SPEAKER: The Woody Allen archives is boxes and boxes of material
he gives to Princeton University.
It has old scripts, ideas.
It's just that the thing that kept showing up
was this focus on very young women.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
I don't know when it started with Soon-Yi.
SPEAKER 2: She had never dated a boy. She never kissed a boy.
She was very innocent.
You have one job, and that is to stand by your child
and keep her safe.
He said, "What...
What about some... father-daughter time?
♪ ♪
(birds chirping)
(Woody Allen speaking)
(Mia Farrow speaking)
♪ ♪
Reporter 1: This is a story of two of the biggest stars in the world.
Reporter 2: The father is Woody Allen, writer, director, actor.
The mother is Mia Farrow, his frequent costar
and the mother of his three children, two of them adopted.
Reporter 3: Woody and Mia have been together for 12 years,
but never married and kept separate residences.
♪ ♪
Reporter 4: She reportedly has a video of their adopted daughter Dylan
explaining how Allen molested her.
♪ ♪
Reporter 5: Allen denies child abuse, but freely admits
he's in love with another of Farrow's daughters,
21-year-old Soon-Yi.
♪ ♪
Reporter 6: Allen said the newest allegations are
the bizarre concoctions of a woman scorned.
♪ ♪
Woman: Miss Farrow's only concern
has been exclusively the protection of her children.
♪ ♪
Narrator: The private lives
of Woody Allen and the Farrow family
would become very public in August of 1992.
A series of investigations and lawsuits followed,
which generated tens of thousands
of court and police documents,
most of which were never made public
or obtained by the press.
♪ ♪
One cache of more than 60 boxes of documentation
was hidden away in an attorney's storage room,
untouched since the '90s.
Over the course of our three-year investigation,
we gained access to those boxes,
along with police files of the case,
additional evidence,
affidavits, sworn testimony,
and private audio and video recordings.
(birds chirping)
Mia Farrow: After the incident in the attic,
the next day, I took Dylan to the doctor.
She didn't really know the pediatrician up here
in Connecticut that well,
and she sure didn't want to talk about it.
He didn't want to pressure her, and he said, you know,
"No problem. Why don't you come back tomorrow, you know?"
When we got in the car, I said, you know,
"Did-did you wanna tell him what you told me?
Do you feel..."
And she said, "I don't like to talk about my privates."
And I'm like, "I get that.
"I get that.
"But, it would be helpful
"if you could tell him because then,
we would have somebody who could make sure you're okay."
♪ ♪
So then, the next day, we went back,
and she did tell the doctor what happened.
And then, we went home.
And we were all outside,
and I got a call from the doctor.
And he said, "I just wanted to tell you
that I've told the police."
I remember when I took the phone call,
I made all the kids get out of the water.
So they were like making sand castles
and covering their feet with sand.
And I saw a little robin was hopping on the grass.
And I'm holding the phone,
thinking it all looked so normal.
But nothing will ever be normal ever again.
♪ ♪
Narrator: Dylan's pediatrician had submitted a report
of suspected sexual abuse,
and a series of legal actions were initiated in two states.
In New York, the Farrows' legal residence,
the City Child Welfare Administration
opened an investigation.
While in Connecticut,
where the alleged crime had occurred,
the state police opened a criminal investigation
which was overseen by state prosecutor
Frank Maco.
Frank Maco: I received a call from my office
with a complaint,
alleged sexual abuse on one Woody Allen.
I met with the members of the Connecticut State Police.
I said, I want to make sure that we're not talking about
some type of a Hollywood relationship that's just gone bad.
Mia: Next thing you know,
like crime squad trucks rolling down our driveway.
They went to do, like, do whatever they do in the attic.
Collecting hair and stuff like that.
♪ ♪
What I remember, um,
is that
after the attic,
things really started changing very rapidly.
I said this thing, and it started this...
nightmare of lawyers
and the phone ringing, and everything changed.
Reporter: Woody's not about to change his ways.
He's where he is every Monday night--
Michael's Pub here in Manhattan.
Steve Powers is there right now. Steve?
It was as if Woody Allen was trying to play it cool
by playing his clarinet as he does every Monday night
over here at Michael's Pub.
He went up on the bandstand and joined the band
in some playing, with a full house.
But earlier, there was an indication
everything wasn't just fine,
when Woody left his apartment at 74th Street and 5th Avenue.
He had no comment.
Woody, could you give us a comment, Woody?
(indistinct)
Woody, anything about the Bridgewater charges, Woody?
(shutters snapping)
Frank: My office and the Connecticut State Police,
we wanted to do our
investigation quietly,
and as effectively as possible. Professionally as possible.
Next thing I know, at The Plaza Hotel,
Mr. Allen calls a news conference
and announces he's subject of a Connecticut State Police
investigation into abuse.
♪ ♪
(coughs) Thank you for coming.
Over the years, you all know that, that, uh, I've been
ahem, reluctant to speak with the press,
and have assiduously avoided publicity.
But because of all the rumors
and innuendos and...
cruel untruths
circulating over the past week,
I feel that I have to make a statement.
This is an unconscionable
and gruesomely damaging manipulation
of innocent children
for vindictive and self-serving purposes.
In the end, the one thing I have been guilty of
is falling in love with Ms. Farrow's adult daughter...
Priscilla Gilman: Woody gave a press conference
where he talked about being wildly in love with Soon-Yi.
And our jaws all dropped.
He said to Mia, "I don't love Soon-Yi."
I heard him say this! "This was just a silly little fling.
I don't love her. Not in love with her."
There's a calculated reason
why love enters the picture.
Reporter: Have you spoken to Mia?
Priscilla: He's trying to distract. "This is a woman scorned.
This is an unhinged woman."
That's Woody's narrative.
He's turned it all back.
Turned it upside down and around,
and focused on his relationship with Soon-Yi.
And the media ran with that story.
One day after Woody Allen acknowledged
a love affair with the 21-year-old adopted daughter
of his long-time companion and leading lady, Mia Farrow,
The usually very private filmmaker went public.
Allen says he feels no great moral dilemma
over his admitted relationship with Soon-Yi Previn Farrow.
Reporter 1: In a written statement, Allen says,
"Regarding my love for Soon-Yi,
it's real and happily all true."
Reporter 2: He added that Mia Farrow was so irate
when Allen fell in love with Farrow's
adopted college-age daughter Soon-Yi,
that Farrow concocted the abuse charges.
(Woody speaking)
(Mia speaking)
Reporter: In "Time" and "Newsweek,"
Allen struck the latest blow in this war waged
with sound bites and spicy quotes.
Over the past week, Allen's trial by tabloid
has captivated the national psyche.
Rosanna Scotto: I was a general assignment reporter back in the '90s
when we heard that
Mia Farrow's adopted daughter
might be having an affair with Woody Allen.
And the way he spun it was just perfect.
You know, don't forget Woody Allen,
at that time, had some really
high-powered people in his court.
Elkan Abramowitz, his attorney, big, big attorney,
and he had a very powerful PR machine behind him.
They were doing a great job painting Mia Farrow
as a scorned woman who would say anything.
But we had to follow the leads, and sometimes, it took us
to a place that Woody Allen was not happy.
Here at the Episcopal School on Manhattan's East Side,
sources tell us exclusively
that Woody Allen was so obsessed with Dylan,
who was then three years old,
that parents and teachers began talking about how Allen
would sit in the doorway,
positioned to watch little Dylan in the classroom.
We were just one of a few journalists
who gave the other side.
Woody immediately got onto the cover of "Time,"
the cover of "Newsweek," the cover of "People,"
and Mia wasn't really speaking.
I thought to myself,
there has to be another side to this story.
She was not giving interviews,
so I had to find people close to her.
I spoke to André Previn, her previous husband.
I spoke to the tutors. I spoke to the babysitters.
One of the things that was interesting to me
was that...
Mia didn't want these allegations to be true
because this was completely unraveling her entire life.
I was told by several different people that she said,
"You know, Dylan, we all make up stories.
"If this didn't happen, you really need to tell me it didn't happen.
Or maybe you think it happened."
And she says, "No! It happened!
And if he says it didn't happen, he's lying!"
So, this little girl would never back down from the story.
I also found out that Woody refused
to submit to the state police's lie detector test.
♪ ♪
Frank: The Connecticut State Police indicated that Woody Allen
had taken a polygraph by a private polygrapher.
I said, I'm not interested.
I want a state police polygrapher to take it.
And he refused.
So, I did not get what I had requested,
which was a polygraph by the Connecticut State Police.
(Mia speaking)
(Woody speaking)
(clock ticking)
Be-- be logical about this.
I'm-I'm 57.
Isn't it illogical that I'm going to
pick this moment in my life
to become a child molester? It's just--
It's just incredible. If I wanted to be a child molester,
I had many opportunities in the past.
Steve Kroft: Why then would Allen's seven-year-old daughter
tell a Connecticut doctor otherwise?
Either she has been coached,
methodically, to, to-- (coughs)
tell this story because...
-Kroft: By Mia? -By Mia, yeah.
♪ ♪
Mia: Overnight almost, there he is on everything.
On the cover of every magazine, on every kind of show,
saying that I had coached Dylan
and all these things.
She's been using her friends on both coasts
to say terrible things about me and to lie about me...
I didn't feel
that it was
seemly to get into
a public fight with him.
Reporter: In a statement, Farrow told NBC News
she wouldn't be interviewed about Woody Allen for this story,
and asked that her friends not talk to us about Allen either.
I just had to keep my focus on the kids,
and try to keep them safe
and try to keep whatever semblance of normal
that we could under the circumstances.
♪ ♪
There were helicopters flying low to take pictures,
and the kids couldn't go anywhere.
And it was terrifying.
Dylan Farrow: If we left the house,
they would follow us wherever we were going.
And...
it was scary.
Reporter: At the Farrow home in Connecticut,
and elsewhere, family members were rallying
to Mama Mia's side.
She's my mother, and, um,
she's the best mother there is.
Any statement saying that she's unfit to be a mother or anything
is completely ridiculous.
She is a marvelous mother, a fine woman,
and she's just got a moral foundation
that's just unbreakable.
A moral rock somewhere, you know,
we're all standing together,
and we're gonna fight this thing till we win.
We didn't need help turning against him.
I mean, he did it to himself.
And his accusation
that my mother is an unfit mother is absurd.
Anybody who knows my mother knows that.
Woody appeared to have what were unlimited resources
and hired private investigators
and people were following us around
and going through garbage and looking for anything
that there's a weakness here
that I can exploit to say,
"Hold on a minute. She's not the great parent
she's asserting herself to be. Look at this."
Priscilla: I definitely felt like I was followed a few times,
when I was coming from
Mia's apartment back to my apartment,
or if I was taking the children out.
♪ ♪
Mia: One night, I was coming home from some friends,
and I was being followed.
So, I didn't even go home.
I took some twists and turns,
and still, this person was following me.
So I went all the way into the neighboring town,
and it became really scary.
♪ ♪
I met with the members of the Connecticut State Police,
instructed them to continue their investigation.
I said, I want this child evaluated.
I wanted some type of opinion as to whether or not
my bringing her into the criminal justice system,
putting her on the stand, in any way, would traumatize her,
and I want to know whether there are any impediments
to the child's ability to take the stand
and testify in court.
So, I suggested
the Yale Child Sexual Abuse Clinic to do the examination.
♪ ♪
They were going to assist me
insofar as determining whether or not
there were any impediments
as to the child's ability to perceive,
recall, and relay.
Narrator: The Yale-New Haven team was lead by Dr. John Leventhal,
who, at that time, was the director
of the Yale-New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic.
The team also included two social workers,
Julia Hamilton and Jennifer Sawyer.
Records show that Sawyer and Hamilton interviewed Dylan
nine times over a three-month period.
Dylan: I would meet with some adults,
who would show me an anatomically correct doll,
and asked me where Daddy touched me.
And I would repeat the story
over and over and over again.
It was grueling, and it was intense, and...
I hated it.
♪ ♪
Frank: Their examination went on for seven months.
And then I received a call
that the Yale Child Sexual Abuse Clinic made a decision,
and I am given the bottom-line conclusion
that the child is unreliable, untrustworthy,
and/or that Mia Farrow
was a fabricator of this incident.
Narrator: The report stated there were
inconsistencies in Dylan's statements,
and that she had, "difficulty distinguishing
fantasy from reality."
The report also stated that Dylan's accusations were,
"likely reinforced and encouraged by her mother
who was enraged with Mr. Allen."
Without notifying Frank Maco,
who had commissioned the report,
Yale-New Haven met with both Mia Farrow and Woody Allen,
and informed them of the results of the report.
♪ ♪
Frank: Next thing I know, the Yale-New Haven team
presented the findings to Allen,
the suspect of the investigation,
and allowed him to announce the results
publicly on the steps of the hospital.
They've come to a decision that, um...
I can say is an accurate one.
Certainly, I never, ever abused my daughter.
There was no sexual abuse that ever took place,
and that, um, that the-- it was either...
it was either an imagined thing or a concocted thing.
Reporter: What do you think it was?
Why do you call the accused and have a press conference
on the steps of the hospital
to, quote, "clear him,"
when you don't give it
to the state attorney to do that?
He was the one who commissioned it.
It wasn't their purview to do that.
Reporter: Today's report, if it is as Allen describes it,
seems to remove any possibility he'd face criminal charges.
The report also says that the child may have made the story up,
but the experts also allow for the possibility in their report
that Farrow may have coached the child to tell this story.
In the report, the experts recommend that Farrow receive therapy now
for what it characterized as her, quote, "extremely disturbed," unquote,
relationship with seven-year-old Dylan.
Frank: I had to come forward and say, wait a minute.
I find nothing indicating that Mia Farrow is, in any way,
fabricating, controlling,
or manipulating this child.
There's nothing to show us that.
-(shutters snapping) -Um, I-I just wanna say that, um,
that I will always stand by my children. That's it.
(reporter speaking)
♪ ♪
I was contacted by Ms. Farrow's attorney
shortly after the Yale report came out.
Ms. Farrow's lawyer was concerned about the report,
and she asked me if I could read it and tell her what I thought.
I read the report and I was horrified.
And I testified in court about the report.
They interviewed this child nine times.
Even in the early '90s,
nobody interviewed a child of any age
amidst an allegation of sexual abuse nine times.
You don't interview a child about the same allegation
over and over and over again.
You...
interview the child
the least amount of times as possible,
so as not to re-traumatize the child.
♪ ♪
Dylan: The more I was asked the same question over and over,
the more I started to wonder,
what do they want from me?
And feeling like the more I said the same thing, that...
it was the wrong answer.
That I was being treated like I was...
lying.
If I change a word here,
they say I'm being inconsistent.
If I use exactly the same...
words that I used every other time, I was coached.
There were absolute consistencies
in which this child said the same thing
to the same interviewers
over the nine times she was interviewed.
Michelle Peterson: She's very consistent about who touched her,
where in the house, what part of her body,
what he touched her with.
So she's very consistent with the core
elements of her disclosure.
She hasn't really moved away from that in, in these, in this report,
in all of these interviews.
♪ ♪
Dylan: You know, every little idiosyncrasy
that I could have had as a seven-year-old girl
was used against me.
The fact that I used childish descriptions.
I described a couple of
mannequin heads as "dead heads."
Frank: The dead heads were later identified
as Mia Farrow's...
mannequins for her wigs, probably in her profession.
I did not find that to be
an unreasonable description by a seven-year-old
that's trying to identify what was in Mom's attic.
Maureen Orth: Part of their conclusion of why Dylan fantasized
was because she referred to "the magic hour."
And, you know,
anybody who's grown up around filmmakers knows that
certain hours of the day do have the magic light.
Dylan: I was the kid of two people in the film industry.
And I was on set a lot!
So how was I supposed to know that that
constitutes magical thinking?
Stephen Herman: I mean, that's a pretty big thing to say
a seven-year-old child is delusional,
isn't thinking right,
doesn't know the difference between fantasy and reality.
This report failed to reflect anything
even close to the child having a psychotic disorder.
Not even close.
♪ ♪
Narrator: Jennifer Sawyer and Dr. Julia Hamilton,
two social workers on Leventhal's team,
interviewed Dylan.
But according to Dr. Leventhal's deposition,
Yale-New Haven's practice was to destroy all notes
after the completion of an evaluation.
So, ultimately, no contemporaneous record exists
of what the social workers thought or observed
when they interviewed Dylan.
Stephen: All of the notes were destroyed.
(Amy Ziering speaking)
No. Notes are never destroyed.
Notes are never destroyed during a forensic evaluation.
Never, ever, ever destroyed.
Notes are evidence,
and we would turn over any drawings,
any notes we took in an interview.
Anything that was written down in an interview
would be handed over to law enforcement.
Frank: If I had elected to go to trial on this case,
my first question to each of those evaluators,
"Let me see your contemporaneous notes
in your interview of this child."
Destroyed. All of them.
Bottom line, this was basically a runaway evaluation.
Michelle: Yale-New Haven did not have
the authority to reach their conclusion.
You know, they're talking about whether a crime occurred,
and the people who decide whether a child
is a victim of a crime is a judge or a jury.
I make the decision, not Yale.
I haven't relinquished my constitutional responsibility
to decide whether or not we're going to prosecute.
It is up to a trained prosecutor to determine whether or not
that child has been sexually abused, period.
No one should hold up that report
and say Woody Allen was exonerated.
♪ ♪
Narrator: While the investigation continued in Connecticut,
the investigation in New York
by the Child Welfare Administration was also underway.
The supervisor assigned to the case was Sheryl Harden.
Sheryl Harden: In my sex abuse unit, I was a senior supervisor.
We investigated child abuse throughout the five boroughs
of the City of New York.
So after I read the allegations and I looked at it,
I said, okay, I'll assign this to Paul.
(inaudible)
Paul Williams was one of the top investigators that I had.
He was very thorough. He was objective.
Bruce Baron: Paul Williams had roughly handled
about 800 cases at the time,
and just the year before, in 1991,
the City of New York
awarded him Caseworker of the Year.
It was the first time that they had ever
awarded such an award to a caseworker.
Sheryl: Paul interviewed Dylan
and found her to be quite credible.
♪ ♪
At her age, she should not know anything about
inserting a finger into the vagina.
She should not know anything about
inserting a finger into the anus.
Those are not things that should be
easy for her to discuss,
um, unless there's something occurring.
Narrator: Among the records we obtained
were a complete set of Paul Williams'
contemporaneous investigation notes.
Within the first two weeks of being assigned to the case,
Williams reported that there was sufficient information
to open a criminal investigation of Woody Allen
in the state of New York.
He was later told by superiors that,
"in high-profile cases, it is customary
for the big wigs to take over, and we do nothing."
♪ ♪
Bruce: This was no ordinary case.
Filings were misfiled.
Misinformation was put into the computer.
There was clearly a strong political...
climate to shut this thing down.
But Paul Williams, his agenda
was the best interest of the child.
The City of New York had another agenda.
They needed to suffocate and silence Paul Williams.
And when he wouldn't shut up, they fired him.
(Amy Ziering speaking)
That he was insubordinate.
He wasn't, he wasn't following instructions.
I have no comment to say, okay?
Rosanna (on video): Paul Williams may not want to answer our questions,
but his attorney assures us
he is not running away from an investigation
into whether someone may have intervened
in New York City's handling
of the child abuse allegations against Woody Allen.
I did my job, and I believe the kid, okay?
-You believe the kid? -Yes. I have seen no evidence
to led me to believe otherwise. I have nothing further.
Reporter: Confidential notes obtained from the Human Resources Administration
indicate that the investigator attributed
the decision not to pursue the case to the mayor's office,
a charge they deny.
This wasn't about one supervisor
or, or one, one department
in, in this agency.
This was a massive cover-up attempt,
and Paul was caught in the middle.
Reporter: Williams is suing the city,
charging that the mayor's office hid
and suppressed information in the case.
Williams contends that higher-ups muzzled him,
refusing to allow him to report his findings
either to New York family court
or to authorities in Connecticut,
where a parallel investigation is still going on.
♪ ♪
Every procedure, every rule, every regulation,
every statute, every ordinance
with respect to investigation of a child sexual abuse
in this matter was violated.
Reporter: Women's rights activist Gloria Steinem
came to lend her support to Paul Williams.
Gloria Steinem: Someone who knew the case
got in touch with me
as just as a reporter, as a journalist.
So, I talked to Paul. He seemed to me
a very admirable, smart,
empathetic person with no possible motive
to do anything but do his best to, to find out the truth.
Bruce: The determination that the judge made was that
he shouldn't have been fired,
and he was awarded his job back and back pay
for what was taken from him.
Paul Williams felt vindicated
in the individual sense
of what happened, in terms of getting his job back,
but he was never able to complete
the very job he was given.
Narrator: Paul Williams still works for New York City's
Administration for Children's Services,
and a spokesperson from the agency
declined our request for an interview.
But in looking through his old case files,
we were surprised to see a familiar name.
Williams had corresponded directly with Jennifer Sawyer,
one of the social workers who had interviewed Dylan
for the Yale-New Haven investigation in Connecticut.
According to Williams' notes,
Sawyer had told him that she had not only
considered Dylan credible,
but believed that she had more to disclose.
Sawyer's notes were later destroyed.
In the end, the result was
that people with power were able
to get the case removed.
It just seemed to me,
from everything I could glean as a reporter,
to be a case of great injustice.
I don't sleep at night. What I do is lay awake,
thinking about how horrendous
this entire matter has been, what they've done to her.
♪ ♪
Sheryl: The elite can do whatever they need to do,
whatever they want to do,
and there's no consequences for it.
Not long after that, I think maybe a year later,
I left the city agency completely.
(Amy Ziering speaking)
Because I could not continue to do what I did
to those low-income families, those Black families, and
welfare families,
and have them treated differently
than if they would've been a Woody Allen.
(indistinct chatter)
Casey Pascal: He's got an army of lawyers,
and he's very wealthy.
You know, people bend over backwards to do what he wants.
Mia: What I really thought was that Woody was all-powerful,
and that what he had told me was true,
and that he could control the Yale people,
the doctor there, and he could control,
somehow, the New York people
because he made his movies in New York.
That brought millions of dollars to New York City.
And what he had said to me was that,
"It doesn't matter what's true.
What matters is what's believed."
And that-- He said it in such a cold way
that...
I thought, "Could he be right?"
♪ ♪
And then Woody sued me for custody,
saying that I had to hand over my children
'cause I was an unfit mother,
turning my children against him with horrible lies.
(inaudible)
That he was gonna take Dylan, Moses, and Satchel.
(inaudible)
But I also faced losing all of my children
because if Woody were believed that I was a horrible mother,
what would happen to all the other adopted children in the family?
I mean, there was a lot to lose.
(Mia speaking)
(Woody speaking)
♪ ♪
John EB Myers: If you look back from an historical point of view,
there's clearly a bias against women who made allegations
of rape and sexual abuse against children.
The very term hysteria, as applied to women,
was easy to believe that
women who made allegations were themselves mentally ill.
I personally read every law review article
on this subject from the 1880s to the 1970s, and
the level of skepticism of women's allegations
of rape and sexual assault was almost monolithic.
People don't want to believe that this could be happening in the context of a family.
It's so awful to think that a father could be doing this to his child
that, that we would rather assume,
we'll look for any explanation other than that being the truth.
♪ ♪
Reporter: Dr. Richard Gardner,
known for his innovative work on children of divorce,
coined the term, "parental alienation syndrome."
The idea is that one parent, caught up in a custody battle,
programs children against the other parent.
Even fabricating charges of sexual abuse.
It's not a rare phenomenon. Um, it's quite common.
Reporter: He says it usually arises when a mother,
afraid of losing custody,
uses false accusations as a weapon.
In about 90% of cases, it's the mother
who is the programmer, and the father
who is the victim of the campaign.
Joan Meier: He said that when mothers report
child sexual abuse in custody litigation,
most of the time, they are doing so not because it's true,
but because they want to alienate the children from their father.
Children are very suggestible, and it's easier for them
to start off with suggested ideas,
which develop into delusions.
I believe that we are witnessing
the third greatest wave of hysteria
that we've ever seen in this country.
John: The problem with his syndrome is that
it became a device for not believing people,
and an easy way to brand the woman
as mentally unstable
and a deliberate fabricator.
So here comes a book that professes
to give us charts and diagrams and numbers
and easy explanations for how to sort out
whether this is true or false.
It's all bogus. It's not real science,
but it looks like science.
♪ ♪
Joan: There were large studies in the US and around the world,
and they found that reports of child sexual abuse
are rarely intentionally false.
Kathy Slobogin: Gardner himself admits that his theories
aren't based on any scientific or clinical research.
Just his experience.
His work on parental alienation
isn't reviewed by peers.
He publishes it all himself.
Joan: He was clearly very, very troubled.
He said crazy things, and he put some of them in print.
♪ ♪
He said that the earlier children become sexualized,
the better it is for the race
because they'll have more sex and more offspring.
So this is all natural and good for them, for the species.
After some of that became exposed,
people started disparaging Richard Gardner
and the parental alienation syndrome,
but then they just started to keep on using it,
even using his same criteria.
So often, fathers who are accused of abuse
respond by suing for custody.
Joan: Very often, the abuser files for custody
to tamp down any kind of criminal investigation that's going on.
The timing of when Woody Allen filed for custody
matches this strategy.
Narrator: Within a week of learning
he was being investigated for child abuse,
Woody Allen filed a lawsuit against Mia Farrow
for sole custody of Dylan, Satchel, and Moses.
The suit claimed Mia was emotionally disturbed,
unable to manage the rearing of her nine children,
and was brainwashing the children with respect
to the false allegations of sexual misconduct by Allen.
♪ ♪
(Mia speaking)
(Woody speaking)
(beep)
(man speaking)
A judge has barred television cameras
from the courtroom during tomorrow's custody hearing
between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow.
Allen is suing for custody of the couple's three children.
Reporter: He said he should have custody
of the three youngest children he shared with Farrow
because she was seeking vengeance on him
through the children and using them as pawns.
We are confident that after the, uh...
all the evidence is in, we will prevail at the custody hearing.
Rosanna: It was totally a circus in that courtroom.
Everybody was jockeying for seats.
I mean, every tabloid,
every big TV personality was there.
Everybody wanted to know
how this was going to end for Woody Allen.
Peter Marks: You know, Woody Allen, to New York,
was a homegrown hero to a whole generation
of artists,
intellectuals, journalists.
I grew up with Woody Allen as a hero.
"The New York Times" was Woody Allen's
hometown paper in so many ways.
Vincent Canby, the film critic for "The New York Times,"
had long been a champion of Woody's work,
and the readership of "The New York Times"
and the viewership of Woody's films
were almost, you know, two parallel audiences.
William Grimes: He was the ultimate New Yorker.
I mean, next to the Statue of Liberty,
who was the most famous New Yorker?
Who expressed the city best?
Who epitomized it to the ultimate degree?
It was Woody Allen, and so,
the atmosphere was one of rapt attention.
Narrator: The Allen v. Farrow trial
was presided over by Judge Elliott Wilk,
who would determine custody and visitation rights
for Dylan, Satchel, and Moses.
Woody Allen was the first witness sworn in,
and his attorney, Elkan Abramowitz,
lead the questioning.
♪ ♪
These claims of Mr. Allen were contradicted in court
by three people who were supervising the children
on the day of his visit.
Kristi Groteke, Dylan's babysitter,
testified that she had searched the house looking for Dylan,
but was unable to locate her for about 20 minutes.
During that same period, Sophie Bergé, Dylan's tutor,
testified she was outside with the other children,
where neither Dylan nor Allen were to be found.
Earlier, Alison Stickland, another babysitter,
testified that she had walked in
on Dylan and Allen in the TV room.
Peter: His head in her crotch.
That stuck with me.
I remember reporters all like exchanging sidelong glances.
There seems no reasonable (laughs)
way to look at that behavior
as anything but trouble.
♪ ♪
William: The Woody who appeared at the trial was a...
frightened, defensive creature
who was out of his element.
There was no sense from him
that the motivation for wanting sole custody
was his deep love for these children,
his concern for their welfare.
I think you did get a sense of his anger with Mia Farrow.
Peter: It was really about
portraying Mia as vindictive
and seeking revenge for the relationship with Soon-Yi.
They were attempting to make the case that,
you know, Mia had concocted this story
as a way to punish Woody.
(static)
Narrator: The videotape of Dylan talking about abuse
in the TV room and then in the attic
was entered as evidence in the custody trial.
Mia testified that she had taped Dylan over two days
whenever she had started to speak about it.
As part of our research, we asked a team of independent experts
to evaluate the tape.
(tape static)
(Dylan speaking)
What a child forensic interviewer is gonna be looking for is
as the child is describing what happened,
does it seem like they are recounting something
that actually happened to them, or is there a disconnect
between the words that they're using and their body language
or their voice inflection or that sort of thing?
John Clune: You can see the child almost physically reenacting
as though they're recalling what happened to them,
by you can see her reaching towards her backside.
Mia: Mm-hmm.
Anna Salter: Mia Farrow was actually pretty careful in her questions.
All she did was say,
"Who, what, when, where, and how."
There were no overt suggestions like,
"He molested you, didn't he?"
So there's none of that kind of coaching going on,
where there are implicit suggestions, such as,
um, one that I saw was
Mia Farrow clearly believed that
he must've taken the child's pants off,
so she asked, "Did he take your pants off?"
Anna: Dylan says no. She keeps coming back.
Anna:: From my point of view,
what's important is Dylan's response.
Does she go along with the suggestion?
"Yes, he-- Oh yeah, yeah, he took my pants off."
But she doesn't.
It's not just what the interviewer says.
It's whether the child is suggestible or not that matters.
And Dylan says no to things like that.
She's very consistent in her story in this.
Michelle: When a child is disclosing a conversation
or something that another person says,
um, that again increases the credibility of the statement
'cause she's restating something that she heard.
And so that's, again, something that would be hard
to be coached on or fabricate about.
John: The child is starting to kind of shut down.
It wouldn't surprise me at all, watching this clip,
if the child already is getting tired of
being asked these questions.
Anna: That is a very typical progression
for an abused child.
Not so much for a false accusation.
False accusations tend to get stronger under pressure.
Mia: No.
Mia: Okay. We'll stop talking then. I'm gonna turn this off.
♪ ♪
(static)
Dylan: What's in that tape feels like that is
who I am when you strip away
everything else.
When you look underneath all my layers,
down to the very center of who I am.
I am that little girl on the tape.
(sighs) So...
it's a very vulnerable part of me.
Um, and a very...
a very hurt part of me.
There's a lot of...
That little girl is in a lot of pain.
♪ ♪
This kind of abuse
warps something inside of you.
Because it doesn't happen
by a stranger that snatches you off the street
and throws you in a van.
♪ ♪
It happens by someone you love and someone you trust.
Someone who buckles your seatbelt,
takes your hand when you walk down the street,
reads you bedtime stories.
♪ ♪
It's incomprehensible
to normal people
because it's not normal.
Reporter: It was the 20th day of a trial
that has played out over nearly seven weeks
in a New York courtroom,
a day for closing arguments
by lawyers for Woody Allen,
who is seeking custody of three children
from his 12-year unmarried partnership with Mia Farrow.
Farrow wiped tears from her eyes
as Abramowitz accused her of seeking revenge
for Allen's affair with Soon-Yi.
The attorney argued, "a mother who cannot
"subjugate her anger at a father
is unfit to be a parent."
♪ ♪
Mia: I was so scared.
And I didn't know what would happen next.
And so, we waited for the decision.
We waited a week.
We waited two weeks.
We waited a month.
And finally,
the judge brought his opinion down.
Woody Allen's bitter child custody battle with Mia Farrow,
waged for ten months, often in public, is over.
And a New York judge today cast Allen in a role
he has often played onscreen: loser.
Reporter: The judge saw Allen did not demonstrate
parenting skills that would qualify him
to care for Moses, Dylan, or Satchel.
Peter: On June 7th, 1993,
Judge Wilk issued his decision,
and it was scathing.
Narrator: He stated, "Mr. Allen's behavior towards Dylan
"was grossly inappropriate,
"and that measures must be taken to protect her.
"It is unclear whether Mr. Allen will ever develop
"the insight and judgment necessary
"for him to relate to Dylan appropriately.
"The evidence at trial established that Ms. Farrow
"is a caring and loving mother.
"I am not persuaded that the videotape of Dylan
"is the product of leading questions or of the child's fantasy.
"There is no credible evidence to support
Mr. Allen's contention that Ms. Farrow coached Dylan."
Reporter: He ruled Allen could not visit Dylan for at least six months,
and questioned whether he could ever be
a fit parent to the girl.
Allen will be able to have supervised visits with Satchel,
the couple's biological child.
But 15-year-old Moses was left to decide
whether he wants to see his adoptive father.
Narrator: Judge Wilk also addressed the findings
of the Yale-New Haven report in his decision, stating,
"The unavailability of the notes,
"together with their unwillingness to testify at this trial,
"resulted in a report which was sanitized,
and, therefore, less credible."
Peter: He could've very easily said,
"I followed the guidelines of the Yale study team.
They're a very, very prestigious organization."
But he didn't.
He said he didn't buy it.
I didn't buy it either.
I-- You know, it's hard. As a reporter,
it's hard to admit this in a way.
I absolutely worshiped Woody Allen
before this trial, and...
I still-- Well, the proof is
I could never watch a Woody Allen film again after this.
(scoffs)
It's...
It's still... It still hurts,
and it still wrenches me to say that.
It's just-- it's still not easy to say that.
♪ ♪
Mia: My hope now is that I can go home,
back to my children,
and that we will finally
have some measure of peace,
and be allowed to heal,
to begin that.
It was a very strange
feeling for me,
being told that...
(sighs)
I never had to see him again.
And it wasn't framed as,
"You're never gonna see your father again."
It was framed as...
"Do you ever want to see him again?" And...
I didn't.
Woody: I feel it's...
unfortunate, even tragic for the kids,
that I didn't get custody of them.
And, uh, and if I could have just a second to thank
all the people in the streets
and at the Knick games
and who have come over to me and given me their support
and said terrific things to me and, you know,
I'm still in there fighting
and doing my best, and thank you.
♪ ♪
(reporter speaking)
Eleanor Alter: I don't know.
I have no idea what Connecticut's going to do.
I don't even know all the information they have.
They have been very diligent.
I think they are also acting as best they can
to protect the children in this family.
Frank: My instructions to the Connecticut State Police
was to gather your evidence,
and submit to me an arrest warrant application.
The decision as to whether or not
there was going to be a prosecution was my decision.
♪ ♪
Narrator: Maco's team had compiled 1,700 pages
of evidentiary material,
including witness statements,
logs of the physical evidence collected by police,
forensic reports,
maps of the crime scene,
and reports of interviews with all of the people involved.
Among the state's evidence were records
of a police interview with Woody Allen
where he was inconsistent
about whether he had ever been in the attic crawlspace area,
and interviews with Dylan
by three clinically trained child abuse experts
from different government agencies,
all of whom found Dylan to be consistent,
honest, and believed she was telling the truth.
♪ ♪
The conclusion of his investigators
was that there was probable cause to issue
an arrest warrant for Woody Allen
on the charges of first and fourth degree
sexual assault of a minor.
Frank: I was confident there was probable cause.
Meaning reasonable grounds to believe a crime was committed,
but I have to prove my case beyond a reasonable doubt.
I can't prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt
without a child.
In other words, could this child
be my first witness
on the stand to say what had occurred?
This case hinged on the testimony of a seven-year-old girl.
♪ ♪
SPEAKER: The option was clear. Have Allen arrested,
go to trial, and put the child on the stand
as my first witness.
But was it truly, in her best interest?
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
REPORTER: Allen denies child abuse.
DYLAN FARROW: I caused a rift in my family.
None of my siblings were ever the same.
RONAN FARROW: I just wanted to run away from this.
When I read the court documents, my reaction was,
"Well, holy shit."
REPORTER 2: Could you give us a comment, Woody?
RONAN: There was incentive to be drawn into efforts
to discredit my sister.
SPEAKER 2: This is a calculated move in a media war.
MIA FARROW: I was so scared.
I didn't know what would happen next.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪