I typically eschew pop culture and would rather meet up with an old friend than meet a celebrity any day. But I find myself compelled to throw down with all the bloggers voicing opinions about the Mia Farrow - Woody Allen child abuse scandal. Since the publication of the letter from Malone (Dylan) Farrow in response to Allen being honored at the Golden Globes, An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow, there has been an onslaught of back and forth, the Woody defenders accusing those who side with the Farrow clan of not knowing the facts and vice versa. He said vs. she said at it’s most brutal. I certainly can’t add to the various possible scenarios that have been proposed by people almost as removed from the personal lives of those involved as I am, but I can lay out what I do know. My intent is not to convince you of what happened or did not happen, but just to share some insight that I have gained from several years of working with families created through adoption.
Depending upon where your sympathies lie, Woody Allen’s relationship with Soon Yi Previn has nothing to do with the allegations involving his daughter, Dylan, or it is the slippery slope that delivered him to the attic in Connecticut. I don’t know for a fact which, if either, scenario is true. What I do know as fact is that Soon Yi was adopted by Mia Farrow and her then husband, Andre Previn, in 1978, when she was approximately 7 years old and that prior to her adoption, she was living on the streets in Korea. What I do know is that children who need to survive on the streets are prey to all sorts of horrors including being preyed upon sexually. What I do know is that these children often have done incredible jobs at surviving, doing whatever it took to stay alive, including prostitution.
What I do know is that children like Soon Yi do not experience the world as a safe and stable place. These children arrive at their adoptive homes with no idea of what a family is or does. They have in place the coping mechanisms that served them well on the street or in the orphanage, manipulation, superficial charm, stealing, and hoarding. They find it hard to believe that their adoptive parents have their best interests at heart. Ideally, over time, with tremendous perseverance their parents can gradually teach them that the job of adults is to provide them with safety and security. This is not a straight and steady path, but a journey with twists, turns and regressions.
It is a fact that Soon Yi’s adoptive parents divorced in 1979, about a year after her arrival. It is widely accepted that divorce throws an obstacle into any child’s path, but most are resilient enough to overcome this. For a child with a traumatic background who is just beginning to trust her parents, a divorce can serve as proof that her world is not safe or secure and adults are not to be trusted. Unlike children born into a family, she does not have a lifetime of loving experiences to draw from.
It is a fact that Woody Allen became involved with Mia Farrow in 1980 and through that relationship met then 9 year old Soon Yi. Actually, it is not a fact that Soon Yi was 9 at the time, she could have been younger. Given her background, there is no way to know her birthdate, 9 is the older estimate. What I do know is that children who have suffered deprivation of the sort that Soon Yi did are well behind their chronological peers in terms of emotional development. That paired with the reactive coping strategies mentioned above give us a child who is charmingly precocious one minute and immature and needy the next. The type of child who is especially vulnerable to being taken advantage of by an adult whose own internal infrastructure is wobbly enough to allow him to forget or ignore the fact that adults are responsible for a child’s safety and sense of security.
It is a fact that Woody Allen admits to being engaged in an affair with Soon Yi when she was 20 (or 18) and he was 56 and still in a relationship with her mother, Mia Farrow. It is a fact that he has stated on several occasions that he does not think there was anything untoward in this. I don’t know for a fact that he’s wrong. I don’t know that unlike many young adults with similar histories, Soon Yi was not well beyond her years in terms of emotional maturity. I don’t know for a fact that she had not completely overcome the reactive coping mechanisms that would have made her vulnerable to being manipulated by the attentions of a much older, wealthy, and powerful man. I don’t know for a fact that she viewed the man who was her mother’s partner for 12 years and father to 3 of her siblings as a part of the family. Her concept of family may still have been vague. (Let’s pretend that doesn’t contradict the notion that she was exceptionally well grounded and mature at the time).
One last fact that I would like to mention is that families who are formed through adoption, by and large, do not like the adjective “adoptive” thrown before mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister. They feel that the descriptor minimizes their relationships by implying that the adoptive parent-child or sibling bond is not as strong as the one among biological family members. I don’t know, but do wonder if this is why many discussions defending Allen’s behavior with Soon Yi or alleged abuse of Dylan make sure that it is abundantly clear that that they are “adoptive” daughters and “adoptive” sisters and all the rest are “adoptive” as well. Perhaps using adoptive as a qualifier to the family relationships makes Woody’s affair with Soon Yi seem like it didn’t leave a real family in ruins (an indisputable fact).
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