On August 4, 1992. A brief critical review. Update 04/13/2018

August 4, 1992

Prolegomena
From January of 1992 Mia Farrow only allowed Allen supervised visits to his children, once a week. The instruction not to leave Allen alone with Dylan is made sometime during this period. According to Mia Farrow's memoirs in January; According to Kristi Groteke, she receives them in June.

On August 1 Mia Farrow knew that the relationship between Allen and Soon-Yi continued. No source explains how she found out, but both Dr. Coates's court statement and Kristi Groteke's book of memories coincide in this fact and in some details of the conversation; essentially in that Mia Farrow requested help from the Doctor to stop Allen: "to find a way to stop him". The day one of August of 1992 was Saturday. On August 4, Allen paid a weekly visit to his children. The first visit since Farrow was aware that Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi continued and since Mia spoke with Dr. Coates to find a way to stop him.

August 4th.
According to Mia Farrow in her memoirs, when that day Allen arrived to make the visits the older brothers had gone away, she was shopping with Tam and Isahia and Moses had gone out for a walk alone. In the house were Dylan and Satchel and to take care of them there was the nanny Kristi Groteke and Sophie Berge, a French teacher who helped in the care of the children during the summer; there were also the three children of Casey Pascal (John Pascal, nine years old, and Emnma and Kate Pascal, both six years old) and their nanny. The ruling collects this same information, but limited to not mention Moses and Kristi Goteke notes that when Casey Pascal came  Mia had already left and that Casey herself was with them during the afternoon.
From the moment Allen arrived until Mia Farrow returned from the shopping, according to Farrow's memoirs, they lasted about two hours.

Before continuing I think it is interesting to remember that there are two nannies to take care of two children, who had received express and strict instructions never to leave Allen and A Dylan alone and that we are talking about a period of about two hours. We know from the memoirs of Kristi Groteke how she fulfilled the task the first time she was ordered to watch Allen: following Allen at all times from one room to another, and we also know from the same source what the environment was to Allen:

Yet tonight he (Allen)walked down to the lake where Mia, Sophie [the tutor], and I. were reading the Times, and he said good-bye. He touched her head and stroked her
hair, affectionately trying to calm her, but what a thing he has done! We all look at him like he's crazy, a monster. As he slowly turns his head in our direction, a little half-smile on his face, he tries to make eye contact with us—any of us. He wants everything to be normal again. Which it is not. How could it ever be?
And how could Mia be continuing to see this man who has destroyed her relationship with one daughter and is now trying to completely destroy her life? How could she even stand to look at him? If I had a lover who cheated on me—and I'm not talking about with my daughter—I couldn't even sit across a table from him. But to have him do it with my child! This is the most insulting thing that could happen to anyone.

This is a few days before knowing that Allen continued his relationship with Soo-Yi. Allen was a monster, knowing that continued with Soon-Yi the opinion about him could not improve. He was a monster (becouse of his relationship with Soon-Yi) and and the monster had to be watched.

What happened on day four?

The narration of the events must begin in the TV Room. It is in it where Casey Pascal's nanny, Alison Strickland, claimed to have seen Allen with his head resting on Dylan's lap, that is where Dylan declared in 1992 that the abuse had begun and it is in that in which 1997 Dylan has said that Allen took off his underwear. Kristi Groteke defined it as "the tiny TV Room". I mean it was a small space


In the TV Room all the children had gathered to see the movie "Who framed Roger Rabbit", and that's why Casay Pascal's nanny went there to look for one of them.

Washington post 1993/04/12/ courtroom-notebook

That means that in the TV Room besides Allen there were five or six children: Dylan of 7 years, Satchel of 4 years, John Pascal of 9 years, Emma and Kate Pascal, of 6 years each, and Moses of 14 years.


In a small TV Room there are six children; Dylan is not hiding in a corner with Allen, Dylan is sitting on the couch in front of the TV in view of all the children in the room and anyone who looks out the door. Allen is not hiding, watching the door and pending the arrival of any adult, Allen is with his daughter and pending her. It is evident why in the custody trial any mention of the existence of abuses in the TV Room disappeared and it must also be evident why the story that Dylan told for the first time in 2,017, according to which her father had removed her underwear in that room, it's amazing. With five children in the room, removing her underwear would not have gone unnoticed even if Dylan had taken them off by herself and without Allen in the house.



But we continue with the facts. At some time after the events of the TV Room, it has not been possible to obtain more details although we do know that it could not be immediately then since Judge Wilk expressly states that the two events occurred "During a different portion of the day "and according to the narration of the Judgment



For a period  of fifteen  or  twenty  minutes  during the  afternoon, Ms.  Groteke was unable to  locate Mr. Allen or Dylan.  After looking  for them in the house,  she  assumed  that  they  were  outside  with  the  others.
But  neither  Ms.  Berge  nor Ms.  Stickland  was  with  Mr.  Allen  or Dylan.  Ms.  Groteke  made  no  mention  of  this  to "Ms.  Farrow  on August 4.

The narration of Mia's memories is very similar:

Cuando la niñera, Kristie, volvió tras haber tomado sus habituales días libres, le pregunté que había sucedido ese día. Me contó que Dylan y Woody habían desaparecido por la tarde. Había estado buscándolos por todas las habitaciones de la casa, en la planta baja y arriba. Había llamado a Dylan. Sophie, que se encontraba fuera, aseguró que no estaban allí. No había querido decírmelo, pero Woody y la niña estuvieron ausentes durante unos veinte minutos.
When the nanny, Kristie, returned after taking her usual days off, I asked her what had happened that day. He told me that Dylan and Woody had disappeared in the afternoon. He had been looking for them in all the rooms of the house, on the ground floor and upstairs. He had called Dylan. Sophie, who was outside, said they were not there. He had not wanted to tell me, but Woody and the girl were absent for about twenty minutes.

As can be seen, the difference between the two stories is that, in the sentence Kristi Groteke assumes that Dylan and Allen are with the other nanny and does not check and in the version of Mia Farrow Kristi Groteke checks that they are not with the other nanny and she hides it from Mia that they have both disappeared for about twenty minutes.
However, Kristi Goteke's account of the events in her book is substantially different:

On August 4. the day in question, Mia had gone out clothes shopping to New Milford with Tam and Isaiah, and Woody had driven up from Manhattan to play with Satchel and Dylan. Not long before his arrival, Mia's friend, Casey, also came by with her three children and baby-sitter, Alison Stickland. in tow. I was present, and so was Sophie Berge, the French tutor, who baby-sat all that summer as well The truth is, when we retraced our steps that day, there were only fifteen to twenty minutes in which Dylan was out of my sight, Sophie's, Casey's, or Alison's.
Of course, those are the suspect "twenty minutes" when. Mia
alleges, the molestation must have occurred.
From my point of view, even-thing seemed normal on August 4 except for one thing. That afternoon, for reasons nobody has ever been able to explain. Dylan, at age seven—an age when all children usually have a well-developed sense of modesty—was wandering around in her billow) white sundress, but without her underpants. Nobody knew where they were Nobody was ever able to locate them. Nor did Dylan ever admit that she knew where her panties were. She said that she didn't remember what had happened to them.
Yet maybe the answer to this is less sinister than it seems.
Maybe Dylan's panties had been wet or soiled from playing at the beach, and she had just chucked them under a lx*d or into the laundry. Or maybe when she changed clothes in the middle of the day, she simply forgot her drawers and didn't notice that she was putting on a dress rather than sweatpants, which she often wore without undies. Still. Dylan's missing underwear and her distracted willingness to run around half naked seemed, at best, odd, It was the first thing that Mia noticed when she returned home from shopping.

Kristi Groteke tells us that on the day that the alleged abuses happened she did not notice anything strange. That he was not aware that Allen and Dylan had "disappeared" and that the conclusion that they had missed fifteen or twenty minutes was reached when "we" (presumably the people who were that day in the house) "retraced our steps" They remembered and shared what they had done that afternoon, retracing their steps, reviewing events.

It should be noted that it is really extraordinary that having two nannies to take care of two children one of them is lost for twenty minutes without anyone noticing. As much or more surprising seems that Allen himself could be unlocatable during that same period of time, also without anyone noticing. If we take into consideration that there were express orders to watch over Allen and Dylan, the omission of care is absolutely extraordinary. With express instructions to watch Allen and Dylan, the nannies watched Satchel and didn´t notice!

To these versions we must add the testimony given by another of the nannies, Monica Thompson, who was on that day but who was in the house on days 5 and 6 in the morning and had a conversation with Kirsti Groteke before she returned to work during the afternoon of day 6.

Thompson said that the next day Kristie Groteke, Dylan's baby-sitter, drove her to the bus, and her fellow employee was "very upset."
"She told me that she felt guilty allowing Ms. Farrow to say those things about Mr. Allen. (Groteke) said
the day Mr. Allen spent with the kids, she did not have Dylan out of her sight for longer than five
minutes. She did not remember Dylan being without her underwear."

In other words, Thompson's testimony confirms Kristi Groteke's narrative that on day four the nanny never gave Dylan or Allen "lost", adding a clear reference that Groteke herself would be aware that whoever is missing The truth in the narrative is Mia Farrow. The truth would be that Allen and Dylan were always located and Groteke would feel guilty about letting Mia say otherwise. Groteke's memoirs confirm that this conversation took place and that Ktristi Groteke told Monica Thompson that she had not lost sight of Dylan all afternoon

The alleged molestation. Monica said, had occurred two days earlier, on Tuesday, August 4. 1992. However, Monica knew only the sketchiest details of what had supposedly transpired. .Although she had been working for Mia for seven years, they weren't close at all,  and so I played dumb and agreed with her. Yes, I said, Mia must have been stretching the truth. And no,  I didn't remember leaving Dylan alone with Woody.


In short, there is no single version of how the events took place on August 4 but two versions that differ in essential details. Any of the versions raises elementary questions How is it possible that in a period of two hours and with two people taking care of two children, but with express instructions to watch one of them and Woody Allen, Allen and Dylan disappear for twenty minutes? We have seen that when she receives the instructions to watch Allen for the first time Kristi Groteke physically follows her from one room to another. How could he "escape" from that surveillance on day 4? On the other hand, when and how was it agreed that Allen and Dylan had been "disappeared" fifteen or twenty minutes? Groteke clearly indicates that it was a "reconstruction" task carried out on the 6th or later (at least two days after the events) of the steps that everyone in the house had taken on day 4. To make matters worse, she herself indicates that day 4 did not happen - apart from the girl's underwear - nothing that caught her attention. It seems that the version accepted by the judge is that the nanny does not know where Allen or the girl is, looks for them and calls them all over the house and, not finding them, assumes they are with the other nanny. And she does not go out to check it. Can someone who has ever cared for a child calmly accept this version?

The day after
Although it is assumed that day 5 Mia Farrow has knowledge by Dylan of having been abused the previous day, she does not call the nanny to ask for explanations or information. On day 5 Dylan does not report abuse to the pediatrician; she will spend the next twenty-four hours being recorded and interrogated by her mother. On day 6, when she returns from the pediatrician after reporting - this time she confirms the abuse - Monica Thopson says:

On Thursday, she took Dylan back to the doctor. When they arrived home, Farrow told me that 'everything is OK now--everything is set.' "


Finally, it was Kristi Groteke herself who called Mia Farrow by phone. According to her story, Mia did not ask, question or reproach anything. Mia simply told her that Woody had abused Dylan. When the nanny arrived the next day the narrations diverge once more. According to Mia Farrow - as we have seen - she asked Kristi Groteke what had happened that day. According to the story of Kristi Groteke herself, Mia put the recording of the video that Mia had made to Dylan. Groteke does not explain how or when Mia asked him what had happened, but when or what it was, we know that he could not respond until he had reviewed with the other two people the steps they took on day 4. There is a curious detail that in the story of Kristi Groteke is not directly related to this day, but can not be overlooked when this is the key fact of his testimony in court.


I should have been more confident. I had been in witness preparation for about two weeks before I testified. Marty Jubileer, an associate of Mia's attorney, Eleanor Alter, would sit me down and cross-examine me mercilessly, letting me know that this was how Woody's lawyers would treat me if I was lucky. The first morning he had spent three hours bombarding me with questions. When I left for lunch I dissolved into tears. I was terrified that I couldn't do it and would let Mia down. But after another three hours that afternoon, and what seemed like endless hours throughout the spring of 1993. I felt toughened and secure, with a stronger sense of myself. I was ready to burst out of the starting block. I promised myself that I would not drop the baton. (page 22)

Two weeks of preparation? Six hours the first day and then countless more hours? Let Mia down?... What is it that needed so much preparation? Kristi Groteke was not one of the parties, she was a witness who had to limit herself to telling the truth about what she was being asked.

Other final issues


On August 4, 1992 leaves a lot of questions in the air in addition to those already raised. I advance a few, which may be the subject of subsequent blog posts:

1.- How is it possible that the trusted nanny Mia Farrow stay at home thinking that Allen and Dylan will be out? What does the nanny do in an empty house during Allen's two-hour visit? What do you do in a house without children and why do not you go where the children are?

2.- Imagine the situation: leave your child under the care of a trusted nanny for two hours -only two hours- with express instructions not to allow her to be alone with a third party, and that trusted nanny does not keep an eye on your son, does not watch the third, does not tell you anything, and that third party abuses your daughter. Would she still be your trusted nanny? Could you look at your abused daughter without remembering that she was under the babysitter's care? Could you look at the nanny without remembering that she was not able to take care of her daughter not even two hours?

3.- Could that nanny continue to be not only your trusted nanny but one of the people closest to you during the next two years? Would you give her material and pleasure to write a book about what happened?

4.- We know that on August 1 Mia Farrow discovered that the relationship between Woody Allen and Soon-Yi continued. For months since the scandal broke in January she had been told and she had thought it had been interrupted. As a result, he called Dr. Coates for help finding a way to stop Allen.
However, no reference is made to the fact that this discovery provoked any discussion, fight or reproach with Allen himself. Is it possible that Mia Farrow did not say anything to Allen about his discovery? Why? Why did he behave with Allen as if nothing was happening?

5.- Moses Farrow. By Mia Farrow we know that Moses had gone out for a walk alone when she went out to go shopping but she had not been away that day from home. Nobody else mentions it, but he himself says that he was at home that day and there is no reason to doubt that it was so. Monica Thomson already explained in 1993 in his court statement that Moses had told him that he did not believe that abuses had occurred and that everything was his mother's invention. Could there be any more key to that day in the memory of Moses Farrow? Moses has recently reiterated that there were no abuses, that he saw his mother persuading Dylan that his father had abused her, that a part of Dylan's memories must necessarily be wrong since there was no train in the attic in the that supposedly there were abuses and that on that day there were about six children in the house and nobody was in separate rooms from the others. Could he give a more complete testimony of what he remembers that afternoon? Could he remember the specific reason why he told Monica Thompson that he did not believe that abuses had occurred? 

6.- A final mention to the girl's underwear. Every time the events of day 4 are narrated, it is common to mention the underwear that Dylan wore (or did not wear) when his mother returned from the purchase, as if it were a factor that encourages belief in the existence of abuse. However,  in the narration of the abuses of 1992 it was not said that  that Allen took off her underwear. If Allen did not remove her underwear, which took her, was lost or not put it is irrelevant to determine if there were abuses. The absence of Dylan's underwear has nothing to do with Woody Allen, in any case.

On the other hand, in the version of the events of 2.017 Allen is supposed to remove Dylan's underwear in a small room full of children and without anyone noticing. This version of the facts is simply incredible and casts even more doubts about the reliability of Dylan's memory.


INDEX


LA CONDUCTA INADECUADA DE WOODY ALLEN EN LA SENTENCIA DE WILK Y APELACION
WHAT EVIDENCE OF THE JUDGMENT OF CUSTODY REFERRED FRAN MACO BY SAYING THAT IT HAD NO PROBATORY FORCE?


A FIRST APPROACH TO JUDGE WILK'S DECISION THAT DOESN´T LOOK LIKE WHAT YOU USUALLY READ

THE SUPPOSED AND IMPROBABLE REFUTATION THAT JESSICA WINTER MAKES OF BOB WEIDE
THE TESTIMONY OF DYLAN FARROW


If you want to know more about what happened on August 4, 1993

ITHE DECISION OF THE PROSECUTOR OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT, FRAN MACO, NOT TO INITIATE A PENAL PROCEDURE AGAINST ALLEN FOR THE ALLEGED ABUSES TO DYLAN FARROW



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