Following several celebrity denouncements against Woody Allen in the recent months, Moses Farrow continues to support his adopted father and details alleged abuse from his adopted mother, Mia Farrow, in a new essay published Wednesday.
“I’m a very private person and not at all interested in public attention,” Moses, 40, writes. “But, given the incredibly inaccurate and misleading attacks on my father, Woody Allen, I feel that I can no longer stay silent as he continues to be condemned for a crime he did not commit.”
Moses was adopted from South Korea by Mia Farrow when he was 2 years old and was then co-adopted by Allen in 1992. Moses, who now works as a family therapist and photographer, says the “fatal dysfunction within my childhood home had nothing to do with Woody.”
“It pains me to recall instances in which I witnessed siblings, some blind or physically disabled, dragged down a flight of stairs to be thrown into a bedroom or a closet, then having the door locked from the outside,” he wrote of Mia. “She even shut my brother Thaddeus, paraplegic from polio, in an outdoor shed overnight as punishment for a minor transgression.”
He said that Soon-Yi Previn, who is now married to Allen, was Mia’s frequent “scapegoat” and allegedly had a large porcelain centerpiece once thrown toward her head. He claims Mia once also beat her with a telephone receiver.
Moses also alleges in the article that his sister Tam, who reportedly passed away at age 21 from heart failure, actually committed suicide by overdosing on pills. Mia’s son Thaddeus committed suicide in 2016 and her daughter Lark died from AIDS-related causes in 2008.
In 2014, sister Dylan Farrow wrote an open letter in The New York Times detailing alleged sexual assault at the hands of her adopted father, Woody Allen. She wrote in detail about a train set that was making a loop around the attic where the alleged assault took place.
In his new essay, Moses details his version of Aug. 4, 1992, writing, “It’s a precise and compelling narrative, but there’s a major problem: there was no electric train set in that attic. There was, in fact, no way for kids to play up there, even if we had wanted to. It was an unfinished crawl space …”
He also claims to have witnessed Mia coaching Dylan on what to say. At the time, Mia and Allen were going through a bitter custody battle after it came out that Allen was involved in an intimate relationship with Mia’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi.
“Frightened and beaten down, I, too, played my part. I even wrote a letter condemning Woody, saying that he had done something horrible and unforgivable, and had broken my dreams,” Moses writes. “I even read the letter for the news media that were now regularly gathered at the end of our driveway, knowing that doing so would earn my mother’s approval. That public denouncement of my father remains the biggest regret of my life.”
Moses has been publicly defending Allen since Dylan wrote the Times essay in 2014. He has been estranged from his adopted mother for many years.
Toward the end of the essay he addresses both Dylan and Mia.
To my sister Dylan: Like you, I believe in the power of speaking out. I have broken my silence about the abuse inflicted by our mother. My healing began only after getting away from her. And what she has done to you is unbearable. I wish you peace, and the wisdom to understand that devoting your life to helping our mother destroy our father’s reputation is unlikely to bring you closure in any kind of lasting way.
Finally, to my mother: One thing you always said you appreciated about me was my ability to listen. I listened to you for years and held your truth above all others. You once said to me, “It’s not healthy to hold onto anger.” Yet here we are, 26 years later. I’m guessing your next step will be to launch a campaign to discredit me for speaking out. I know it comes with the territory. And it’s a burden I am willing to bear. But, after all this time, enough is enough. You and I both know the truth. And it’s time for this retribution to end.
Dylan responded on Wednesday afternoon by saying, “As I said when he last made these claims, this is an attempt to deflect from a credible allegation made by an adult woman, by trying to impugn my mother who has only ever been supportive of me and my siblings. It’s easily disproven, contradicts years of his own statements, is beyond hurtful to me personally, and is part of a larger effort to discredit and distract from my assault. My brother is a troubled person. I’m so sorry he’s doing this.”
A rep for Mia Farrow did not immediately return our request for comment.