Opinion: A moral conundrum

It has been a bad month for trial by media. The tragic death of Philip Seymour Hoffman attracted a wealth of tabloid sleazebags, competing to expose the gory details of
his death (hi TMZ!); or to use his funeral as a fashion PR stunt (stay classy, Valentino!); or to expose a deep ignorance of the nature of addiction, and judge him for not loving his children enough to stay alive (thanks, Daily Beast!).

But the response to Dylan Farrow’s recently reiterated claim that Woody Allen molested her as a child has been even more distressing. Due to the statute of limitations, there will never be a criminal trial. Allen will never be legally declared guilty. However, it’s the public scrutiny which has engulfed Dylan Farrow that must be examined. When it comes to sexual abuse, can it be that the presumption of innocence is being extended to the accused, but not the accuser?

It is not an arena in which certainty can be claimed. On the one hand Woody Allen passed a lie detector test; his wife Mia Farrow refused to take one; doctors said, when the accusations were first made, that there was no sign of molestation; and et the police stated that there was enough cause to charge Allen, but chose not to.

My own gut feeling is that allowing Woody Allen the presumption of innocence, while obviously a legal necessity in any civilised society, is not in itself a neutral stance. Because the corollary is to ignore consistent reports of abuse, unchanged for decades; it is to read the testimony of Dylan Farrow and to choose to believe that she is lying, making her the guilty party; it is to overlook the fact that, in response, Woody Allen launched a scathing attack on his ex-wife, as if women are not only hysterical, but interchangeable; it is to ignore the highly questionable distinction between “biological daughter” and “adopted daughter”, made by the media in order to render a sexual interest in her, on his part, somehow more palatable; it is to miss the fact that a famous film director had journalists, actors and fans jump to his defence, while the testimony of a young woman who says she has been abused was torn apart; and it is to forget what it costs for someone to stand up and say: “I am a victim of sexual assault”...

As a director, Woody Allen’s oeuvre has been about holding a mirror up to our humanity – or aspects of it – in order to make us laugh, cry and fall in love. However his ‘private life’ has held a mirror up to our inhumane treatment of victims of abuse...

See also Anne Sexton