THE REPORT OF THE CLINIC YALE -NEW HAVEN

When he initiated the investigation of the complaints received for sexual abuse against Woody Allen, the prosecutor Fran Maco applied for the prestigious Yale-New Haven child-abuse Clinic will make a report on Dylan's reliability as a witness. Although the report that was produced as a result of this petition has never seen the light in its entirety, its main conclusion is widely known:

It is our expert opinion that Dylan was not sexually abused by Mr, Allen. Further, we believe that Dylan"s statements on videotape and her statements to us during our evaluation do not refer to actual events that occurred to her on August 4, 1992

The professionals who prepared the Report did not testify at the trial and the notes they collected during the interviews were destroyed when the final report was made. There is only one declaration prior to the trial of Dr John M. Leventhal, director of the Report. As a result, the Report could not be defended in the trial by those who had done it and the parties could not question the professionals who had materially conducted the interviews with Dylan. That is, Woody Allen found one of the main evidences that counted in his favor lost much of his power of conviction. Although it is not possible to explain with complete certainty what happened, it seems reasonable to suppose that the fact of being involved at the request of the prosecution in a criminal investigation opened in another State (the custody trial was in New York and the investigation carried out by Fran Maco developed in Connecticut) could influence its inability / refusal to come to testify.

In any case, we will try to reconstruct what is possible of the Report, the conclusions reached and the reasons why it came to them, the criticisms it received and its final assessment by the courts.

THE ELABORATION OF THE REPORT

To reach it, the professionals of the Clinic met with the police and the prosecutor, Frank Maco, for preliminary information. They collected more information from one of the detectives, John Mucherino, to handle all the data that the police had. Between September 18 and November 13, they conducted a total of nine separate interviews with Dylan and his mother, Mia Farrow. On October 14, they interviewed Dylan's nanny Kristi Groteke and between November 17 and January 7 they had three interviews with Woody Allen. Finally, they met with Mia Farrow to review the recording she had made of Dylan between August 5 and 6. According to one of the fragments of the report circulated by the network, The other nanny present on August 4 was also interviewed and the two psychotherapists treating the children, Dr. Coates and Dr. Stcuhtz

When starting their work, the team proposed the study as an attempt to corroborate or falsify some of these basic hypotheses:

1.- That the Dylan demonstrations were true and Allen had sexually abused her.

2.- That the manifestations of Dylan were not true and had been made by an emotionally vulnerable minor trapped in a disturbed family situation and who responded to stress

3.- That he had been taught or influenced by his mother.

Everything we know about the development of the sessions (very little) we owe to Kristi Groteke. Dylan's sessions lasted about an hour. The session in which the professionals from Yale interviewed Kristi herself lasted three hours.

Dylan's first session at Yale was on Wednesday, September 22, and every Friday thereafter she would meet with the Yale-New Haven team, who would talk to her for an hour or so. None of us knows what her responses were; not even Mia has seen the records, which were sealed and have since then destroyed. I was interviewed at Yale for three hours.(1)

RESULT OF THE REPORT.

As we have already pointed out, the most relevant conclusion of the Report and the only one on whose foundation we know something true, was that Dylan had not suffered any sexual aggression. The reasons that are alleged to reach this conclusion are the following:

1.- There were important inconsistencies between Dylan's statements recorded by his mother between days 5 and 6 and what Dylan herself narrated to the Hospital team, as well as among the various narrations made at the Hospital. These inconsistencies affected essential elements of the narrative. The doctor gave an example of the inconsistencies:

"Those were not minor inconsistencies," he said. "She told us initially that she hadn't been touched in the vaginal area, and she then told us that she had, then she told us that she hadn't."(2)

2.- Dylan seemed to have difficulties to narrate the touching

3.- The narration of the abuses was little spontaneous, excessively controlled and reflective and suggested that something rehearsed was being repeated.

This lack of spontaneity is aggravated by some manifestations of the girl

 At one point, he said she told him, "I like to cheat on my stories."(3)

4.- The description of the details surrounding the alleged abuse was unusual and inconsistent.

The newspapers of the time expand this information a little.

Dr. Leventhal said it was "very striking" that each time Dylan spoke of the abuse, she coupled it with "one, her father's relationship with Soon-Yi, and two, the fact that it was her poor mother, her poor mother, "who had lost a career in Mr. Allen's films.(4)

The report reveals that the Yale New Haven professionals found other possible causes as the source of the girl's statements.

The doctor suggested a connection between Miss Farrow's outrage over Mr. Allen's affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, and the accusation made by Dylan, who said it was unusually protective of her mother. "It's quite possible - as a matter of fact, we think it's medically probable - that she stuck to that story because of the intense relationship she had with her mother," he said.

Even before the claim of abuse was made August, he said, "The view of Mr. Allen as an evil and awful and terrible man permeated the household." The view that he had molested Soon-Yi and was a potential molester of Dylan permeated the household. "(5)

He also said it was possible that Miss Farrow encouraged her child to fabricate simply by videotaping her telling the story, because Dylan liked to perform. (6)

Dylan's relationship with his mother appears, in one way or another, linked to Dylan's behavior

http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-05/news/mn-31539_1_daughter-farrow

According to Dr. John M. Leventhal, a pediatrician who headed the New Haven team, Dylan was "extraordinarily protective of her mother and did not want to see her mother hurt."

Leventhal said that Dylan stuck to her story of child abuse "because of the intense relationship she had with her mother and because of the fact she had some difficulty distinguishing what was true and what was not true." (7)

Kristi Groteke also offers interesting information

Dylan,  at  one  of her first sessions,  told  the  Yale  team:  "I  love my mother. That's  all  I  have to say.  I  love  my mother and  I  hate mv  dad."  She  confided  that  she  had  begun  to  feel  this  after  she learned  about  Woody's  affair with  Soon-Yi.  "I'm  like,  why  me?" she  said.  "Why do  I  have  to  solve  this  problem?"  On  October  2 Mia  admitted  to  the  Yale  team  that  she  had  told  Dylan:  "If you don't  want  Daddy  to  be  your  daddy  anymore,  he  doesn't  have to  be."  Throughout  the  grim  days  of  that  fall  and  winter,  she would,  in  fact,  constantly  reassure  Dylan  with  these  same words. Then  on  October  30,  Dylan  dropped  a  little  bomb  in  New Haven:  She  recanted  her  testimony.  When  Mia  brought  her  for her  session  that  day.  Mia  explained  to  the  social  workers  that Dylan  had  not  wanted  to  come.  In  addition,  as  Mia  testified,

Dylan  had  earlier  confided  to  her  that  Woody  "didn't  do  any-thing;  nothing  happened."  Later  that  afternoon,  however,  Dylan reversed  herself  and  denied  her  denial.  As  Mia  explained,  she had  simply gotten  sick  and  tired  of being grilled  round  the  clock by  a  bunch  of  strangers.  Instead—and  understandably—she longed  to  stay  home  and  watch  cartoons  on  TV. (8)

The  Yale-New  Haven  Report  had  concluded,  among  other things,  that:  1)  Dylan  was  so  enmeshed  with  her  mother  that she  felt  herself  to  be  "her  mother's  problem  solver,"  and,  2) Dylan's  telling  about  the  touching  could  be  construed  as  a  way to  protect  her  mother  and  banish  her  father. (9)

We know from Wilk's court ruling that the Yale team estimated that the tape recording by Mia Farrow was the product of leading questions and the girl's fantasy.

We  also know from the ruling that: The report advised that the visiting regime of Allen with Satchel be resumed and reached some conclusion about it, although we do not know if only in relation to the visits; He also recommended that Mia Farrow start therapy and, at some point, the report was critical of Allen and his behavior. Interestingly, the criticism against Allen is the only thing in the Report that Wilk accepted as evidence in his sentence, picking up Dr. Leventhal's testimony as one of the credible reports about Allen's inappropriate behavior. Apparently for these specific purposes it did not matter that Leventhal never saw Allen and Dylan interact or that this opinion went beyond the initial commission framework (two criticisms that Wilk makes of the report regarding the other conclusions)

CRITICS

The report was, of course, the main focus of the attacks by Mia Farrow's attorneys and they hired Dr. Stephen Hermman Dr. Hermman made a series of assessments that, as soon as they were considered correct by the judge, were included in the report. Judgment. Let's see them. Dr. Herman blamed the Yale-New Haven team (1) for making visitation recommendations without seeing the father interact with the child; (2) for not adequately supporting his conclusion that Dylan suffered from a disorder of thought; (3) to draw conclusions about Satchel, whom they never saw, (4) to conclude that no abuse occurred when the supporting data were inconclusive; and (5) for recommending that Ms. Farrow enter therapy. Of course, I also point out the inconvenience of having destroyed the notes that each team member took in a case that, he understood, was obviously going to end up in court. The first thing that draws attention to this extensive list is that only one of the objections is related to the main purpose of the report. Dr. Hermman considered that the data did not allow affirming that no abuse had occurred, but that it should have been stated that the data did not allow any conclusions to be drawn in this regard. It is striking that the expert quoted by Mia Farrow was not in a position to claim that the evidence suggested that the abuse had occurred. We do not have access to the complete report of the Hospital, but Dr. Herman did have it and after examining it he did not say that it was incomplete or that the interviews were poorly performed or poorly documented. What he said is that, in his opinion, what was extracted from them was not that there had been no abuse, but that it was not possible to determine if it had occurred. Regarding some of the specific points indicated in the Report, we know that Dr. Herman made other considerations, but they were only attended by Judge Wilk which were included in the Judgment.

As for them, which can be supposed to be the best founded, it is not possible to make a definitive judgment since we lack the text of the Report and, therefore, we do not know what exactly is criticized. For example, Herman criticizes that the report refers to Allen's visits with Satchel, when no member of the team saw Satchel, or that recommendations were made about Allen's visits with Dylan, when no observation of the interaction was made. from both. These criticisms seem reasonable, but without knowing the tenor of the original report it is impossible to know if they are founded or not. For example, once the abuses have been ruled out, it would be perfectly reasonable for it to be recommended - at least - to return to the visitation regime that had been suspended or reduced as a result of the complaint. To make such a recommendation it would not be necessary to interview Satchel or see Allen's interaction with Dylan. Nor is it very clear because making recommendations to Mia Farrow, whom they did see and interviewed several times, could be criticized.

In any case, as far as we know, most of the observations made in the report remain unchallenged. Thus, there is no challenge that explains or finds a way to detract from the recurring union in the girl's narrative of abuses with the Soon-Yi theme and with the career of her "poor, poor mother"; nothing is said in any of them about the fact that Dylan was seen as "her mother problem solver", or what was the problem that Dylan felt he had to solve or how he thought he should. The conclusion that the recording of the tape is the result of suggestive questions or the child's fantasy is not answered in any way and, in fact, It is partly supported by the conclusions of Dr Herman, the expert from Mia Farrow, who acknowledged that the way in which Mia Farrow questioned Dylan could "... Set a tone for a Child about how to answer"; As for the fact that it gives the impression of being a learned narrative, we know from Kristi Goteke's book that Dr. Herman indicated that it could be a quality of Dylan's narratives in general; However, the clinic staff interviewed Dylan nine times and Dr. Herman none, so it seems evident that the clinic was in a better position to appreciate that circumstance. In short, although different criticisms are made about the form and conclusions, the criticisms about the findings are minimal and do not affect the essential ones.

The destruction of the notes and the refusal to testify in the custody trial

One of the most recurrent criticisms of the Yale New Haven Report is based on the fact that the individual notes collected by each of the doctors throughout the interviews were destroyed at the time of writing the final report. The report incorporated the common conclusions and a description of all the sessions, but not the individual notes of the team members. This fact, together with the impossibility of questioning the professionals who did not attend the trial, determined that Judge Wilk refused to give value to the report - although in this specific aspect the court of appeal expressly stated that it did not share Wilk's criteria and that the report should be taken into account- Although we do not have access to the protocols of the Clinic in those years, we must bear in mind that we are talking about an official investigation commissioned by the prosecution. Any deviation from the protocols that would compromise the investigation in progress would have resulted in disciplinary actions, if not criminal, against the clinic and / or against the team members. None of this happened. In fact, among those who have made public criticism of this particular fact has never been the prosecutor who commissioned the case: Frank Maco.

The destruction of the documents related to each of the interviews AFTER having incorporated into the report the consensus among the members of the team regarding the notes of the two interviewers, was in 1.992 a habitual way to keep confidential, both the investigation and the of the child's statements. The Yale New Haven Sexual Abuse Clinic had been in existence for around 20 years in 1992. It was one of the pioneer institutions in the country in the study and discovery of child abuse and one of the most prestigious. At that time I had made more than 1,700 interventions and nobody could say that in this case they did something different than what they had done in the previous 1,699. There have been 25 years of constant attempts to discredit the Yale New Haven Report and no one has been able to say that they violated the protocols of the Clinic or that in this case they acted differently from all previous or following ones.

The report, dismissed by Wilk, was rehabilitated by the court of appeal that corrected Wilk in this specific aspect and pointed out that the considerations made by the Clinic should be taken into account.

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INDEX

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(1)  Mia & Woody. Love and Betrayal. Kristi Groteke with Marjorie Rosen, Rd First Carrol  & Graf, 1994, pag 167.

(2) http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/04/nyregion/doctor-cites-inconsistencies-in-dylan-farrow-s-statements.html

(3) http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/04/nyregion/doctor-cites-inconsistencies-in-dylan-farrow-s-statements.html *

*It should be noted that despite the text of the news the interviews were conducted by the team's interview specialists, not by Dr. Leventhal.

(4) http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/04/nyregion/doctor-cites-inconsistencies-in-dylan-farrow-s-statements.html

(5) http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/04/nyregion/doctor-cites-inconsistencies-in-dylan-farrow-s-statements.html

(6) http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/04/nyregion/doctor-cites-inconsistencies-in-dylan-farrow-s-statements.html

(7) http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-05/news/mn-31539_1_daughter-farrow

(8) Mia & Woody. Love and Betrayal. Kristi Groteke with Marjorie Rosen, Rd First Carrol  & Graf, 1994, pag 168.

(9) Mia & Woody. Love and Betrayal. Kristi Groteke with Marjorie Rosen, Rd First Carrol  & Graf, 1994, pag 168.