Moses Farrow, Mia Farrow’s adopted son, self-published a personal essay Wednesday, explaining his memory of the day Woody Allen allegedly molested his sister Dylan Farrow. Moses claims that Mia physically and emotionally abused him throughout his childhood, and that Mia often scapegoated his adopted sister, and Allen’s current wife, Soon-Yi Previn. On the day the alleged abuse took place, Moses recalls, nothing was amiss until a family friend’s nanny said that she saw Allen’s head in Dylan’s lap on the couch in the TV room. “The narrative had to be changed since the only place for anyone to commit an act of depravity in private would have been in a small crawl space off my mother’s upstairs bedroom,†Moses writes. “By default, the attic became the scene of the alleged assault.â€
Moses runs down other supposed inconsistencies in Dylan’s account — the attic was not much more than a crawl space, he says, and there wasn’t a train set in the room, as Dylan recalled — ultimately concluding that the abuse allegations were a product of his mother’s brainwashing. Ultimately, Moses asks why his father’s critics, especially those in the #MeToo movement, are so convinced of his guilt:
Meanwhile, though, my father continues to face wave after wave of unfair and unrelenting attacks from my mother and her surrogates, questioning why he has been “given a pass†all these years. But Woody was not given a pass. Quite the opposite. Mia’s accusation was fully investigated by two separate agencies and charges were never brought. Mia reached the end of the legal runway after it was determined that the abuse never occurred. But trial by media thrives on the lack of long-term memory and Twitter requires neither knowledge nor restraint.
To those who have become convinced of my father’s guilt, I ask you to consider this: In this time of #MeToo, when so many movie heavyweights have faced dozens of accusations, my father has been accused of wrongdoing only once, by an enraged ex-partner during contentious custody negotiations. During almost 60 years in the public eye, not one other person has come forward to accuse him of even behaving badly on a date, or acting inappropriately in any professional situation, let alone molesting a child.Â
Moses ends his account with a message to his mother and sister. Moses wishes that Dylan had the wisdom to see that “devoting your life to helping our mother destroy our father’s reputation is unlikely to bring you closure in any kind of lasting way.†Moses says that he expects Mia to “launch a campaign to discredit me for speaking out,†but that defending his father is worth it.
Update, May 24, 2018, at 9:07 a.m.: Dylan Farrow responded to the essay with a tweet, calling his claims “easily disproven,†“hurtful,†and “part of a larger effort to discredit and distract†from her assault.
Update, May 24, 2018, at 1:46 p.m.: Dyaln’s brother, Ronan Farrow, also tweeted a statement saying, “I believe my sister.â€