarely makes public statements or gives interviews, so the piece is notable in that way – because this is the most in-depth piece I’ve ever read about who she really is and her side of the story. I also believe that just like we believe Dylan Farrow, we should believe Soon-Yi Previn. You can believe two people at once: you can believe that Woody Allen abused Dylan, and you can believe – as Soon-Yi Previn and Moses Farrow have claimed – that Mia emotionally and physically abused her children too. You can read the full Soon-Yi interview here. Here’s part of what Soon-Yi says about Mia’s abuse:
How Soon-Yi feels now: “I was never interested in writing a Mommie Dearest, getting even with Mia — none of that,” Soon-Yi tells me quietly but firmly. “But what’s happened to Woody is so upsetting, so unjust. [Mia] has taken advantage of the #MeToo movement and paraded Dylan as a victim. And a whole new generation is hearing about it when they shouldn’t.”
She disliked Mia from the start, when they first met at a Korean orphanage: “There was a big excitement and hoopla around her. And she came to me and she threw her arms around me to give me a big hug. I’m standing there rigidly, thinking, Who is this woman, and can she get her hands off of me? She didn’t ring true or sincere.”
Mia always told people that Soon-Yi was an idiot: “I do have a little learning disability,” Soon-Yi says almost bashfully. “I’ve never spoken about it, because Mia drummed it into me to be ashamed about it. It comes out in spelling, and I had to work much harder in school. But I was driven and interested, and I wish I’d had a tutor the way some kids do for homework… Mia used to write words on my arm, which was humiliating, so I’d always wear long-sleeved shirts. She would also tip me upside down, holding me by my feet, to get the blood to drain to my head. Because she thought — or she read it, God knows where she came up with the notion — that blood going to my head would make me smarter or something.”
Mia was into “arbitrarily showing her power”: slapping Soon-Yi across the face and spanking her with a hairbrush or calling her “stupid” and “moronic.” Sometimes, according to Soon-Yi, Farrow lost it completely, as when she threw a porcelain rabbit that her mother had given her at Soon-Yi (“She never really liked it,” Soon-Yi wryly observes. “That’s probably why she threw it at me”), smashing it to pieces and startling both of them. “I could see from the expression on her face that she felt she had gone too far. Because it could have really hurt me.”
Used as maids/assistants: Soon-Yi also says she and her adopted sisters were used as “domestics,” while Farrow kept busy rearranging the furniture, ordering from catalogues, working on her scrapbooks, and talking to her friends on the phone. “We did the grocery shopping, starting in third grade, for the entire family,” Soon-Yi says. “Lark and I wrote the list of everything that we needed for the house, we paid for it, we unpacked it. When I went to Ethical Culture, I had to pick up my siblings … In Connecticut, Lark cooked, and we cleaned the bathrooms, cleared the dishes, washed up, and did the sweeping. When Woody started coming up to Connecticut, I ironed Mia’s sheets.”
And on and on. The whole piece is an long, interesting read and I found myself somewhat invested in Soon-Yi’s personal story. I believe some of what she cites as abuse from Mia was just… Mia not being a great mom, and Mia being sort of screwed up as a person too. I also believe that Soon-Yi would never have ended up with Woody if Soon-Yi hadn’t been so starved for affection, love and acceptance by any older paternal/maternal figure. What’s said in this piece is the same thing everyone always says: we’ll truly never know. Soon-Yi has her truth, Dylan has hers, Ronan has his, Moses has his, and we’ll never know how all the kids seem to have such wildly different memories. I also feel like… Soon-Yi has a right to tell her story. Speaking of, Ronan released a statement.
Statement on New York magazine, which has done something shameful here: pic.twitter.com/xGeQP341OG
— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) September 17, 2018
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I want to hear from Isaiah and Quincy Farrow. If Mia treated her non white children badly, I want to hear their experiences of her.
That’s exactly what I was thinking, Ronan’s experience might not necessarily be the same as Soon Yi and to be so dismissive of her joust shows his privilege as a white male. This is so sad and does not take away from Woody has done but definitely this sounds like a real cramp situation to grow up and constantly be dragged back through.
Ronan was caught up with his own activities — he was very much on the gifted track — as a child and left the family at a very young age to go away to school. In a recent interview, Fresh Air, I think, he said he felt like many of his adopted siblings were much needier than him and he felt somewhat like it was his duty to clear out so that the other kids could get more attention. So I believe he probably didn’t know what was happening because he wasn’t around.
Moses’ experiences are very much like what Soon-Yi spoke of.
https://mosesfarrow.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-son-speaks-out-by-moses-farrow.html
Ronan is 17 years younger than Soon-yi. How could he possibly know her experiences growing up? She got with Woody when he was three maybe?
Also, parents and parenting CHANGE. There’s every reason to believe the younger children AND older children are telling their truth, even though the stories are drastically different. They did NOT grow up in the same household even though they’re siblings.
I think all of their children are telling their truth, but, because Woody is a sexual abuser, Mia seems to be getting a pass on being a physical and emotional abuser. The piece by Moses depicts a childhood of constant fear, bullying, and physical violence.
The age difference is huge and explains a lot about their different experiences. My husband was 15 years younger than his closest sibling and if you hear them talk you’d think they had totally different parents. I think for Ronan to dismiss her and Moses shows a large bias, especially since he’s a journalist. Kind of makes me wonder what Ronan might be missing on his journalistic front.
I’m old enough to remember stories about Mia well before the allegations against Woody came out. She was considered very odd and rather inauthentic, like she played roles in real life. No one really knew what to think of her. One minute very worldly, another meek as a mouse. That’s how I remember it anyway.
@Mindrew, Moses Farrow sold out because his father offered to cover him financially and is likely going to include him in his will. I don’t deny that their upbringing with Mia Farrow was terrible, but Moses went out of his way to dismiss Dylan Farrow’s allegations of sexual abuse and basically called her a liar for a paycheck. I wouldn’t trust him to be honest about anything.
@A says did you read the link from @Mindrew with Moses blog. It’s the post Ronan argued against. His writing does not blame Dylan at all. It blames Mia. Now maybe he did it for money, not sure why he needed money he is a therapist, but where is your link about Moses saying awful things about Dylan. I haven’t heard him say those things. I have heard him say bad things against Mia though.
One thing really weird about Mia Farrow’s family is her brother is now in jail in Maryland for sexual abuse of two children, grown men now. These assaults were not that far from when Dylan’s accusations came out, either 3-10years depending on when it started. My guess is he didn’t just start in his 50’s either. Apparently, Mia’s kids were allowed alone with him.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Mia-Farrows-Brother-to-Be-Sentenced-for-Sex-Abuse-229522321.html
While I believe wholeheartedly that Dylan was abused by Allen, so was Soon-Yi. He groomed her early on to accept him as her “savior”, as “her way out” of whatever she felt her home situation was. To me, it’s a form of “Stockholm Syndrome” with Soon-Yi. She was young when he started this, wasn’t she around 7 when adopted by Previn and Farrow, and then mid teens when Farrow started with Allen, and about 17 when the nude pics Allen took of Soon-Yi were discovered on the mantle, “accidentally on purpose”, for Farrow to find. Grooming, plain and simple… and using, on both sides (Soon-Yi and Allen): one to hurt a partner, one to hurt a parent and get out of the home to one person who “claims to love and will protect her”.
Woody and Mia started a relationship around 1980,when Soon-Yi was either eight or ten years old. He’s known her since she was a child.
Jan, Soon-Yi was 20-21 years old when the photos were taken, not 17. In the same article she mentions starting school and being several years older than her classmates so her 11th grade age was not the same as every other 11th grader.
I still think Woody groomed her. When she talked about how she must have been so intetresting for Woody to kiss her it was very telling. She still thinks she was special and unique for a 50 year old man to be intetrested in a 20 year old woman. That’s how I used to think as a teen when older men showed attention but looking back it was so predatory and had nothing to do with me being interesting, just a target.
To me, she is so damaged and brainwashed. That pig married her simply because he got busted taking the nudes. Probably didn’t realize the story would be worldwide. He was a father figure to her, Mia’s boyfriend. I hate this story, it sickens me. I feel sorry for her, sorry she hates the women who adopted her and loves the man who took nudes of her for mom to enjoy. I hate Woody Allen.
Well said, @jan90067
My mom and stepdad got together when I was 7. I don’t particularly consider him a father figure but I do consider him a very good friend of my mom’s that has been around for a long time.
I WOULD NOT POSE NUDE OR KISS ANY OF MY MOM’S GOOD FRIENDS. It’s not appropriate. Even if my mom wasn’t dating this person, it’s not ok.
They have spoken up indeed, in a statement of their own – all of them – with the exception of Moses and Soon-Yi. Their statement of family support was gratefully appreciated by Dylan Farrow and is easily found online. It’s direct, to the point and speaks eloquently for itself. I read it myself this morning.
Moses has spoken up:
https://mosesfarrow.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-son-speaks-out-by-moses-farrow.html?m=1
One of Woody & Soon-Yi’s daughters shared this on her facebook page.
@Olive, I remember this – it was written in May. The joint family statement supporting Mia and Dylan Farrow, which refutes anything that Moses and Soon-Yi have said about the Farrow household, was made yesterday. Just type in Dylan Farrow’s name to Google it.
Quincy and Mia are still close.
Can we also note that this piece was written by someone is is friends with soon-yi and an admitted fangirl of woody?
The magazine writing is biased.
@Caity – And Ronan Farrow’s wasn’t?
Ronan Farrow wrote a letter, not an article, about Woody Allen.
@Bythesea As a result of Ronan Farrow’s letter in conjunction with Dylan Farrow’s claims, he may never work again. If there is another side to the story – as already microscopically detailed by Moses Farrow – it should be heard. Soon Yi’s testimony is just as valuable as that of the others.
Woody will never work again because he is a pedophile. I think Moses and Soon-Yi’s stories raise the question of whether or not Mia should ever work again. I believe all of these stories and will not see anything either does because I don’t want them to get my money.
Note Ronan never wrote about his own personal experience. All those exposes were about other people (CBS, Weinstein etc). There is no conflict there. He is allowed to have an opinion about his own family.
THat old dude is still a pervert and his movies are gross. The daughter/wife is brainwashed. She can talk about her own experience without dumping on Dylan (Ex: she stated she wanted the story buried and it shouldn’t be exposed again because of me too? WTF).
So, believe all women, except for the ones whose narrative doesn’t fit our previously held beliefs?
It doesn’t matter if the article is written by someone who is friends with them if he accurately quoted and reported what Soon-Yi had to say.
It actually does matter because it gives the article a patina of objectivity that it doesn’t deserve. When Ronan wrote his opinion piece, there wasn’t any such pretense.
That being said, I have no problem believing that Mia was abusive towards Soon-Yi just as I have no problem believing Woody groomed Soon-Yi and just as I have no problem believing that Woody abused Dylan.
For all that Soon-Yi wants to be believed, she is doing the same thing that all of Allen’s supporters do – denying Dylan the right to tell her own story. She once again positions Dylan as a pawn. Dylan is now an adult and has repeatedly described her abuse. It’s gross that Soon-Yi denies it.
I believe Soon-Yi when she shares her experience. I believe her when she says that Mia was abusive.
But I also know that this article was written by a Allen fangirl, and is therefore not objective. Additionally, I know that Woody began a relationship with his teenage stepdaughter, so I know he is a predator. I believe that Mia treated her badly, but I also believe that she has been groomed by Woody; a creepy predator who has traded on his privilige as a white man for far too long.
I very much believe this interview has been orchestrated by Woody as a result of his projects being abandoned and him struggling to secure financing etc. Soon-Yi and Dylan are both victims of both parents.
Yep Clare you nailed it. Soon Yi can talk about her experiences but what she’s doing is trotting it out and trying to cancel Dylan’s. That creepy pervert has enough money for several lifetimes. He can keep his vision and art at home.
@Alissa –
Yes! She has to accept being a victim whether she likes it or not. She has no right to deprive other victims of her own victimhood. At the very least she should admit humbly that she has been brainwashed into staying with this monster for the past 25 years.
(Yes, dear anyone who might be wondering whether this is sarcasm: it is.
And the author – yours truly – is someone who knows this subject well, having been pushed – again and again – to “admit” I was a victim.)
The article raises some concerns. Thaddeus, another adopted child, may have committed suicide in 2016. Another, Lark died of AIDS, living in poverty, and Soon Yi’s brother, Moses, backs up her statements. This may be a case where none of the adults involved are innocent 🙁
I am curious as to why Lark was living in poverty when her mother is rich and could have assisted her?
@Kacy Poor Lark’s sorry history is detailed in Moses’ testimony. http://mosesfarrow.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-son-speaks-out-by-moses-farrow.html?m=1
And Tam did commit suicide. So three of her 10 (!) children died early, which is tragic.
you cannot possibly be saying that a parent is to blame for suicide. How awful to say that. How cold and disheartening.
“She even shut my brother Thaddeus, paraplegic from polio, in an outdoor shed overnight as punishment for a minor transgression.”
That kind of childhood would definitely put someone at higher risk of suicide. To act like childhood does not have an impact on suicide is naive.
Re: Tam
The details of Tam’s overdose and the fight with Mia that precipitated it were relayed directly to me by my brother Thaddeus, a first-hand witness. Tragically, he is no longer able to confirm this account. Just two years ago, Thaddeus also committed suicide by shooting himself in his car, less than 10 minutes from my mother’s house.
I agree, it’s quite easy to believe both stories. Children can easily have different experiences growing up in the same home, especially where there is an age gap (due respect to Ronan but he was very very young when this all went down. He can speak his truth, but he cannot speak to the experiences of either of his sisters).
Honestly I’m done with any and all stories about this family. There’s no end and no closure and nothing more to be done about it. There are no legal charges and no path to them (on either side). Opinion will remain somewhat divided. I’d rather refocus on rooting out those still in power. This all seems pointless.
“Honestly I’m done with any and all stories about this family. There’s no end and no closure and nothing more to be done about it.”
I thoroughly agree with you.
This family has an avalanche of messiness from every angle – coupled with abuse from both parents.
What’s even scarier, is that I’m sure there is worse stuff not disclosed.
“Children can easily have different experiences growing up in the same home”: yes to that.
I am now involved with a terrible case of negligence and abuse by a mum who only targets the older sister. The siblings are oblivious to what is happening because children do not react in the same way as adults. Moreover, a mother is so important, and a grown-up, that the children do not question her, even the abused one, for a very long time.
Yes. Exactly. This is an ugly situation.
Have to agree. Soon-yi’s story sounds true, as does Dylan’s story. One doesn’t cancel out the other.
My dad’s father targeted my dad and physically abused him. His younger sisters have happy memories of their dad, while my dad does not remember him well.
If you ask my mom about her mother she will tell you nothing but stories of abuse, yet her older sister talks about what a saint she was and how she worked hard to give them everything. They were both in the same house 5 years apart. I think in a way they are both right based on their experiences and personalities ( my mom is very sensitive my aunt is self absorbed and oblivious to others.)
I do not, and never have, believed in Woody Allen’s alleged guilt. He may not be a pleasant man. He may be twitchy, difficult, insensitive and neurotic. That much has been revealed through his film career from Take the Money and Run to Manhattan to Hannah and her Sisters. But there is *no* conclusive proof that the allegations are any more than that. Two flat contradictions (Moses, Soon Yi; and one secondhand claim of ill treatment by the late Lark Farrow) of the Farrow narrative, along with in depth investigations, now exist. Given Mia Farrow’s behaviour post the breakup – due to the affair with her stepdaughter, not his (and nor had they ever lived under the same roof) leads me to side with Allen. Because for justice to be done, for Me Too to have power and for its victims to be respected, we cannot allow the court of public opinion to be the final arbiter. If his guilt cannot be substantiated in law on numerous occasions, look to another source.
The facts have been in the public record for decades. I really recommend reading this: https://www.scribd.com/document/205403621/Allen-v-Farrow-Custody-Ruling-June-7-1993#from_embed
That said, I do agree that different children in the same family can have very different experiences. We can respect each one. But that doesn’t mean WA isn’t culpable in Dylan’s case.
It doesn’t change the fact that she was groomed for sex by WA, who was a parental figure. If she was abused by her mother it makes WA’s behaviour even worse due to her vulnerability. Child sexual predators know how to hone in on those with no one to turn to…
The allegations are way older than #MeToo.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts
You will never have the proof you need.
You will only ever have the story of Dylan. Either you choose to believe her story or you don’t.
Looking for some solid evidence to satisfy yourself in believing a victim is shameful.
For many cases of abuse and sexual assault you only ever have the victims satement. Looking for some dramatic evidence in order to believe the victim is exactly why movements like #metoo are so important.
Thank you for saying this. I was sexually assaulted at the age of five. All the evidence I have are the memories of it. Which were made 26 years ago and exist as pictures and gifs in my brain. They have greatly affected my life and my development. I almost wish I had never remembered it. The #metoo movement gave me the space to talk about this to my family and even my doctor and therapist for the first time ever. I have been sexually assaulted many times in my life and yet again just this last Saturday by a man whom identified himself as gay no less and kept using that as a reason as to why it was okay that he was trying to rape me. I’m still processing what happened and am so confused. My memory and the subsequent trauma of what happened to me are the only “evidence” of my assaults. It baffles me that anyone would expect more evidence than that.
@Reese (Don’t know why my previous comment wasn’t posted, but here goes again) I’ve been sexually abused, assaulted, myself. I’m certainly not looking for “any” evidence to vindicate Allen; why would I? Instead, I’m seeking evidence that substantiates Dylan’s claims independent of Mia Farrow and sans the possibility of coaching. Is there really a need to respond so emotively and engage in character assassination??
My comments are not personal, they are a response to yours.
I’m certainly not going to come at somebody and if you felt that way then I’ll apologise to you bc I’m not about attacking people, just statements that can be troubling. I ask you to read some of what you wrote again.
Especially
“But there is *no* conclusive proof that the allegations are any more than that. Two flat contradictions”
If you weren’t saying you needed proof, more than Dylan’s story, and the fact that her other siblings didn’t see the sexual abuse so it contradicts Dylan’s claims then I guess I was wrong in what you are trying to say here?
“If his guilt cannot be substantiated in law on numerous occasions, look to another source.”
There can still be a victim, even if the perpetrator hasn’t been found guilty or even charged. There is another source, it’s Dylan’s story.
“Instead, I’m seeking evidence that substantiates Dylan’s claims independent of Mia Farrow and sans the possibility of coaching”
You actually have that. You have Dylan’s story. As I said you will never get the proof you need. Either you believe that Dylan, as a grown women, continues to defend herself against claims that she wasn’t coached by her mother tells the story of her abuse at the hands of her father. You either believe her or you don’t. It’s really that simple.
@greenqueen I am so sorry this has happened to you. Do you have support for what happened on Saturday? Are you safe?
How can Moses or Soon Yi possible provide a contradiction of the sexual abuse? Dylan has never claimed that either of them were there when it happened. All that Moses or Soon Yi can say is that they don’t believe it and that he didn’t abuse them. You or I could say that we don’t believe it because we didn’t see him do it and he didn’t abuse us either, and we would be just as credible as to whether he sexually abused Dylan.
Moses answers this in the essay referenced above.
I will admit that I really don’t know what to believe when it comes to the allegations of abuse from Dylan. I never liked Woody Allen, I always found him repulsive even before I heard of the allegations of abuse, and I make a conscious intentional decision to believe victims. And even with those biases, I am conflicted about these specific allegations. I don’t believe that Dylan is lying, I fully believe she’s telling her truth, but I can understand why people can believe that the allegations were made up by Mia Farrow and that maybe Dylan was coached into saying these things by a manipulative abusive mother. And I hate myself a little for being so conflicted. Not all cases are black and white, and this one was a lot of grey for me.
However, even if Mia Farrow came out today and admitted she had made the whole thing up as an act of revenge, I would still believe that Woody Allen is abusive and gross, and that’s undeniable because he’s married to his abuse victim. Soon-Yi clearly doesn’t see herself as a victim of his, and I don’t like dismissing her either, but she was an incredibly vulnerable, abused, young woman and he was a much older, richer, powerful man who no matter how he twists it was in a position of authority over her and was treated as a relative, if not her father. If the allegations she makes against Mia are true, then that makes her relationship with Woody even more disturbing and abusive, not less so. She was completely alone, with nobody to turn to after a lifetime of neglect and abuse. By having an affair with her, he isolated her from her only support network and made her completely dependent on him, the way he speaks of her is disturbing. She needed help, protection, counseling, not for her much much older step father to begin a sexual relationship with her. Soon-Yi is very much a victim.
Two “flat contradictions” from people who weren’t in the room and weren’t the victims, especially from one who was groomed by the abuser, are meaningless.
You presume Dylan is lying. Because that’s your only option here, if you say you don’t believe he’s guilty.
Soon-yi is not Mia’s stepdaughter. She is Mia’s daughter, just as my adopted daughter is my daughter. Please.
ah the level of mental gymnastics we will perform to absolve white men of their guilt. It’s amazing.
how do people who weren’t “alleged” victims and weren’t there at the time and place of “alleged” molestation know if Dylan was or wasn’t molested?
Sorry, has Dylan changed her name to Moses? To Soon Yi? THEN HOW COULD THEY KNOW?
Ugh, please.
Bottom line: keep your mitts off your long-time girlfriend’s teenage daughter. End of story.
Thank you.
There ya go. No matter what else is or is not true, Allen is a sexual predator and his victim is excusing it. Not an unusual thing.
Yes. He could’ve helped the kid but he preyed on the situation instead.
Not to mention, he supposedly had a role in parenting the other kids. Where was he when Mia was supposedly being abusive to them? Just off in his own little fantasy cinematic world?
Friendly reminder: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts
I really recommend reading this, it will take 2 minutes of your time. I am very interested if your stance is going to change after reading that.
I think Soon Yi was young and easy to manipulate, I think Woody has raised her shaped her and her mind according his way 9f life, his needs. So I don’t know how to take all of this, the simple fact for her even now there is nothing wrong in her relationship with Woody speaks volumes to me.
Interesting that all of this is coming when Allen`s latest project is on indefinite hold…Is not that Soon Yi is telling likes or the truth, is that she has been manipulated by everyone, and now by her husband.
It was reported that he can no longer get the financing he needs for his films so the timing is indeed interesting, guess this is their way of fighting back but it won’t help in my opinion, especially in today’s climate of #metoo and people taking a stand against vile behavior.
@Elena I figured Soon-Yi did the interview now that her youngest child is 18 and just started her freshman year of college.
I think she was abused by both her abuse by mia made her vunverbale for being groo ed by wood
Yes, Soon Yi has a right to tell her story. But we also have a right to note that the story was filtered through an admittedly Allen fan.
Also, I dislike that she claims Dylan is being paraded as a victim, as if Dylan has no agency. Dylan is now a grown woman and has told her story – consistently – over and over. This is not Mia Farrow telling the story.
I had trouble reading after the comment “And a whole new generation is hearing about it when they shouldn’t.” I just literally cancelled Soon-Yi.
Girl was groomed by Woody and is brainwashed. Journalist is a Woody stan. Too much is wrong in this piece for me.
I agree but I do feel sorry for Soon-Yi. She grew up on the streets of Seoul eating out of trash cans because her drug-addled prostitute birth mother couldn’t take care of her. I don’t even want to think about what could happen to a child in such a position. To make matters worse she gets adopted but the abuse continues: verbal abuse from her adoptive mother and grooming by an important father figure. Yes, she’s an adult and she’s responsible for her decisions now but when a child has been abused and neglected from the start I can’t help but feel sorry for them because they never really had a chance.
@medusa, soon yi literally says in this piece that the part about her mom being a prostitute was not true.
Yep that statement really goes to the heart of the issue. They are trying to contain that scandal. Sorry he will never get a pass from me and many others.
Also in order to forget this incident, he would count on younger audiences. Sorry no one wants to watch movies about an old man’s obsessions over a teen. Apparently that’s the common thread with most of his movies?
It’s interesting that she says Dylan has been paraded around, while she herself is in a sense being paraded around by Woody and his fangirl.
Clearly a move from Woody to claw back some of the good will to get his career back on track – too bad she’s being used like this.
Their relationship is so creepy. Probably Allen is scared about #metoo.
Oh boy.
I kinda believe her?? I also agree with Kaiser’s statement that she likely would not have ended up with Woody if she hadn’t wanted to get out of that ducked up household. I think that she can be right about Mia but that doesn’t change the fact that Woody was an inappropriate predator.
Also, Ronan is her biological son. And white. That could have informed how he was treated by their mother as opposed to some of his adopted siblings of color.
I’m with you. I’m not writing this off as fiction – I’m taking it seriously. But I’m also not doubting that Woody is a predator. Look – if Soon Yi was abused the way she says she was, I don’t blame her for feeling at least somewhat bitter over the Dylan stuff. If she was being treated so horribly, and her way out was through Woody – I get why she’s siding with the person who got her out. I can also imagine that she looks at her treatment compared to Dylan’s and can’t fully grasp how it’s possible that the person who ‘saved’ her would do something like that to another child, especially when she saw Dylan being treated completely differently by Mia.
It’s easy to say “well, she was groomed to say this, she just hates Mia” but the same kind of grooming could be assumed on the other side – it’s much easier to convince someone of something untrue than it is to correct that. We don’t know what happened. But I’m also not above thinking that both stories have a lot of truth to them.
Erinn – I agree with you. I think both Mia and Woody are guilty of abusing soon-Yi and their other children, in different ways.
But what I find particularly curious (and sad) is that Soon-Yi is now being brought out as Woody’s defender/Mia’s victim when Woody’s career prospects are at an all time low, in an article written by a Woody fan-girl, no less.
I feel like Woody is using her to discredit some of the claims against him, and that is gross and cynical. As if Woody hasn’t done enough damage to his children/step-children over the years.
I also find the gymnastics around him not being her father really disturbing. She was the daughter of his sexual partner, and sister to his children. If him engaging in a sexual relationship isn’t disturbing…
Erinn, I was thinking the same thing and as usual, you explained it so perfectly!
I think Mia was at least emotionally abusive and manipulative parent.
I also, personally, have no doubt that Allen is predator and that he abused Dylan and at least groomed Soon-Yi. At least. I also agree with Medusa, I feel sorry for Soon Yi.
Mia is a perfect partner for an abuser. Lots of vulnerable, neglected children and flighty and self-involved mother. perfect combination for him.
Erinn- I agree as well. Both Woody and Mia could have been abusive. I’m not sure if my earlier comment didn’t post (sorry for the double post if not!), but Jezebel’s account of some of the children’s upbringing can be traced to early 1990s articles that came out when Woody’s abuse of Dylan first made headlines.
In particular, Lark who died in poverty, struggled with drugs, was caught for financial fraud and shoplifting in her teen years had a both a former nanny (Thompson) and Woody’s assistant (Martin) testify that she “was treated like a ‘scullery maid’ in the Farrow household and that she would be the most likely of the children to write a Mommie Dearest type of memoir.”
1992 Vanity Fair’s positive write-up of Mia also included one of her sources recounting that Woody told Mia that his affair with Soon-Yi was “a tepid little affair that wouldn’t have lasted more than a few weeks anyway [and it was] probably good for Soon-Yi’s self-esteem.” Mia supposedly heard this terrible comment from a man she considered to be a predator, but her response was to tell this predator to take her daughter away and then she cut off her daughter’s financial support.
https://jezebel.com/all-mias-children-the-tangled-branches-of-the-farrow-1516793360
“Mia is a perfect partner for an abuser. Lots of vulnerable, neglected children and flighty and self-involved mother.”
@geekychick:
Agreed except I would go further and say she was and is an out and out malignant narcissist. I’m sorry that she too had a terrible childhood (meaning Mia Farrow). That doesn’t excuse her attitude and behavior.
I agree with many here, these now adult children were abused by both parents in different ways.
This. All of these experiences and narratives are not mutually exclusive. Siblings can have profoundly different experiences and memories growing up in the same home even when they all bio/close in age/not diverse. The truth of an individual experience does not invalidate the others. And regardless of how Mia behaved, Woody is a predator.
I have no problem believing her. All the adults involved are sick. Woody most definitely used some predator-like behaviours and Mia already had more than sketchy relationships before she was with WA (wasn’t she underage when she started a relationship with Sinatra? She got pregnant with Prévin who was her friend’s husband while she was living at the couple’s house, she claimed to have been sleeping with Sinatra while with WA and that Ronan might be Frank’s… WTH?! How was she even allowed to adopt?). It’s really not difficult for me to believe that they completely messed up their kids with all their weird games to get back at one another (ultimately, I feel that this is more important to both of them than the kids’ wellbeing).
I really don’t know what exactly happened, I’m not even sure that anyone involved actually does at this point. All I’m sure about is that those kids suffered from the hands of adults they should have been able to trust and were supposed to protect and take care of them.
Classic textbook grooming. And as I have said before, the fact that the little horrible man has adopted two girls is beyond sad and awful.
“the fact that the little horrible man has adopted two girls is beyond sad and awful.”
See this is yet another wrinkle that makes this story impossible to resolve: Yes they adopted two little girls and I’ve always had the sense people expected that something would come out that would finally take him down. Well…those girls are both now in college, active on facebook, and have defended him as a wonderful father. So whatever people thought was coming? It isn’t. Yes I know that doesn’t mean that can’t change, but for now it is what it is. So again, no resolution and zero chance of any closure. My new strategy? Ignore everything about this family. Too messy and too sad.
Even if they were not abused part of my outrage is just the fact that he was able to adopt. He dumped his two adoptive children with Mia, which means they were twice abandoned.
And given what we went through to adopt our second child, I can’t believe that Spence Chapin allowed him to adopt those girls. He clearly got a pass where others would not.
Just because they are in college and nothing has come out does not mean nothing happened. It’s painful and horrific to come out against your parents and some people do not have the support.
For it to be blasted in the media – I would be petrified.
If anything happened to those girls I pray they have the strength to tell thier story some day.
So you think because Allen is a “good father” he can’t be a predator? You do realize serial killers have families, right?
He has money, power, and connections. Without a legal record behind him, it would be plenty easy to find an adoption center willing to give them children. Allegations do not hold the same weight. Don’t assume abusers can’t be canny about who they choose to violate.
Way to miss my point @AMiller. Of course bad people have families. My point is that for years I saw people talk about these girls like something clearly would have happened to them and it was only a matter of time. Only that’s not the information (at least from their word and perspective). No that doesn’t mean he’s not an abuser, but it does further muddy the narrative. We believe women? OK in that case we believe all his daughters and his wife. Possible…and very complicated. And absolutely blows apart the possibility of any resolution or public consensus on all this. So what now? Nothing, that’s what. This will never end.
I’ve read each piece by all parties and the kids each seem to be earnest of their accounting. Each person has their own perception which informs their reality and I tread with caution to ever dismiss someone’s account of events.
Frankly, people aren’t all bad or all good. Most of us are messy, fallible, human, flawed. I can see this regarding both Mia and Woody. It was an unconventional family with so many different, seemingly eccentric personalities. The combination could lead to so much discourse without proper awareness.
Personally, I don’t find Soon-Yi a victim. That’s not to say Dylan was not a victim per se, but I don’t sense it with Soon-Yi. I think they fit each other well and carved out a life they are comfortable with which is more than I can say for people who met under less questionable and messed up circumstances. To each their own.
But, I definitely agree with Kaiser in that both adults can be culpable and both Dylan and Moses can be speaking their truth. Its not mutually exclusive, each persons experience.
By all means, I’m not a fan whatsoever of how the affair between Woody and Soon-Yi began. As Mia, I would be shell shocked. But no one should ever hold on to that sort of anger and think it won’t affect and inform their every day life. It’s poison.
I don’t find that odd at all: he’s smart enough to never, ever touch them. He must be aware how damning any kind of allegation would be-there wouldn’t be an excuse he could find for the public.
What Mia4s said.
I find it weird that Ronan dismisses the testimony of his sister like this. If he has the right to talk, if Dylan has te right to talk, so does Soon-Yi. I know he is an ally, but I don’t get good vibes from him.
Neither from Soon-Yi by the way. I just think this is an incredibly screwed up family and that Soon-Yi saw love in Woody Allen’s ways as opposed to her horrible mum.
This is a sad story all around, where there is a real possibility of a child/teen having been in a situation of being better off with a pedophile than her adoptive mother. BERKKK>
I don’t get good vibes, either. I also just find him incredibly creepy looking and arrogant, which doesn’t help. But the fact that he’s so dismissive of Soon Yi is strange. He also gets so much credit as an ally – but at the same time he seems unable to get over the bias that Dylan and Soon Yi can both be victims and that his experience with his mother isn’t the same as hers.
We also have Moses Farrow saying that Mia got physical with him. She pushed, slapped, shouted – he said if you went against her wishes there were big repercussions. So that’s at least two adoptive children that have claimed Mia abused them.
I read the link posted above to Moses’ blog. His story sounds so true – a detailed and unemotional statement of facts. I don’t know who to believe in all of these conflicting stories (are all of them true? Some of them? None of them?), but, based only on that one post, Moses is the one who comes across as most compassionate and reflective. I find the rest of that family (woody, Mia, soon-yi, Ronan, and Dylan) disturbingly creepy. Ultimately I don’t think it really matters what I think about any of them, and I don’t think I’m ever going to find out the whole truth, so I think I will just stop reading about them as they are painfully dysfunctional.
I can’t fault Ronan fFarrow for being subjective when it comes to his family. I can’t even fault him for not taking himself out of the converasation or stating, every time, that his perspective is biased. In situations where your family situation becomes entangled with your profession, it’s easy to lose compass and not even see it.
I’m not his fan, but I can’t judge him for that. It proves he’s human (he always seems like a semi-bot to me).
Are you kidding? Ronan Farrow is a freaking genius. Literally. He’s a genius. Graduated college at 15 yrs old. Got a law degree from Yale. Was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Worked in public service and government at the highest levels and then goes on to be a Pultizer Prize winning journalist. For you to dismiss him because you think he’s “creepy looking”?! Pretty sure he has limited control over how he looks just like any of us.
You may not like how he looks, but he is an exceptional mind. I for one am impressed and grateful that he routed out and exposed predators in high places. His work is of the highest caliber; if he’s arrogant (which I don’t find him to be at all), frankly he’s earned it.
Oh and he’s all of 30 yrs old btw.
I tried to read this last night and couldn’t finish, it was sordid and even if you believe what Soon-Yi has to say about Mia, which probably is all true, the fact that the interviewer is has a long friendship and admiration for Woody makes this is spin job in my opinion. More than that, the story of how Woody and Soon-Yi got together smacks of Woody taking advantage of this child’s issues for his next relationship. Woody may not have women coming out of the woodwork as some of the others but he is not a good guy. He probably manages his issues by telling his story over and over again in public via his movies. This is just sad all around. I am good with this family after this. And I will continue not supporting anything Woody Allen does. If I was an actress who worked with him, after seeing this story I would feel icky and dirty just by association.
Good analysis. There are SO many moving parts in all of this that it is almost impossible to know what happened. But, just because Mia may have been an abusive mother doesn’t make Woody a good guy. As you say, if she was abused, she would have been even easier to take advantage of.
I do believe her interpretation of her upbringing, but it is all so tricky, because how much has been filtered through Woody’ s view? And yes, Soon-Yi might be of normal intelligence, but Woody is pretty much a genius…it you couple that with the age difference, there is no way it would be difficult for him to warp her world view if he wanted to.
My mother convinced me that my father was a monster after the divorce – it took me 10 years of therapy to realise that it was all lies. So woody could easily have done the same to Soon-Yi.
@Winnie For the sake of the argument: it was claimed that Mia convinced Dylan she was abused. We’ll never know and the story seems to go both ways. Especially in Soon Yi and Dylan’s case where the whole world seems to be involved in this story. Double the trauma.
Except for we do know. We know that Allen married his daughter. There is your proof he is a predator. Case closed.
@AMiller Except he didn’t. As Soon-Yi herself says, she had a father – Andre Previn.
We can feel that it was creepy, inappropriate, that there’s something wrong with him for pursuing his girlfriend’s daughter, etc, but she was not his daughter and he was not a father to her. They didn’t even live together.
She was the CHILD of his SEXUAL PARTNER.
She was a SISTER to HIS children.
Whether he was legally or biologically her parent is so not the point. That he groomed her and engaged in a sexual relationship with his children’s sister is just vile and disturbing.
Please don’t fall for the ‘I wasn’t her father’ semantics.
It doesn’t matter if they didn’t live together if he had contact with her as a minor. He had power and influence over her as a young person. And even removing that context, Woody would have known that she was an abuse victim at Mia’s hands. He would have known how young and vulnerable she was, and he would have known he could exploit that. There are thousands of women he could have gone after – why the abused, emotionally vulnerable adopted daughter of his partner?
You need to stop making this arguments trying to justify this man’s shitty behavior. I know you don’t mean for it to come across that way, but that’s how it reads in the broad scale of things. This infantilization of male choices while simultaneously overstating woman’s positions of power and responsibility is repulsive to me, particularly when aimed at non-white women who have been historically brutalized and dehumanized under white colonialism. This kind of shit is how we wind up with courts getting away with arguments regarding the ability of fourteen year old girls and their ability to consent to teachers assaulting them. It’s an abuse of power, period. All of the red flags are there for us to see. It’s so dangerous to ignore them.
Agree. I couldn’t finish either. I don’t know what happened between WA and Dylan, but I think WA is a bad guy for preying on his stepdaughter (the whole, “he never actually *lived* with us, so we didn’t see him as a father!” is just an outrageously stupid argument), and I cannot see him as anything other than a predator. His films have always fetishized young girls, and so it isn’t so hard to make the leap into abuse. I tend to believe Dylan and Ronan about Mia, but I can also see that Soon-Yi has the right to tell her story. That said, don’t expect me to buy into the “he wasn’t REALLY a father to me!” line of BS. Soon-Yi’s story sounds well-rehearsed, with Woody chiming in to help her when she forgets a key detail he wanted her to mention. The writer made him seem small and frail in order to make us feel sympathy for him: it didn’t work.
I need a shower after reading half of it.
I had my 3rd step father at the age of 20 and I’m trying to imagine a world where it would be okay for me to then go and marry him after they later divorced because I never lived under the same roof as him and my mother and I can’t because you don’t have a sexual relationship with a mother and then her daughter. Full stop.
Maybe my thinking is dated but that stuff just sounds like chores to me. I don’t know this family’s ins and outs but where’s her dad and why didn’t he kick Woody’s ass?
Apart from throwing stuff, it sounds like chores to me too. Perhaps it was worse than that, perhaps not. But she will view everything through the perspective Woody wants her to. She’s been groomed since childhood to view him as her knight in shining armour.
I was also thinking these just sounded like regular chores. My sister and I, just like our friends, did grocery shopping, dishes, cleaned bathrooms, swept, and never thought we were being used as maids or assistants
Me, too. My siblings and I did all that stuff. *shrug* My brother didn’t. I was also deeply reviled by my dad for some reason, so my mom couldn’t be affectionate with me, so that has colored my experiences and recollection of my childhood. My three other siblings thought their childhood was great. Different kids can have different experiences within the same household.
That being said, he still pursued (Soon-Yi’s own words) his former partner’s child. That is at best inappropriate. And while they claim they started dating when she turned 21, that doesn’t change the fact that Mia found pornographic pictures of Soon-Yi that were taken when she was underage. He’s a vile, gross man.
If only certain children were expected to carry responsibilities in contrast to others, yes, that is abusive. A common thread among abusers is that they single out certain kids for the abuse and treat the others decently – if not purposefully engage them in the abuse of the other child.
And who sends EIGHT YEAR OLDS to do all of the shopping for the household? There’s a difference between them helping with groceries and putting them away and being expected to make a list of everything needed, go by themselves, and come back with the groceries. Then you had the older kid cooking. I’m sorry – there’s a difference between doing chores, and taking over certain tasks than having your children shop and cook for everyone when you have 14 kids.
It’s the racial implications that make this sadly realistic to me. I have heard way too many stories of rich white families adopting non-white/foreign children and treating them like inferiors.
@Veronica S & @Erinn. I am dealing with a case like this so yes. It’s sounds like abuse to me. It seems there was difference of treatment and negligence of some of the kids.
But there is a great difference if all the children had to do the chores pr just some. If it’s just some, and those were non-white siblings..it’s a completely different dynamic and story.
I deffinetely think there was some emotinal abuse at play, but as I stated, that doesn’t negate the fact that Allen groomed her.
i have mixed feeling about dylan’s asserction, BUT
my mum. who is a terribly present person , that always aloud me have people home, who sent me best schools- places- trips ever, even when she couldn’t really afford it, and who is a smart and well educated person, and always hugged me and whatnot, ALWAYS had a bad temper. how bad? bad. she never hit me but she would speak her mind if i gained a pound, or my hair looked like sheet.Plus she never had patience. she would go like: you do that and that’s it. so, reading soon y story, i can see a lot of what my mum would do. of course not holding me backwards, but she would loose her patient too if it took me time to do homework or wouldn’t get something right on the spot. fact is: you must understand if it’s mean to be mean or just bad temper.about favourite kids. well, if she hated so much her mum, she should be totally indifferent to that, or am i missing something?
I also think there is an undertone of racism in the way people immediately revert to “Soon-Yi was groomed”, up until now that she is a mother herself and an adult.
if Dylan’s word is important than Soon Yi’s is too. There is a real possibility of both of them having been manipulated for different reasons which is why this case is so doomed.
Why do we consider Soon-Yi as groomed and therefore not worthy of our belief and not Dylan whose mum was clearly abusive?
Exactly this. Believe the white kids… they’re the ones telling the truth! Um, ok?
You’re leaving out Quincy and Isaiah. They’re her non-white adopted children who have come out in support of Mia and her parenting.
Yeah, that’s the one thing that really bothers me – the hypocrisy of “believe all women” but when Soon-Yi comes out and shares her version of the story, she’s just groomed and can’t be believed. She’s an adult woman in her forties now. She was an adult, however young, when her and Woody began dating.
It’s just interesting to me that we can assert over and over that Soon-Yi was groomed at 21 but that Dylan wasn’t coached at 7.
This whole thing is a mess and I don’t think ANYONE involved behaved like a normal person.
If she wasn’t groomed and her learning disability is way overstated, that’s really kinda gross, too. Cause it implies getting involved with your mom’s partner knowing full well what you are up to and that it’s not a cool thing to do.
Although she probably would not be the first girl to get involved with her mom’s boyfriend. ?Revenge?
I think it’s entirely possible Mia Farrow was racially abusive. I also think it’s impossible for her not to have been groomed. Her claim of what age she was at the time of the affair is negligent. Going after a twenty-one year old who is significantly younger than you and with whom you have previous familial ties is about as predatory as it gets. Both of them did her wrong.
Look at how Woody is holding Soon Yi’s arm in the top picture: it screams control. My father had an unhealthy relationship with me, using ME as his confidante and emotional support instead of my mother, and he sometimes held my arm the exact same way. Mia Farrow may have been an abusive mother, but Woody Allen definitely took naked pictures of a young teen who was the daughter of his girlfriend. That undeniable fact renders him unacceptable in any way, shape, or form, and people who constantly defend him are weird in my book. On what planet is seducing your girlfriend’s daughter acceptable??
He does it quite often. Tom Cruise used to do it to Katie Holmes.
I so agree with your last comment. Even if Mia was a shit mother, even if Dylan made up her sexual assault allegations, the pictures alone should be enough to cancel him.
How anyone can defend him is beyond me.
He’s not a spring chicken. Part of me gets that vibe. Part of me thinks he’s holding on to her for balance!
I tend to agree with you and see Woody’s relationship with Soon Yi as very problematic. I am not defending Woody here at all. What I am defending here is – sorry to sound grand – justice itself. You cannot equate the testimony of a child with a manipulative mother with that of an adult such as the #metoo accusation we have seen and support.
You can read his body language all you want but there isn’t proof that he is culpable of sexual abuse. Only that he took pictures of a naked child. I grew up in a far less prudish society than the American one, we were all naked at the beach, taking naps in the summer and have plenty of photos my dad took of me naked. I assure you I was never abused.
So what I mean is that this case is horribly messy, the people involved are very unreliable and the victims and witness even more so.
@Niki, we are having two conversations in two threads. I assure you I am not stalking you!!!
Only that he took pictures of a naked child
Said naked child’s photos were taken of her spreadeagled… and graphic. That was dodgy.
@duchess of hazard
Actually I just read the interview and the photos were taken while she was in college already having an affair with him. So at the age of consent, but while Woody was supposedly still in a relationship with Mia. Horrible all around.
My sense of this situation is what others are stating here: the problem with all this is not only Allen’s behaviour but also Mia reacting against Soon-Yi kicking her out and André Previn cutting Soo-Yi off and basically leaving her in the streets as if she was “the other woman” instead of a really helpless young woman.
From what I’ve read the photos Woody took of Soon Yi were very graphic. They were not innocent pics a normal father would take of his kids. There’s a huge difference between your story and Soon Yi’s. I agree with you that this family is messy and quite sad, Mia and Woody are both awful. Poor kids.
ETA: whoops! Should’ve refreshed before commenting. What duchess said.
Man, it doesn’t matter if they were ‘already having an affair’ when those graphic photos were taken. Woody had known her since she was a young girl (8 or 9?) and the pictures were taken when she was either a teenager or in her very early 20’s. Regardless of age – she was his girlfriends CHILD and his children’s SISTER.
There should have been no relationship and no pictures – forget when or at what age. Gross gross gross. If people don’t find this shit disturbing because he ‘wasn’t actually her father’ then I despair.
Actually, I think there really are 2 Nikkis who post on Celebitchy!
@Clare I agree. I was just correcting my own statement saying that they may have been innocent pictures wen in fact they were of sexual nature. Which makes it creepier.
+1,000 to Clare. Please: the guy was in a longterm relationship with Soon Yi’s mother, and had known her since she was about 9 years old. The pictures were not sweet nudes as a dad would take; they were of Soon Yi spread eagled, very graphically sexual. Anyone who thinks that’s OK because he wasn’t legally married to Mia, or Soon Yi may have reached 18 ( I doubt it), or who wants to find other excuses, WHY TRY TO EXCUSE THE INEXCUSABLE? He took advantage of his access to Soon-Yi heinously.
I believe Soon-Yi!!
It’s entirely possible Mia was abusing her, but that doesn’t undermine that what Woody Allen did to her wasn’t equally abusive and unethical. If anything, it just highlights how much easier grooming her would have been. The fact that this magazine would utilize a victim’s words to exonerate him is just beyond repulsive.
I fully believe Woody Allen is a predator, but I also believe Mia Farrow is twisted.
Mia’s own accounts of Allen’s behaviour give her away. According to her she strongly suspected he was abusing Dylan, and all she did was ask one of her staff to try and keep them apart. Then she just left it at that til she found the pictures of Soon-Yi and he left her. She only got the authorities involved because SHE got hurt. She didn’t lift a finger when she thought her daughter was being hurt.
Then there’s Soon-Yi. According to Mia she was significantly mentally handicapped and she had been groomed by a predator for years, yet Mia jumped straight to treating her as the other woman. Not as her daughter, not as a victim, not as a vulnerable person, just the woman who stole her husband. That’s not normal. She should have been horrified he’d abused another one of her children, instead she just hated her daughter for stealing her man. It was obvious that she didn’t really think of Soon-Yi as her daughter and that she didn’t care that Soon-Yi was preyed upon.
I fully believe Soon-Yi in regards to Mia’s parenting. Some people tried to make Mia out to be a saint, adopting all these children, but it was always ragingly obvious she had major issues and the kids were part of that. She loved talking about their horrible lives before her, about how damaged they were, about how ill they were, about how developmentally delayed they were etc. She’d light up while talking about her children’s pain. It reminded me of a Munchhausen by Proxy situation, except instead of making her children sick she specifically sought out children who were already sick.
I never understood how she was able to adopt all those children, especially after everything with Allen. Her applications should have raised about a gazillion red flags no regular person would ever get past.
I totally agree. It’s the fact that the magazine is clearly using it as a hit piece against Woody’s accusers that infuriates me. Notice how it can’t just be HER story, it’s really ultimately about HIM. A good reporter would have at least asked some very direct questions about Woody’s behavior and the ethics of her pursuing her. The absolute audacity and cruelty of using a victim’s words to protect her abuser is just mind-blowing. The one thing I agree with Dylan on is that any magazine with a modicum of integrity would never have agreed to this interview.
The way she treated Soon-Yi raised major red flags for me, too. I remember being struck by that very fact, too, and wondering where her alarm and concern for her daughter was.
I agree with the others on this thread that this family was/is an extremely messy one. It’s heartbreaking to think about how much pain so many of them have experienced.
Yeah, I think both Mia and Woody are totally messed up in the head and it’s unfortunate that there were so many children dragged through the mess.
Mia reminds me of Adora on Sharp Objects, to be honest.
Could not have said it better.
Absolutely agree, I’ve always thought Mia is completely crazy. What she did to the Previns and adopting so many children with such enormous needs (saviour complex? Need to be seen with a halo?) and the fact that her own brother is in jail for child sex abuse, yet she’s said nothing about his victims, because apparently they don’t count… She picks and choses her storylines quite a lot doesn’t she? Doesn’t excuse Woody at all but I think Mia is a real mommy Dearest type…
Hope he never works again in hollyweird.
I could believe that Mia was abusive to some children and not others – such dynamics are sadly common in abusive situations. However, Soon-Yi and Moses specifically allege that other children in the household were also abused, and those children deny it. It’s not as if it’s the white family members vs the POC members either, as some of the siblings that’s released a statement in support of Mia and Dylan are POC as well. It is also worth noting that Moses uses the assertion that Mia abused him – which certainly is not impossible – to directly undercut Dylan’s claim of abuse and gaslight her by saying Mia coached her. In fact, the whole point of this piece, written by an Allen fan girl, is to use these attacks on Mia as a ‘gotcha’ against Dylan’s claims against Woody Allen, which would never make sense. Mia and Woody are separate people and any abuse Mia may have committed against Moses and Soon Yi, even if true, would not cancel out Woody’s assault on Dylan.
It’s not uncommon for abused children to deny the abuse of a parent especially as the abusers make sure the abused child is relient on them even as a adult
How is this even a question? Allen hooked up with his daughter and then married her to give the relationship legitimacy. Mia’s behavior does not justify his actions. In fact, it only means Soon-Yi was doubly abused.
Sorry, Allen, your career is over. It never should have happened in the first place. An entire generation of men is obsessed with teens because of Allen normalizing age play crap. Rot in Hell, Woody.
You’ve said it better than I could’ve.
THIS.
This pathetic attempt from Allen to claw back some semblance of support by having his daughter-wife air her sad past is utterly disgusting.
F him.
I do believe some of what Soon-Yi says, though I wonder how much of her memories have been colored by her relationship with Woody. However, having your children doing housework isn’t using them as “domestics”, it’s called doing chores and it’s something most kids I know are expected to start doing at a certain age. That being said, if this wasn’t expected of all of the children, particularly if the duties were delegated based on the race of the children, then it’s definitely suspect. Also, if there was physical and emotional abuse going on, I would think a responsible stepfather (Woody) would do something about it, not exploit it to take advantage of his young, vulnerable stepdaughter.
Honestly? I don’t care.
Everyone in this family is f*cked up to some degree, and I think both Mia and Woody are to blame. Other than Ronan’s journalistic endeavors, which are fantastic, I treat this family like the Kardashians—I just scroll past. (Except this time, obviously, which I’m already regretting.)
One story does not disprove the other. They can both be true.
These terrible stories about Mia (whether they are true or not) should have nothing to do with Dylan’s story.
Dylan’s story has not changed. There are facts in her story that have been proven by eye witnesses. She is an adult now and stands by her words. Woody got away with child molestation. It is horrible and disgusting. Soon-yi’s experiences may also be true, but they do not discredit Dylan or clear Woody.
Mia’s son Fletcher Previn is Chief Information Officer at IBM. That IBM.
If you read the article, even in her ‘defense’ of Allen it comes off as major grooming. He starting moving after her when she was still in high school. The language she uses when describing him at those games makes me ill to my stomach. “I think Woody went after me because at that first basketball game I turned out to be more interesting and amusing than he thought I’d be.”
“We chatted about it, and I must have been impressive because he kissed me and I think that started it. We were like two magnets, very attracted to each other.”
Ugh. Woody Allen is disgusting. it’s pretty clear he has a thing for young girls he had paternal authority over, making this whole thing miles creepier. Just watch his movies.
I know, that was just nauseating to read. My heart hurts for her that she’s been abused and groomed her whole life to do the bidding of others instead of having the option to pursue a healthy life for herself, that she wanted, for HERSELF. I doubt she can even hear the implications in what she says in how their entire romance boils down to what he wanted, what he pursued, and how she fulfilled his pleasure. I’m so angry for her, and she will never even understand why.
Thank you!
Read his own words about how she responded to him because he was “paternal” but that he only thought of her as a “fling.” WTF?
https://pagesix.com/2015/07/30/woody-allen-soon-yi-responded-to-me-because-i-was-paternal/
Honestly, I think we can believe both Soon-Yi and Dylan. I have read the legal documents about Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, and honestly, none of them seems to be parent-of-the-year material. Mia adopted way too many kids, many of them special needs who would probably have needed their parent to devote more time to them than she ever did.
She then married Woody Allen and wanted children with him when he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about it (and he didn’t even bother having a relationship with her adoptive children anyway). She then adopted Dylan and had Satchel (aka Ronan), whose paternity is quite questionable but she made Allen believe that he was the father all along.
This was a distaster waiting to happen in many ways. They are both messed up.
I don’t know how anyone can look at Ronan and not believe he’s Sinatra and Mia’s kid. He looks an awful lot like Sinatra and absolutely nothing like Woody.
Until today I always felt like he looked so much like Mia that I could ignore the Sinatra stories. Sure, he looks nothing like Allen, just favors Mia. Lucky kid. But today I noticed his nose. It is neither Allen’s or Mia’s. It is clearly Sinatra’s to me. Look it up. I never noticed that detail before and might have to adjust my opinion.
He also plays up aspects of that – likely to try to push away the association with Woody. He’s repulsed by him, clearly, and I can’t imagine he’d want people looking at him and seeing Woody. He wears tinted contacts – his eyes are actually a lot more of a deep greenish blue. Honestly – I think his natural eye color is a lot better looking (the light blue with his skin tone and hair makes him look kind of creepy).
He looks a lot like Mia, I think, which could make him look more like Sinatra, I suppose. Genetics are weird though – I don’t think he’s Sinatra’s son, and I think that also is a disappointment to him.
My personal theory is that Woody is sterile and that it came out at some point during/after the custody trial and it’s one of the reasons he has no relationship with Ronan because he’s known for decades that Ronan isn’t his but he did not know it at the time of Ronan’s birth.
Mia Farrow did not marry Woody Allen.
Child molesters don’t just molest one child.
I completely believe Soon-Yi. However, I don’t see what her story of being abused by Mia Farrow has to do with whether we believe Dylan was abused by Allen, or whether we consider Soon-Yi herself a victim of grooming by Allen. Soon-Yi’s interview, actually, gives TONS of support to the notion that she was groomed. Living with a “mother” who called you stupid and treated you like a maid (it’s not the chores, it’s the context and I credit Soon-Yi’s feelings) when she wasn’t ignoring you would make a child all the more open to an adult man who could save her and who seemed to think she was interesting and important…sexual favors would seem a small price to pay for safety and “love.” In any case, Soon-Yi’s experiences with Mia appear to be being used to deflect from the very real allegations against Allen. Woody and Mia still both seem to think that the victims in this are mere props in a battle between the two of them rather than people. It’s disgusting.
Nobody comes off well in this article, particularly Soon-Yi, who seems to have hated Mia from the get go. That doesn’t mean that Mia was never neglectful or abusive, but I got a distinct whiff of revisionst history throughout the interview. I myself had very difficult parents and a very stressful childhood, but I have a lot of good memories from that time. A LOT. So when Soon-Yi insists she couldn’t remember a single one? Seemed disingenuous to me.
The minute I realized that the author was a 40-year acquaintance of Allen’s, the article’s credibility was damaged for me.
The article should have been more objective. I get that Soon-Yi is a “big get” given her silence, but maybe the magazine should have applied the same objectivity to her piece that has been done to many others. The Weinstein pieces for instance took months to research and put out. I think it’s important for Soon-Yi to tell her story, but I believe that unless she wants to release it on her own, then she shouldn’t get the backing of credibility a paper provides without following proper editorial procedure. No other woman would.
I have a pretty big problem with someone who claims to be victim of Farrow, claims we should have and should believe her (I do, I think Farrow mistreated her and then Allen saw a great target and groomed her), and then in the same interview claims that “Dylan wasn’t abused and Allen never didi it.”
It’s such disrespect to Dylan!! Was Soon-Yi there, with Allen and Dylan in the room? No? then she should shut the f up about that!
We cannot pick and choose whom to believe. Either believe the women, or don’t. It does not matter that Soon-Yi is not an “ideal” victim—we need to believe her too.
Children can have vastly different experiences in the same household. My father was not abusive in any way, but my brothers certainly remember a different childhood than my sister and I. If you ask them, our father was doting and attentive, while if you ask me or my sister, he was indifferent and uninterested, and we certainly never received the attention or doting that our brothers did. There is absolutely no reason for it to be so unbelievable that Mia may have doted on some children and been indifferent or even abusive to others.
This thing is, SHE (Soon Yi, as a mouthpiece for Woody) is asking us not to believe Dylan.
SHE is calling her sister a liar
SHE is claiming her sister was brainwashed or whatever
SHE is asking us to believe HER, while at the same time asking us not to believe Dylan.
Don’t you see the irony?
For what its worth, I do believe Soon-Yi was abused by Farrow. I also know she was groomed by her disgusting POS stepfather/husband. I know that Woody Allen has got decades got away with his disgusting grooming of his stepdaughter. I know that he is now using that very same stepdaughter to try and claw back some legitimacy or sympathy in hollywood.
He is disgusting, and she is just another one of his victims.
@Clare, THANK YOU. That’s the whole problem. I would have had no qualms about this article if it was only about Soon-Yi discussing Mia Farrow’s emotional abuse and neglect. But it wasn’t. She was using that case of emotional abuse to allege that MIa Farrow is lying about what happened to Dylan in order to vindicate her husband.
I’m starting to sincerely believe that a great deal of the people in this comments section didn’t read the full article. Watching people fall for such clearly manipulative BS on the part of Woody Allen and his PR team without calling out how clearly the piece was meant mostly as a means to paint Dylan Farrow as a liar is mindblowing.
Soon Yi’s life experience is almost entirely limited to Wood Allen. I think she, and apparently Daphne Merkin, are too isolated in the Woody bubble to acknowledge how incredibly bizarre the whole situation was and continues to be. I believe Dylan. And I also can see how Farrow failed Soon Yi. I’ve come to side eye mass adoptions.
It sounds like she was made to do chores like most children (I ironed and vacummed) and also never connected with her adoptive mother.
This is probably an unpopular opinion but she sounds like a damaged person and is trying to justify sleeping with her mothers boyfriend.
I agree.
Some of the things makes it seem she never outgrew her teenage anger for her adoptsd mother, maybe woody festered it and used it to turn her against Mia
When I lived in a rural town I had a friend who by the age of 11 slaughtered chickens that her family owned. (For cooking, not cruelty or secret psychopathic issues, of course.) Life is different for everybody, some children are given more responsibilities than others.
However, I belive that Soon-Yi was abused and neglected by Mia. It’s not the chores alone but pretty much everything else. Like, what kind of a shitty human being do you have to be to blame a teen/young woman for your creepy old parners nude pics of her? How can you know about his predatory behavior towards your one daughter yet still blame the other? How can you leave her vulnerable by throwing her out of the house? There are red flags over red flags here. Even in the weird way Soon-Yi speaks about herself like she is not her own person but a passive object that people do things to. She sees herself through the gaze of others. It’s just sad all around.
But!!! None of it discredits Dylan’s story. And I belive her, as well.
In conclusion Woody is still the worst!
Do third graders typical write up a grocery list, and go acquire the groceries for the entire household though? Yes, some of it is normal chores. But I certainly wasn’t expected to do something like she was, and there weren’t so many kids in our family.
Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t – my own mother once told me that she did all the cooking and cleaning for the family by age 11. (Not as a bad thing, just as a matter of fact.) Which her entire family then heartily refuted with laughter. My mom is extremely stable but had simply just remembered it wrong. Or, more likely, the one time a week it WAS her turn to do chores ended up feeling like she was doing EVERYTHING.
It’s also much more common for younger kids to do things like this when you live in the city. It was also a different time, in terms of it being much more normal to send a child down the block for a bag of groceries.
I agree. You have to take the memories like this from childhood with a grain of salt.
Was Mia perfect? Clearly she was problematic – does it rise to the level of abuse? I’m not sure.
The predator here is Woody Allen, clearly. He is the origin of the dysfunction in this family. Without him- none of this may have ever happened.
Dylan spoke up months back, why is she speaking up now when Woody doesn’t get finances?
How is Mia being an abusive parent makes it okay for her to call Dylan , her little sister, a liar?
Woody has messed with her head too much and I pity the girls he adopted with her. God knows what grooming he is doing and she thinks it’s alright becauss he saved her.
I should have sympathy for Soon Yi, but somehow I cannot. She is mid 50s now, she had enough time to get out of the cult of Woody even when she was groomed when she was barely legal. Now she is just complicit with her husband
I still have immense amounts of sympathy for what Soon-Yi dealt with. But you’re right, she is a grown adult now.
As for Soon-Yi’s children, someone else in another thread pointed out that one of their adoptive daughters looks like the spitting image of Dylan Farrow. The resemblance is eerie.
Fascinating article. I was very interested to hear Soon Yi’s perspective.
this all makes me feel bad for Soon-Yi, both for Woodys grooming/ abuse and for the parts of Mia’s parenting that weren’t good. But make no mistake, this article is all about Woody. Follow the money– right now he can’t get his film project funded. It isn’t a coincidence that Ronan’s articles going like gangbusters in speaking truth to power, getting a Pulitzer etc. Each of Ronan’s articles about other powerful abusers keeps Woody also in the back of people’s minds, therefore the (mostly) men who fund his movies are holding back the money. Woody is likely very angry about that and trying to hit back at Ronan, by attacking Mia and Dylan. rRonans journalism likely also scares the shit out of Woody. It is sad what Soon-Yi went through. I also think this article shows that Woody views women as props to serve his own needs, which in this case is to try and punish Ronan. Hence the “interview” of Soon Yi by one if his defernders, and the attacks on Mia and Dylan, to hit back at Ronan. I do not for one moment think Woody really cares about what Soon-Yi went through in her adoption/ as part of Mia’s family etc . Which is sad. Soon-Yi deserves to have someone who really cares about HER.
I read another article about this interview and it’s interesting to note that Woody Allen sat in on the interview with Soon-Yi and periodically chimed in, and the interviewer is a long time friend and admirer of his, so while I don’t think she’s lying about her experiences, the interview seems like it’s heavily slanted in Allen’s favor.
I don’t understand how multiple people have accused Mia Farrow of child abuse, there is documented evidence of things most people would consider abuse (taking videos of an underage Dylan naked and answering questions about her sexual abuse and leaking them to the media), plus multiple accusations that she bribed or threatened people to perjure themselves in the abuse court case and people are not willing to consider the possibility she is an abuser.
The victim blaming and downplaying of abuse aimed at Soon Yi is disgusting.
I have been around way too many families where Mothers treat children differently…biological or not…so I wholly believe what Soon-Yi says about Mia….and something else…I ALWAYS thought that so much of Woody’s work was autobiographical….and I remember in “Hannah & Her Sisters”…one of my favorite films that has been SPOILT…when Mia’s and Michael Caine’s husband/wife character were arguing about her wanting more kids…when they ALREADY had a bunch of kids that reflected the children that Mia had in real life…and he was basically like…”Damn, we ALREADY HAVE 50-11 KIDS AND YOU WANT MORE?”…Mia always impressed me as someone who…like collected kids…and G-d bless her heart…perhaps that wasn’t such a good thing….
And I believe Dylan…I believed it then…and I CERTAINLY believe it now…and I fret for Woody’s young daughters…..
Where I live (eastern europe) hitting children is just a natural way of bringing them up.. Well, used to be, anyway. Now I know things have been changing.
Anyway, me and my friends were all hit and had things thrown at us when we were little but none of us hold that against our parents cause that’s how they grew up, too. Do i think thats good? No, but spanking children for discipline and out of frustration isn’t same as sexual abuse/exploitation and I can’t believe this woman is bringing the former up as if it makes Mia come close to Woody Allens lunacy.
Also, the house chores are done by children all over the world.
I don’t believe they started their affair when she was 21. Woody had nude pics of her when she was 17.
I’ve always believed that Mia’s “parenting” gave Woody the space to groom and manipulate Soon-Yi.
Woody is wholly responsible for his own behavior though, let’s be clear.
And I don’t believe you have to choose between Woody being a predator and Mia being a horrible mother. Both can and obviously are true.
I’m very sorry Ronan can’t see that.
Mostly i’m sorry for all of these children. This will never end.
Ronan defends Mia because Soon Yi discredits Dylan and her Abuse and turns her into abusive Mias puppet. Its not about Mia, its about calling Dylan a liar with no agency in her thirties. All of this to absolve that creepy old leech Woody.
Soon Yi uses Mias abuse of her to excuse the sexual abuse of Dylan.
And she tries to paint her an innocent victim of Mia driven to the arms of Woody, completely excusing herself for the 30 something years she is with Woody
How come nobody ever discusses that their is no way that Ronan Farrow was fathered by Woody Allen!!!!!!.
I believe Soon Yi. Sounds like the house was a house of horrors on many levels. Wow. Sad.
“house of horrors” yes this is a good way to put it. what a dysfunctional family all around. toxic in sooooooo many ways.
Also, I don’t believe that Soon Yi’s grooming means her account of her mother’s abuse cannot be trusted. In fact, I believe the two go hand in hand.
I believe Soon Yi.
I believe Dylan.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Ronan needs to stop speaking as if they are. Soon Yi’s account does not invalidate Dylan’s or vice versa.
Except Soon-Yi is asserting that her account does, in fact, invalidate Dylan’s. That’s the whole purpose of presenting her account, to offer the notion that because there’s a disconnect between her experiences and Dylan’s that Dylan is the one who can’t be trusted.
I trust Soon-Yi on the abuse and neglect she dealt with by having Mia Farrow as a parent. But she is not just speaking about that abuse alone in this article. She is positioning that abuse to cause more doubt wrt Mia’s support for Dylan. The fact that this is going unchallenged is starting to get frustrating.
Too clarify, I believe Soon Yi’s account of how her mother raised her.
I do not believe all that business about Woody not being her predator or anything she positions as somehow favorable to Woody or dismissive of Dylan’s claims.
I’m speaking 100% about Soon Yi’s account of her mother vs Dylan’s account of her father. Those are the claims that aren’t mutually exclusive.
Soon Yi wasn’t there when Woody assaulted Dylan. Ronan wasn’t present/aware for much of the parenting that Soon Yi describes. Therefore neither can speak with authority as if they know for certain the other didn’t happen.
That’s what I mean when I say neither negates the other.
Except you cannot decouple Soon-Yi’s account of her upbringing from her intentions behind discussing said upbringing as neatly as you do here.
The whole reason she’s giving an account of her mother is to insinuate that Dylan is lying. The fact that it is entirely accurate is beside the point. She would have never brought any of this up about Mia if she didn’t have something to gain from it.
Dylan, in comparison, has had nothing to gain from talking openly about what her father did to her. She has been slandered in the press, laughed at, branded as a crazy person who’s just in it for the attention. Soon-Yi is adding to that pile with this article.
People are trying to isolate the details rather than looking at the sum of its parts here. You cannot separate the intent from the details, they directly influence the details as accurate as they may be.
It bothers me that all these actors who have starred in Allen’s films are now distancing themselves, rejecting their pay, etc. (Timothee Chamalet, for example) based on allegations. Serious allegations, yes, but none that have been proven after many years and investigations. They are simply afraid of being guilty by association. I choose to believe Soon-Yi.
In my opinion, Soon-Yi was groomed by Woody Allen, probably from a fairly early age. But that, in no way, negates what she has to say about Mia. In fact, it makes MORE sense that she would be groomed by an older man who was in a position to play “savior” to her due to the actions of her mother. I also believe Dylan. The two are not mutually exclusive. I’ve never believed in the role that Mia has portrayed and it would not surprise me in the least that she was abusive in some form.
Soon Yi is claiming now she was of age when her sexual relationship with Allen began, but I don’t buy it. I think Allen’s creep factor is huge, and his entitlement is vast — and she has Stockholm Syndrome. In December 1991 he was adopting his kids with Farrow, and presenting themselves as family, while at the same time diddling Soon Yi? And If Farrow had not found the pics, it probably would have continued that way. The situation was working for him!
The whole story is just so off. And flame away if you must, but Soon Yi also seems to have a huge ego about her abilities with men. That’s a big red flag, that someone has been sexualized as a child and that becomes their self worth. IMO.
That’s what struck me about Soon Yi, too. Who knows what had happened to her before she was adopted. I don’t think she sees Mia Farrow as her mother or mother figure, so she does not see the relationship with WA as inappropriate. Someone adopting you doesn’t make them your mother. Her comments about what took him so long is sad and makes me think she viewed her relationship with men via being able to influence them sexually. What’s sickening is that WA would pursue a relationship, even if she initiated it and was interested. Wouldn’t any adult recognise that it was misplaced love and direct it to a more normal mentor/father figure-young girl relationship. AS for Mia Farrow, I totally believe that she might have treated her Asian/Indian adopted kids differently than Ronan and Dylan, specially if she thought she was doing them a big favor by adopting them.
But, who knows. Just so many levels and layers of sadness in this entire saga.. Just sad any way you look at it.
I believe Dylan – I believe Ronan.. Woody came into Soon Yi’s life when she was 8yr? 10yrs old? sorry – not ok… Also, Mia treating her like a servant? A big family like that – I have no problem with Mia handing out chores and shopping. And Ronan is right – this article was written by a friend of Woody’s – Ronan has done a lot for women who experienced abuse – I just believe him and his sister.
I have a dear older lady friend who has cerebral palsy who gets in arguments with her brother all the time about their now dead mother. Her brother was treated better because he was a boy and not disabled whereas my friend had years of physical and mental abuse. Her brother chooses to deny his mother doing anything wrong and wants to believe she was a loving mother to all. Some people live in fantasyland because it is easier. Some people want to whitewash the past.
Clearly this is the case here too. I believe Soonyi as much as I believes Moses and Ronan. Mia set Soonyi up by abuse and grooming from Allen. Sadly, some do not get any good parents. My mother was a physical abuser to me and my dad is a mysoginst. Some people want to mitigate or give my parents a pass but the fact remains, some people don’t get “good parents.
I think they’re all speaking truthfully, but that truth has been manipulated by both Mia and Woody. I am close to Soon-Yi’s age, and while it was indeed abusive to treat kids that way, in that 1970’s, it was also “normal”. We just considered parents who used hairbrushes, beatings, etc to be “harsh” or “strict” parents. Now of course it’s reprehensible, but back then that was how we rationalized it.
Soon-Yi may have suffered from Attachment Reactive Disorder, which would explain her rebellious nature, and the epic conflicts she had with Mia that led her to the romantic escape relationship with Woody. I think it’s hard to be an older kid and just be expected to open your heart to a stranger as your mother. It’s sort of the child-parent equivalent of arranged marriages that end in disaster. It was also a time when dyslexia and other learning challenges were not well-identified or understood, and a lot of kids suffered for it, including Soon-Yi. She will never leave that marriage with Woody, which is hard for us to accept, but she views him as her rescuer.
Abusers often target one child, but leave the rest alone. I don’t think Dylan would still hold onto the story if she felt now that Mia had manipulated her. I think she would have retracted her story by now, and explained the emotional blackmail.
Even Larry Nasser didn’t molest every single female patient he ever saw, but he still abused over 200 girls / young women.
I feel really badly for all these kids, stuck in the media’s spotlight, parents who still hate each other, and it will never go away.
Soon-Yi’s description of her relationship with Woody Allen is far FAR too common with women who have been in all of the same circumstances. The world is littered with stories about women who get into relationships with older, abusive men in order to escape a disastrous home situation because they thought marriage or something similar would be their escape. Men who enter relationships with such women are absolutely predatory. They target those women because they know their abusive behaviour will go unchallenged long enough for it to become too difficult for those women to leave.
There is SO MUCH in this article that the author flat out refused to challenge. The most egregious of these is the fact that she allowed two prominent figures to romanticize their abusive dynamic so publicly.
The crux of this article is not the abuse and neglect that Soon-Yi suffered at the hands of Mia Farrow. It’s the fact that Soon-Yi and the author of this article are purposefully using her experiences in order to call Dylan Farrow a liar. Soon-Yi is honest about her abuse, I do not doubt that, but she is not presenting it in an objective way. She’s presenting it in such a way that its intention is to discredit Dylan and absolve her husband. The sole reason she brings up how self-centered and disingenuous Mia was as a parent is to imply that she can’t be trusted when it comes to her support for Dylan, and that she is using Dylan to get back at Woody Allen.
This is incredibly manipulative. This is essentially what gaslighting is. She deserves criticism for choosing to be a part of a narrative that inflicts further abuse on someone else. There are people who are shrugging their shoulders and saying, “There are many truths.” Yeah, well Soon-Yi doesn’t agree. According to this article, for her, there is the truth of her own experience, and that truth is the only truth, and everyone else’s experiences are just lies or ignorance. This presumption on her part has got to be challenged because it’s incredibly dangerous.
I would have had a different opinion entirely if this article were simply about how Mia Farrow was as a parent. I’m sure she was self-centered and neglectful as a mother. But this does not mean that she is not supportive of Dylan. This does not mean that Dylan is a liar. The fact that people are choosing to ignore the conclusion that the article advances is irresponsible.
This +10000
I saw on the Today show that Woody was present during this interview and often answered questions for her. Ugh. She’s a prisoner and can’t escape.
All this talk of “grooming”. If you follow the story WA took no interest in Soon Yi or Mia’s other kids until he started taking her, at Mia’s suggestion to ball games. He was a selfish narcissist who acted on his feelings with no remorse and to this day I don’t think he has any. He was still with Mia after she found out about this and until she started accusing him of sexual abuse towards Dylan. Mia knew everything and was still going to star in his film and showed up to set. Some real #Metoo story there.
This is just damage control because he cannot continue to get films made and a way to defame Mia’s clan. Soon Yi should not claim to know what happened with Dylan though. Just my humble opinion. I think they all need serious therapy.
Woody Allen is a predator who is using Soon-Yi as a last resort to save his reputation before he dies . I wish all ill will towards this woman who is annoyed for Allen that an entire new generation of people now knows that he grooms vulnerable girls. Boo effin hoo. I also find it questionable that at third grade, a child who lives in a wealthy home with tons of assistants would be doing the grocery shopping for the “entire household”. She continues to defend this monster, so I could care less about the crap spewing from her mouth.
I believe Soon-Yi, and I also believe Dylan Farrow. One person being abusive doesn’t rule out the other being a child molestor. In fact, child molestors are KNOWN TO predate upon children from troubled homes. They go for a lot of vulnerable kids.
Exactly!! I believe her.
Where was Andre Previn during this? Did he abandon the children he had with Mia when they split?
I believe this. Perhaps each child has their own story of their relationship with Mia, but I absolutely think this is true. I also never thought Woody Allen was guilty. My vibe was that she planted those stories in the kids heads. This is only my opinion.
Cold hard fact: he still had sex with his ex girlfriend’s adopted daughter and married her
Mia Dylan Ronan Soon Yi aside, he is still a creep and if you can do one creepy despicable thing you can do others
If you have time, I highly recommend reading the whole interview. If this is still the way Soon-Yi speaks and thinks at her age, I really do wonder about her maturity level, even now.
The “grooming” really comes through in these quotes – which probably isn’t what Soon-Yi wants to convey here but, whoa.
“I think Woody went after me because at that first basketball game I turned out to be more interesting and amusing than he thought I’d be. Mia was always pounding into him what a loser I was.”
“I wasn’t the one who went after Woody — where would I get the nerve? He pursued me, That’s why the relationship has worked: I felt valued. It’s quite flattering for me. He’s usually a meek person, and he took a big leap.”
“Went after?” Yeah. That’s gross.
These poor kids. Either stay with abusive control freak Mia or go with Woody and be molested. What kind of choice is that?
I’m sorry… if you pay attention a person will tell you who he is… it is clear Woody is a person who does not care about anyone except himself. And NY Mag using that strange photo of Soon-Yi with her bed hair tousled in her hands- what are they trying to say? It is like a little girl play acting something sexy.
…What about when she brought home a disabled boy and the screaming was too annoying, so she got rid of him 4 days later. https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1992/11/farrow199211
“A six-year-old Vietnamese boy Mia and Woody had been waiting months to adopt arrived. He was supposed to be recovering from polio, but she soon discovered that he had severe cerebral palsy and was retarded. He screamed all day. She felt the burden of having him was too much for the other children, and after four days she allowed him to go to a family in New Mexico who already had older retarded children and who wanted him very much.”
poor kid…. How wanted would you feel
sad stories