What falls away : a memoir

by Farrow, Mia, 1945-

  from any visitation or contact with The Children.

  • Respondent has been, and presently is, emotionally disturbed and is under constant heavy medication.

  • Upon information and belief, Respondent has physically abused one or more of her children.

  • I believe that The Children are in great fear of the Respondent by reason of her emotional instability and abusive conduct.

  • Respondent's past and present actions have created great emotional distress for The Children, which has necessitated psychiatric intervention.

  • Respondent has falsely accused the Petitioner of sexually abusing Dylan and Satchel and continues to falsely claim that Petitioner is guilty of sexually abusing them.*

  • Respondent is brainwashing The Children with respect to false allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of Petitioner.

  • Respondent, who is unable to manage the rearing of nine (9) children, recently adopted Tam Farrow and Isaiah Farrow. Tam is twelve years old and blind. Isaiah is a seven-month-old crack baby. Petitioner has been informed that the Respondent has made application to adopt two additional children, both of whom are blind.** Respondent is incapable of raising any additional children.

  • The presence and condition of Respondent's additional eight (8) children are inimical to the

  * Satchel had never been sexually abused, and no one ever asserted that he had been. ** At that time I had not made any further applications to adopt children.

  health, welfare, and best interests of The Children.

  • It is in the best interests of Satchel, Moses, and Dylan, that physical and jural custody be awarded to their father, the Petitioner herein.

  • The Petitioner respectfully requests that the court direct the Respondent to physically produce the three (3) children on the return date hereof.

  • Petitioner is a capable and fit parent to assume sole custody of The Children, and possesses the ability to provide them with a happy, healthy and stable home and environment.

  Within moments of these papers being filed, even before I knew of their existence, the news was leaked to the media. Incredibly, in a frantic effort to distract the public from the facts and salvage the mythology of his reputation, Woody was seeking to make me the issue. It was a preemptive legal action initiated when it became apparent to him that a criminal investigation of his conduct was about to become public. If he was believed, then all my minor children would surely be taken away. The ones he didn't want—Isaiah and Tarn—would be put into foster care.

  Four days later the Connecticut state police publicly confirmed that they were conducting an investigation that involved Woody Allen.

  The following day. Woody gave a press conference on national television. He denied that he had sexually abused Dylan and claimed the allegations were nothing but "a currently popular though heinous card played in all too many custody fights . . . Regarding my love for Soon-Yi," he went on, "it's real and happily all true. She's a lovely, intelligent, sensitive woman who has and continues to turn around my life in a wonderfully positive way."

  At Frog Hollow, several of the older kids and I watched

  this press conference in horror and stunned disbelief. My lawyer responded, stating only that Mr. Allen had filed his custody suit to deflect attention from child-abuse investigations that had been ongoing for the past two weeks in Connecticut and New York City. He also pointed out that the investigations were not instigated by me, as Woody Allen was claiming, but by the child's doctor, who had notified the authorities.

  But Woody was louder and far more relentless. He began a campaign of damage control that reshuffled the chronology of events. In late August he gave lengthy interviews to Time and Newsweek magazines. Times Walter Isaacson asked him: "But wasn't it breaking many bonds of trust to become involved with your lover's daughter?"

  "There's no downside to it," replied Woody. "The only thing unusual is that she's Mia's daughter. But she's an adopted daughter and a grown woman. I could have met her at a party or something."

  "Were you still involved with Mia when you became interested in Soon-Yi?" Isaacson asked.

  "My relationship with Mia was simply a cordial one in the past four years, a dinner maybe once a week together. Our romantic relationship tapered off after the birth of Satchel, tapered off quickly."

  "What was your relationship with Soon-Yi when you first started going over there to visit your children?"

  "I never had an extended conversation with her," Woody admitted. "As a matter of fact, I don't think she liked me too much. The last thing I was mterested in was the whole parcel of Mia's children ... I spent absolutely zero time with any of them. This was not some type of family unit in any remote way." He went on to say, "I didn't find any moral dilemmas whatsoever. I didn't feel that just because she was Mia's daughter, there was any great moral dilemma. It was a fact, but not one with any great import . . . These people are a collection of kids, they are not blood

  sisters or anything ... It wasn't like she was my daugh-

  It ter.

  When asked if he considered his relationship with Soon-Yi a healthy, equal one, he answered, "Who knows? . . . The heart wants what it wants."

  Regarding Dylan's claims, Woody said he had not been alone with her that day. "Nothing at all happened," he said. "In light years I wouldn't go into an attic. I wouldn't even know how to find Mia's attic."

  "This is so laughable," he went on in Newsv^eek. "I have never been in an attic. I'm a famous claustrophobic . . . wild horses couldn't get me into an attic." (But after the police found hair samples in the attic that were microscopically similar to Woody's, he changed his story. He later testified that "Mia showed me the crawl space up there. I'm not saying I didn't pop in and say it's a very nice place and search it. By the way, I may have reached in.")

  As untruthfial and hurtful as those interviews were to me, seeing his words, his thoughts, in print gave me some of the objectivity I had lost.

  Andre quickly came to my defense. "If Mia is not a good mother, then Jascha Heifetz didn't know how to play the violin. I am terribly shocked and saddened that he would choose to have a relationship with Soon-Yi. As a father I don't think I have a colorful enough vocabulary to tell you what I think. It is an unspeakable breach of trust which has caused a great deal ot anguish m the family. This is a first-time experience for her. She only just got out of high school last year. Accusing Mia of being a bad mother is bizarre and irresponsible. She's a remarkable mother: our six kids together are happy, healthy, well-educated, and secure, and the other children in the family are in exemplary shape as well."

  The Sinatras also gave me their support. Frank even offered to break Woody's legs.

  It was mayhem at Frog Hollow: we were besieged by hordes of reporters. A satellite dish was set up in the tiny village. We couldn't leave the property without being followed by packs of cars. I stopped reading the papers and I couldn't turn on the television. There were so many crazed letters that I finally threw away my mail unopened. When it got dark, and the press began to filter down the driveway, I called the police. I was alone in the house at night with the little kids. We didn't have any curtains, so we couldn't be sure there was no one outside the windows, looking in.

  Trucks labeled CRIME SQUAD pulled up in front of the house. The attic and everything in it were dusted for fingerprints and searched for hair samples. The press called incessantly. I changed my phone number for the second time in a week, and when it rang within the hour, I picked it up warily; it was Fox Five News. I screamed.

  Our New York apartment was also besieged by the press. The older kids, who were spending their summer in the city, had jobs and college classes. In order to come and go, they had to fight through tangles of reporters, who pushed microphones in their faces and hurled questions at them. When the kids came to my defense, Woody publicly criticized me for it, but I couldn't have stopped them if I'd tried. My brothers and sisters rallied around me. My mother, who had stood by
me all my life, was now strong, furious, and anguished. She and my stepfather did everything they could to help and protect us, calling every day and sometimes twice when she sensed I needed the extra support.

  While we waited, I did my best to preserve some semblance of normalcy for the younger kids. Casey and her children came over, and everybody played and swam as

  usual until, overhead, helicopters drove us inside. When my lawyer learned that Woody had hired private investigators, he warned us, even the kids, to be wary of new friends. The house might be bugged, he said, and the car; the phone could be tapped, and there might be a transmitter near the house. "Oh, and don't accept any flowers." Flowers?

  Woody's private detectives contacted the baby-sitters and Sophie, who hung up on them. Someone in Woody's film crew called, warning me that his investigators were interviewing people at work, asking for any damaging information about my family. Detectives even showed up in a small town in Vermont, where my brother told them to go back to New York, A man's raspy voice on the phone warned, "I hear there could be an accident. Watch out for yourself on the road." On three consecutive Sundays a gray car came down the driveway and took away our garbage. Moses, in his leg brace, ran after it, shouting, "Give it back! Give us back that garbage!"

  The last time we spoke, I told Woody I thought that something in him must have ruptured. I don't know why I bothered saying again how much he'd taken from all the kids, and maybe from Soon-Yi even more than from Dylan. When I begged him for the children's sake to stop the publicity circus, he told me he hadn't even begun; that I was already "the laughing stock of the country" and that "by the time I'm finished with you, there will be nothing left." When I howled to him that in court he wouldn't be able to say things that weren't true, he replied, "It doesn't matter what's true; all that matters is what's believed."

  Ntw York Times, August 26, 1992. In the eye of an extraordinary media storm. Woody AUen and Mia Farrow and their lawyers met last night in the chambers of Judge Phyllis Gangel-Jacob. Mr.

  Allen and Ms. Farrow arrived separately for the meeting last night at the sealed-off court building at III Centre Street and left the same way, without speaking a word to the press. Indeed no one expected grand revelations, but that did not deter scores of reporters, photographers, and spectators from clogging the street in anticipation of both the arrival and departure of the two celebrities. Mr. Allen somehow managed to get inside without being seen. Ms. Farrow was not so lucky. Arrivmg about fifteen minutes before the 6 P.M. meeting, her chauffeur-driven car was set upon as if by locusts, with photographers rushing the car and adhenng to the windows before the car was able to shed them and disappear into a basement garage. "This is incredible," said Gerry Migliore, who stood on the corner of White and Centre Streets at about 6 P.M., during the height of the media crush. He said it was the biggest media onslaught in the court neighborhood in his memory. "In eleven years I've never seen anything like this. Not even for Bernhard Goetz," he said, recalling the famous subway-shooting case.

  I had never seen anythmg remotely like it either, not even during my years with Frank Sinatra. It was as if something had landed from outer space. In disbelief and horror I could see the entire area awash in an unearthly white light from countless floodlights. The street outside the courthouse was lined with camera trucks, satellite dishes, and press people. I wonder how my heart didn't stop. For only a moment I went undetected inside the radio cab as it drew near the Supreme Court of New York State. The traffic moved slowly through white, waiting stillness. I didn't move or say a word. The lawyer beside me was quiet too. I could

  scarcely breathe. Then all at once someone shouted, and barricades broke, and photographers rushed at my cab, covering it. I heard yelling, and the sickening thud of countless lenses hittmg against the wmdows. I don't know how every-thmg didn't break.

  Inside the courthouse, the judge denied Woody's request to see Dylan, but said he could see Satchel, supervised, to which I had no objection. Woody refused, saying that if he couldn't see both children, he didn't want to see either. The judge said she would have thought, in this family, that Woody would be most interested in the little boy who was his biological son. But Woody was adamant: he didn't want to see Satchel without Dylan.

  "I find that bizarre," said the judge.

  In New York, Paul Williams, the Child Welfare caseworker, reported that "based on Dylan's demeanor and her responses to my questions, and my conversations with the caseworker in Connecticut, and my experience from interviewing hundreds of children who had been abused, I concluded that abuse did occur and that there was a prima facie cause to commence family-court proceedings against Woody Allen. Then the barriers came down. There came a litany of reasons why we should not go forward. My superior said that Woody Allen is 'an influential person,' she talked about his films, and his 'position.' As more evidence came through interviews, I insisted that the case should have been filed. Managers at the Child Welfare Agency responded that 'pressure [to drop the case] is coming all the way from the mayor's office.' " The New York investigation was abruptly called off. The mayor's office denied the allegations.

  I didn't know what to believe. What was Woody capable of^ Where would it stop? Who would draw the line? As I stood at the kitchen sink peeling potatoes, I thought that

  maybe if I just kept on peeling, and didn't do anything else, no more bad things would happen.

  In September we moved back to the city and the kids returned to their schools. In order to get Dylan out of the apartment building without exposing her to the photographers, I carried her out of the basement door wrapped in blankets. Nonetheless, despite all the chaos, Dylan began to blossom. She no longer locked herself in bathrooms, or fled from room to room screammg, Hide me, hide me! Gone were the days in bed under her quilt, the evasive looks, and the unconnected, unfinished thoughts. Gone too were her stomachaches and headaches. Her haunted little face opened into sunshine as we sat around the table each evening, reporting the events of the day. Outside, Dylan was still shy, but she was growing more confident in her friendships, as if seeing the world as a safer place. It was wonderful. There had been two changes in her life: she didn't have to see the therapist she disliked, and she didn't have to see Woody Allen. Indeed, she adamantly refused to see him and became fearful once more at the mention of his name.

  The older children seemed to be handling things with equanimity, but they had been profoundly affected. I found myself experiencing the same creeping fear I'd had as a child, after the polio: that I had unknowingly brought danger into my family and that I might have contaminated those I loved the most.

  Woody's custody trial was held in abeyance, pending word from the criminal investigation in Connecticut. In December, when Dylan was interviewed by a representative of the Connecticut police, she again went through the details of August 4, just as she had before, to the police, the doctor, social workers in New Haven, child-welfare agencies in New York and Connecticut, and to my lawyer, Eleanor Alter. In December Dylan told the police about another occa-

  sion, when she was climbing up the ladder of a bunk bed in the playroom. She said that Woody had slipped his hand inside her shorts and touched her there, and she was illustrating graphically where, in the genital area. She told them about the time Woody had angrily pushed her face into a plateful of hot spaghetti, and then whispered he was going to do it again. She described how she had seen Woody "trying to bend Satchel's leg the wrong way," and she took the anatomically correct doll and showed them, twisting the doll's leg backward, and she told the police that "Mommy stopped him."

  She also recounted a time, more than a year earlier, when the weather was warm, and she was at Woody's apartment with Satchel and Soon-Yi. She said that she and her little brother were left in front of the television while Soon-Yi and Woody disappeared. After a while Dylan went upstairs to look for them. She saw them out on the terrace with their arms around each other. She called to them and they told her to "go away," they wanted "a little pri
vate time." Dylan said she pretended to go away, but she hid on the staircase next to the bedroom door, facing the glass doors to the terrace. She saw them walk into the bedroom, and the door was left partially open. Dylan crept up and watched. She saw Woody and Soon-Yi on the bed, on top of the covers, and "they were doing compliments and making snoring noises." That is what she said. And that "he was putting his penis mto Soon-Yi's vagma."

  For a moment, in cold December, a familiar, long-ago self breathed beside me. This other self of mine had embraced all the Christmases of her life with a delight usually reserved for children. I had knit nine beloved names into the long red and gold and green and white stockings, and hung them before the fireplace, acknowledging that my finest dreams had come true.

  From days of youth and travel, I had gathered handsome ornaments, and each December, together with my children, we placed them among fragrant pine branches and rejoiced at miracles, and we sang the Christmas songs, strung fat cranberries, draped the lights of gold, and bowed with shepherds and kmgs before the solemn creche. And when we gazed straight mto the eyes of baby Jesus, we were grateful, and certain our Christmas was as glorious as any on earth.

  But this Christmas, demons danced in the place of peace. Bolts of terror split the moments, shattered the nights, froze me at my tasks. I slipped into still, dangerous darkness. We had howled our terror, our outrage, and our pain. We had wept ourselves empty. We had tried, alone and together, to understand, but we could make no sense of it. Later we would speak again of people torn away and all the ways we loved them. But now, this Christmas, we were straining impossibly for the sound of a single sleigh bell.

  That was the landscape of my mind. But I was in fact before the fireplace in our warm farmhouse in ConnecticuL It seemed as after a death, unchanged, unreasonably so, yet altogether different. The light was harsher, sounds were louder, the edges sharper. I could see the world and my place in it from the top of a pin.