Anyone else seen Woodie Allen's movie "Magic In The Moonlight"?

[Whateverist]

I'm not convinced Dylan Farrow's accusations weren't created by a spiteful and hysterical mother. I don't know that for a fact but it strikes me as equally likely from what I've read. Whatever we choose to believe about this I think we can agree that the evidence is far from conclusive.

It's not up to you or I though; we have courts which decide these cases.

That's true but it did come to the attention of the judicial system at the time and they chose not to prosecute. I'm not sure what you make of that. I'm not sure why that was either.

Maybe a little bit of context: I'm from the UK. We recently have a large number of court cases against celebrities regarding child abuse; several people been convicted, including popular entertainers. A lot of them were very old (some died before the allegations even emerged) and these crimes happened decades ago.

It seems to me that back when these crimes took place, lots of people got away with it, even if they were questioned by police (the investigations were flawed at the time). There are probably hundreds more cases which won't even get to see a court room; it's a scandal of epic proportions.

In my view, it shouldn't matter if the case has already been investigated, or whether the family situation at the time was hostile. I'm not convinced that the police had the right attitude back then, and if an adult has stuck to their story, there should be a proper investigation. That investigation may find Allen not guilty, or may not turn up any evidence other than an accusation, but it should happen.

As for criminals creating art, or course they can, and some of it might be enjoyable. However I can't in good conscience pay money (part of which ultimately ends up in the hands of the artist) to see art created by someone who has had accusations of child abuse placed on them and has not been properly investigated / tried for them.

It's a personal thing. If you can do it, I've got nothing against you.

And vice versa. You're far from alone in your reaction to Woodie Allen and his work on account of all this. Reasonable people can disagree.

But I confess I do have a dog in this fight. Have you ever heard of Recovered Memory Syndrome? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome

False memory syndrome (FMS) describes a condition in which a person's identity and relationships are affected by memories that are factually incorrect but that they strongly believe.[1] Peter J. Freyd originated the term,[2] which the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) subsequently popularized. The term is not recognized as a mental disorder[3] in any of the medical manuals, such as the ICD-10[4] or the DSM-5;[5] however, the principle that memories can be altered by outside influences is overwhelmingly accepted by scientists.[6][7][8][9]

False memories may be the result of recovered memory therapy, a term also defined by the FMSF in the early 1990s,[10] which describes a range of therapy methods that are prone to creating confabulations. Some of the influential figures in the genesis of the theory are forensic psychologist Ralph Underwager, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus and sociologist Richard Ofshe.

The reason this came to my attention is that two my wife's sisters accused their father of sexual abuse as the result of undergoing therapy which utilized hypnosis among other techniques to recover lost memories. When the first one made the announcement we assumed there must be something to it since this phenomenon was all the rage here twenty years ago. Plus my father in law, the only one in his family of Italian immigrants born in this country was always flamboyantly flirtatious with waitresses .. something we wrote off to his old world ways. So we were receptive to the charge when we first heard it.

But no details were forthcoming. We were concerned because, as the only family living near my wife's parents, we assumed we'd need to support her father in coping with the fall out. Not only didn't we get anything to work from but our requests were met with suspicion, hostility and ultimately rejection. That sister wrote my wife, her son and myself off too. The youngest sister went on to do the same.

As a result we became involved with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, following their newsletters and the research. I found it enlightening and as a result came to the conclusion that it was far more likely that this had befallen my sister-in-law than that she had been abused by her father.

So having seen the way shoddy psychotherapy can harm both those it seeks to help as well as their families, I am very sensitive to the possibility that the daughter and the mother could have been duped and not even be aware of it. As a result, even without a ruling from the judicial system, I am sympathetic toward Allen but also recognize that even if he is innocent, the mother and daughter are also victims.