One of the fundamental arguments put forward by
those who defend that Dylan Farrow's account of alleged abuses must be believed
was first published by Vanity Fair,
and has been used by Dylan Farrow herself recently. We are going to examine it
in some detail starting from its original formulation:
Dylan’s
claim of abuse was consistent with the testimony of three adults who were
present that day. On the day of the alleged assault, a friend's
babysitter told police and gave sworn testimony that Allen and Dylan went
missing for 15 or 20 minutes while she was at the house. Another babysitter
told police and also swore in court that on that same day, she saw Allen with
his head on Dylan’s lap facing her body, while Dylan sat on a couch “staring
vacantly in the direction of a television set.” A French tutor for the family
told police and testified that that day she found Dylan was not wearing
underpants under her sundress. The first babysitter also testified she did not
tell Farrow that Allen and Dylan had gone missing until after Dylan made her statements.
These sworn accounts contradict Moses Farrow’s recollection of that day
in People magazine.
As we shall see, these allegations of abuse are
not more consistent with the testimony of the witnesses than the version of the
facts provided by Allen, and consistency issues of the statements themselves,
which should be taken into account, are being ignored. Finally, several of the
statements are totally useless to assess the facts, but they are presented —falsely—
as if they supported the alleged abuses. Let us examine what we know of the
three testimonies.
The first thing that needs to be clarified is
that Woody Allen's testimony is equally consistent with that of the adults who
were in the house. It is not that the nannies' testimony corroborates one
version and contradicts the other. No testimony places Allen with Dylan alone
during the alleged disappearance, nor did anyone see them climbing the stairs
to the top floor of the country house, nor did anyone see them coming down. What
is even more amazing: on August 4 nobody noticed that Allen and Dylan had
"disappeared" for those ten, fifteen or twenty minutes.
The nanny (Kristi Groteke) told a colleague
(Monica Thompson) that she had not lost sight of Dylan all afternoon [i]. That
is what Monica Thompson declared, and the nanny herself acknowledged, in the
book of memories about that period which Groteke wrote after the trial (ii). Then,
how was the conclusion reached that Allen and Dylan had "disappeared"
for 15 or 20 minutes? Well, through a reconstruction made by the three nannies
several days after the events. Apparently, when they got together to review
what had happened that day, Kristi Groteke realized that there was a moment
when she looked for Dylan inside the house and did not find her; then she
thought Dylan would be out with the other two nannies. She did not check it right
away, but while reviewing the events together, the three caretakers decided
that at that moment Dylan was not out of the house, and that between the time
they saw Dylan for the last time and the moment they found her outside of the
house fifteen or twenty minutes may have passed.
Therefore, we have two groups of babysitters (Kristi
Groteke, on one hand, and the French tutor and the other nanny, on the other)
who are not in the same place and do not communicate during the entire period
of the alleged disappearance. An interesting fact is that at no time is it
indicated that Dylan was missing, "between 5 pm and 5:30 pm", for
example. Why is it interesting? Because it indicates that in their
reconstruction of the afternoon the nannies were not able to indicate what time
it was in any of their clocks at the time of the supposed disappearance.
Let us think about it. There are two separate
groups of people who do not communicate with each other, and each one thinks
that Dylan and Allen are with the other. How can they reach the conclusion that
this was not the case if group A does not know what time she saw Dylan or Allen
for the last time nor what time it was when she looked for Dylan without
finding her, and group B does not know at what time they came to be with them?
Moreover, group B does not know at what time the nanny of group A thought that
Dylan was with them.
How is it possible to know that Dylan and Allen were
15 or 20 minutes by themselves? Actually, it is not possible. If group B does
not know what time Dylan joined, nor whether she did it at the same time as
Allen, it is impossible for them to know if Kristi Groteke was looking for them
at that time. The only possibility of reaching that conclusion would be that
both groups had clocks, that both did consult them and, therefore, that they
could tell us at what time —or between what times— the
"disappearance" occurred.
But that is not the case. Therefore, in order to
reconstruct the afternoon, the nannies had to use their own subjective time
estimates starting from a common event (perhaps the very separation of the
nannies, which would be the last common event). Those time estimates were
independent of each other. On the one hand, we have the estimate provided by Groteke,
who was alone inside the house (a question of some interest here is: given the
fact that she had received explicit instructions not to lose sight of Dylan, what
was she doing inside the house by herself?). On the other hand, we have the
subjective time estimate provided by the other two caretakers, who were outside
the house in charge of four children. Needless to say, this way of
reconstructing the steps taken on day 4 —if it has any use at all, which is
rather doubtful— is enormously limited and subject to a huge margin of error,
since it is easily affected by the expectations of the people who carry out the
reconstruction. If what you are looking for is a period of time in which neither
of the groups saw Dylan or Allen, you will find it, whether or not it exists.
On the other hand, there are no concordant
testimonies: what exists is a reconstruction based on separate testimonies. If
nanny A says "I think I saw Allen for the last time a half hour after X,
then I looked for them and they were not around" and nanny B says "well
I think I first saw Dylan about 50 minutes after X", there is no agreement
between those two declarations. What nanny B says does not confirm that nanny A
actually saw Dylan 45 minutes after X, and what nanny A says does not rule out that
nanny B did not actually see Dylan only 30 minutes after X.
Finally, Dylan's account of the alleged abuses is
not fully compatible with the statement of nanny Kristi Groteke. According to
the court ruling, the nanny looked for Dylan throughout the house before
assuming she was out with the other nanny. Why did not Dylan hear about this
search? Let us assume it is reasonable for the nanny not to go to the small
attic to look for her, but she definitely checked the main room and if she
searched and called Dylan there, why did not Dylan hear her? Moreover, nothing
in Dylan's account suggests that Allen heard anyone looking for Dylan and asked
the girl to keep silent, or stopped the train to avoid making noise.
Kristi Groteke's experiences during those days
are interesting in many ways; one of them is that Mia never reproached her or
asked her how it was possible that Woody Allen had been alone with the girl
despite her recent explicit instructions against it. She did not ask her
whether it was possible that the alleged abuse had happened: she told her it
had happened. And several days after the events, the nanny met with the other
two people who were in the house to "reconstruct the afternoon" and arrived
at the conclusion that there were between 15 and 20 unaccounted minutes in
which none of them had been with Dylan or Allen (iii). As already mentioned,
before being forced to "reconstruct" the afternoon on account of her
boss's sexual abuse allegations, the nanny had told a colleague that she had
not lost sight of Dylan. None of the testimonies indicates that Allen and Dylan
were together during that time, nor that they were found together or at the
same time.
Kristi Groteke herself wrote about it in her
book:
To tell the truth,
in my heart I hadn't the foggiest notion of whether or not that
molestation ever took place.
By the way, none of these testimonies contradicts
the testimony of Moses Farrow in People,
since no one asked the children to reconstruct the chronology of the day. The
essential part of Moses' statement is much simpler: there was no train in that
attic so it is impossible for Dylan to remember that a train made its way
around the attic while Allen sexually abused her. Until today, no one has
responded to this statement by Moses. On the other hand, it should not be
forgotten that Monica Thompson already declared in 1993 that Moses had told her
that he believed Mia Farrow was responsible for Dylan's accusations (iv).
Kristi Groteke was neither fired nor reprimanded
by Mia Farrow for leaving Dylan unattended despite her express orders: rather, she
became her most trusted person in the care of the children for the following
year, and Mia Farrow delivered documentation and materials for Groteke to write
a book.
This testimony is presented as if it supported or
was "consistent" with the existence of some kind of sexual abuse. However
this is totally false. Dylan has never indicated that Allen took off her
underwear. According to Kristi Groteke, Dylan never explained what happened to
the underwear. There is no mention of that fact either in relation to the
alleged episode of abuse or in the tape that Mia Farrow recorded, nor in the
Yale New Haven sessions, nor in the sessions with the police, nor in any of the
modern versions of the story that Dylan has provided. Obviously, if the absence
of underwear has nothing to do with the alleged abuse according to Dylan's own
narrative, then the absence of underwear cannot be used to "validate"
that the abuses existed. The absence of underwear —and the testimony of the
French teacher about it— is simply irrelevant and neither confirms nor
validates anything.
Moreover, what the absence of underwear may
indicate is that Dylan "slipped away" to get rid of it unobserved.
Perhaps she was embarrassed because the underwear was stained, or perhaps she
thought her mother was going to scold her if she got dirty. The fact is that it
seems that Dylan was able to dispose of her underwear without any of her
caregivers (or anyone) noticing. She may have disappeared for a few minutes in
order to discard her panties in such a way that they would never be found again.
At what point would Dylan be free to go where she wanted and elude the
vigilance of all elders? It seems that the ideal moment would be when Allen
went to the toilet. In this way, it is perfectly possible that the two
"disappeared" for a few minutes but were not together. In any case, she
had to dedicate several minutes of the period in which she had been supposedly
out of the adult's radar to do away with her underwear.
Once again, the way of presenting the facts leads
the reader to think that there is some relationship between the episode in the
TV room (the head resting on the lap) and the alleged episode of abuse, when it
is not true. On the one hand, the ruling considers the TV room episode to be
proven fact and does not consider it to contain any kind of abuse. On the other
hand, it should be evident that, if abuse had taken place, the nanny would have
immediately sounded the alarm (Mia Farrow tells us in her memoirs that this
nanny was also clearly instructed not to leave Allen alone with the children).
Finally and even more importantly, the ruling
clearly states that there is no relationship, nor even temporary continuity,
between the television room episode and the alleged abuses. Indeed, judge Wilk
clearly speaks of "at other time of the day," which means that
whatever happened in the TV room was not any kind of sexual abuse, nor did it
result in any kind of sexual abuse. From what we know, it is reasonable to
suppose that, had the abuse taken place, the nanny would have warned her colleagues,
that they would all have entered the room and that they would have left the
place together.
In either case, there is neither
"consistency" nor confirmation —nor, in fact, any relationship— between
this testimony and the alleged episode of abuse.
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."
[ii] Mia
& Woody. Love and Betrayal. Kristi Groteke with Marjorie Rosen, Rd
First Carrol & Graf, 1994, pag 126.
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.
[iii] Mia
& Woody. Love and Betrayal. Kristi Groteke with Marjorie Rosen, Rd
First Carrol & Graf, 1994, pag 129.
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.
Thompson added that on one occasion almost immediately after the
alleged incident, Moses, 14, another child Allen and Farrow adopted, indicated
doubts about what, if anything, had taken place. "Moses came over to me
and said that he believes that Ms. Farrow had made up the accusation that was
being said by Dylan," Thompson said in an affidavit.
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