He was in therapy for himself, but he was also in therapy initially because he failed completely to bond with his son. Then the same therapist began treating him for what all parties agreed was a very unhealthy and damaging obsession with Dylan, which made demands upon her that were not in her interests - the reverse. The main criticism you could make of Farrow here - and I do - is in supporting Allen's later adoption of Dylan.
I'm interested that people keep talking about "the timing" of the allegations, as if they were made as soon as the Soon Yi mess emerged. They didn't. Farrow found the images of Soon Yi in mid-January 1992. She then supported contact between Allen and the younger children for months and months afterwards, albeit finding it hard, and only stopped contact after Dylan made the allegations, in August. People are stating that Farrow took this step after finding the images as if that were immediate revenge for the affair, but she didn't: it was 8 months later. Farrow didn't go to the police with her worries, either; she talked to her lawyer, who very sensibly told her to take Dylan to a paediatrician. Farrow specifically said at the time that she didn't know if Dylan was telling the truth and hoped it was a fantasy, but that she sounded convincing - that is in the sworn statement of the therapist treating Allen, Satchel and Dylan, and whose evidence is primarily supportive (in terms of the sexual abuse allegations - she openly acknowledges the treatment was for grossly inappropriate boundaries on Allen's part) of her continued main patient: Allen. There was no assumption on Farrow's part that Allen was guilty, though she said Dylan's version of events sounded frighteningly plausible. That paediatrician reported Allen to the police, as they were legally obligated to do. From that point, it was out of Farrow's hands. She stopped contact between Allen and Dylan, but are people seriously blaming her for that? The police were involved in a child abuse investigation - was she meant to keep going with contact sessions? It's also notable, though people never mention it, that she didn't stop him seeing either of the boys, as long as a nanny was present at those contact sessions. A mother inventing abuse allegations to deprive the father of all contact would be unlikely to send her uninvolved 4 year old on regular contact visits, saying she had to balance his need for his father with protection. The only child she refused to allow contact with was the one at the centre of an outstanding sexual abuse investigation.
Allen keeps saying that he took and passed a lie detector test, while Farrow refused to. What he does not say is that the Connecticut police asked him to take one independently, and he refused. He then got his lawyers to set one up with a provider of his choice, which he passed - and he challenged Farrow to take one with that same provider, which she refused. The police never asked Farrow to take one, as she was not under investigation. So Allen, who himself refused to take an independent lie detector test, is decrying Farrow's refusal to take one he would have set up and controlled while trumpeting his having passed a test. Yet he is the only one of the two who refused to take a police-requested, independently-assessed test.
Allen also says he would never have been in the attic because he's claustrophobic. He insisted that to the police. When they then asked him how his hair had been found on a painting up there, he changed his story and acknowledged he may have gone up after all. It could be a faulty recollection. Or, you know - he could have been lying.
The "expert report" people keep citing has serious problems, which is why the prosecutor and custody trial judge refused to accept it as of much value:
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The "experts" people keep citing were in fact an academic social worker, qualified to PhD level, and another with only a Masters in social work. The paediatrician who made up the third person on the panel merely signed it off after the other two had completed their investigation - he never met any of the parties involved. I don't think this is quite the stellar constellation of hugely-experienced child abuse investigators people have in mind, really.
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Despite their lack of psychological or psychiatric training, the report appended clinical labels to Dylan, and diagnosed her with a disorder. A child psychiatrist who was brought in to look at the report stated that he disagreed completely with their assessments in this way, and also found no credible evidence to support their statement that she was a fantasist or coached. Their primary evidence for fantasy was Dylan's insistence that "dead heads" were kept in the attic. They never asked any of the family about this, assuming it had to be wrong... and it transpired that Farrow kept all her wigs from past roles up there for the children to play with, on foam mannequin heads. So Dylan was actually not lying or fantasising. She was using childlike language to explain a reality.
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The team refused to testify at any stage, stating they had destroyed their notes and therefore could not support their report any further than it stood for itself. The deposition for trial was written by the paediatrician, who had never even met, far less examined, Dylan or Farrow. He further refused to present himself to the court for cross-examination. This is automatic for expert witnesses, because otherwise there is no way that their statements can be tested.
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The team disclosed their findings to Allen without any warning that it was confidential medical information concerning a child. He then stood on the steps of the courtroom and held a press conference in which he shared all the information with the media, despite it concerning his vulnerable 7 year old. In this country, that would earn you jail time.
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A child psychiatrist with extensive experience in abuse cases found five main problems with the report: that they never witnessed the child interacting with their parents yet made visitation recommendations; that they did not explain or support their (unqualified) diagnosis that Dylan had a thought disorder; that they never even laid eyes on Satchel, yet drew conclusions pertaining to him; that they concluded there had been no abuse without providing justification, and on inconclusive evidence; that they recommended Farrow enter therapy, which was outside their remit and served mainly to support their statement she may have coached Dylan.
The custody trial judge found they had destroyed notes and refused to present themselves to court for questioning, and that they had markedly exceeded their mandate in a way no party had requested or agreed to.
Despite these problems, the paediatrician who had signed off the report (and refused to testify) acknowledged in his deposition that Allen would continue to need treatment if he were to behave appropriately with Dylan. There was not a single professional involved in the case who found his relationship with her anything but troubling - even those on his side. Not one expressed unqualified support for the relationship's being positive.
Nobody knows what happened, for sure. Some believe Dylan, some Allen. But pretending there's no real evidence for abuse here is silly. There was, and is. And it's telling that most of Allen's defences to the accusation are half-truths, at very best. He admitted he went into that attic, so bringing up his claustrophobia as he did last week is disingenuous. Similarly, droning on about the lie-detector test is less than fully candid - because the only person who refused to take a formally requested and independently administered test was Allen. And in terms of his awareness of his own culpability in events, it's also very telling that he is insisting the judge was against him because of the age gap between himself and Soon Yi. He is, still, absolutely unable to grasp the inevitable, catastrophic pain and harm he inflicted on that family - including his own supposedly beloved children - when he embarked upon an affair with their teenage sister, behind the backs of their and her mother. His narcissism in still apparently believing that his wants matter more than his own children's needs is not encouraging.