Mia Farrow's Brother Sentenced for Child Sex Abuse

The brother of movie star Mia Farrow will spend the next 10 years in prison for sexually abusing two boys in Maryland.

John Charles Villiers-Farrow, 67, was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison, with 15 years suspended.

John Charles Villiers-Farrow,  Mia Farrow's creepy brother

Villiers-Farrow entered an Alford plea in July to two counts of child abuse in the molestation of two 10-year-old boys who were his neighbors in Anne Arundel County, Md., in 2002.

He had faced 39 counts. 39 counts dropped to 2? That's a plea bargain and a half. Authorities say he abused one victim for seven years, beginning when the boy was nine, and abused another boy from the ages of 8 to 13.

An Alford plea means the suspect does not admit guilt, but concedes there is enough evidence for a conviction. What a strange thing that is. Is he guilty or not? If he's not, why is he going to jail? Weird, very weird.

Villiers-Farrow was arrested in November following an investigation that began when two men came forward in August 2012. At the time, Anne Arundel County police had recently received information that several children were sexually abused in the Edgewater area.

According to court documents, the boys were abused in Villiers-Farrow's home, and a few times in a nearby camper. The victims told police that Villiers-Farrow would show them pornographic movies. The encounters escalated to touching and then to oral sex, the documents said.

Mia Farrow

Villiers-Farrow made headlines in 1992 when he commented on the controversy surrounding sister Mia's custody battle with Woody Allen, and Allen's relationship with Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi. At the time, Villiers-Farrow told People magazine, Allen "is going to be indicted, and he's going to be ruined. I think when all of it comes out, he's going to go to jail." He didn't, unfortunately.

People magazine described John as "a sometime screenwriter and boat salesman outside Annapolis, Md." A Baltimore Sun article from 1998 described "John Farrow" as co-owner of Chesapeake Catamaran Center in Annapolis, though that business has since been sold.

Villiers-Farrow also had a brush with fame in 1968 when he accompanied Mia and their sister, Prudence, to visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India. The Beatles arrived in India to meet with Maharishi while the Farrows were there. Villiers-Farrow is just one of many nightmare stories associated with people who visited the Maharishi that year. Much, much more to come on that story at a later date.

He appeared as a teen in the Robert Stack movie "John Paul Jones," which was written by his father, screenwriter and director John Farrow. Villiers-Farrow's mother was actress Maureen O'Sullivan.

Mia Farrow, UNICEF
Goodwill Ambassador

The website IMDB says Villiers-Farrow also had an uncredited role in the 1954 Elizabeth Taylor movie, "The Last Time I Saw Paris." And a Brooklyn newspaper said Villiers-Farrow was scheduled to have a movie role at the young age of 5 months, playing a baby in his father's movie "Blaze of Noon" with Anne Baxter and William Holden.

Mia Farrow became famous for her roles in the TV show "Peyton Place" and in movies including "Rosemary's Baby," and Woody Allen movies including "Zelig," "Broadway Danny Rose" and "Hannah and Her Sisters."

More recently, she has served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and as an activist for humanitarian aid and political change in Sudan.

Dylan Farrow Began a Vital Narrative on Pedophilia - 3 More Stories

When 28-year-old Dylan Farrow wrote an angry open letter in The New York Times accusing her adoptive father, Woody Allen, of sexually molesting her at age seven, America exploded with opinions. 

Many readers believed her every word, their opinions of Allen forever tarnished; others suspected that her mother, actress Mia Farrow, had put Dylan up to it—or even that Dylan was flat-out lying.

But whatever you think of the case itself (no charges were filed against Allen when the allegation was investigated more than 20 years ago, and he continues to deny any guilt), Dylan's passionate public words ignited a conversation about child sex abuse—and sparked all kinds of personal memories for survivors.

Three of them tell you their heroic tales of healing, moving on, getting justice...and finding peace.


I Confronted My Abuser—and Then I Forgave Him

I grew up in a small city in Missouri, and my parents were so normal—Dad was a teacher, Mom a secretary. But I always knew we were different from other families. My father sat me on his lap to open his Playboy and Penthouse magazines and walked around in front of me naked.

At first, when he'd come into my bedroom after I was asleep—I'd smell the alcohol on his breath—he'd lie on me and put his fingers inside me. At some point between when I was seven and 10 (that's how much I blocked it out), it was flat-out rape.

I can't remember how many times my father raped me. I turned to food, but I also immersed myself in schoolwork—all the way through medical school. And I became an emergency room physician because being the calm person in the middle of chaos felt so familiar to me.

I was getting a facial three years ago when the aesthetician put a warm washcloth over my face—the same way my father used to smother me with a teddy bear. ("Just lie quietly," he'd say before raping me.) I jumped up, paid, and ran to my car. I was crying so hard I couldn't drive. I sat there in solitude and started yelling what I had not yelled when I was nine: "Help me! Help me! Help me!"

That year I talked to a psychiatrist about whether I should report my father. He wasn't around kids anymore; he was 65. We decided we'd think about it for a week and then make a decision.

Almost exactly a week later, my father was hit by a car. I flew to Kansas City, Missouri, and walked into his intensive care room. I asked to be alone with him. There, bending over his face, I told him that I remembered everything and that for him to do something that terrible to me, something terrible must have happened to him. I told him I wished somebody had loved him when he was little.

And then I told him I forgave him.

Minutes later, he stopped breathing. I know that my father was waiting for those words from me.
—Jennifer Hanes, 39, an emergency room physician and mother of two in Austin, Texas


I'm Still Getting Stronger Every Day

My stepfather, an Air Force sergeant, pled guilty to indecent acts with a minor, including touching and kissing my private parts and making me touch his. He went to prison for three years, but he still didn't get it. He wrote me letters from prison about the music he was listening to and how he was working out—as if he'd done nothing wrong! Yes, he was punished, but it was not enough compensation for my suffering or truthfulness.

I'd finally told a counselor about the abuse when I was almost 13, after trying to commit suicide. And even after he was sentenced, I continued to struggle—dropping out of school at one point, cutting boys' names into my arms, feeling like a toy to them with no self-worth, running away. Then I had a son at 19, and that kicked everything into full gear for me.

I eventually accepted what I can't change and decided to help other victims. I went to college. I juggled three part-time jobs. I am now a buyer for an aviation company—and every day a stronger person.
—Trisha Fielding, 34, a retail buyer for an aviation company and a mother of one in Titusville, Florida



I Worked With Cops to Convict My Rapist

It was two years ago that I made the "cold call." As I stood there with two detectives, I dialed my abuser's number, ready to lure him into a friendly chat about our "relationship." The cops had tapped his line. I wanted evidence.

I'd met this man—my friend's dad—10 years earlier. At 13 I wanted to be an artist, and he was an incredible painter. Extremely cunning, he saw from the get-go that I was naive and vulnerable, devoutly Christian, and unhappy at home. "I know what you're going through," he'd say. "Your parents don't understand you." I started coming over once a week. I'd sit on his couch; he'd scoot closer to me, grab my hand. "You're beautiful," he said one day. Then he kissed me. I was 13. It was my first kiss.

Within a couple of months, he was forcing me to perform oral sex on him. I felt very confused. I didn't realize I was being worked over by a master manipulator. When I was 14, he started raping me, keeping me around with threats, saying things like "If God brought us together, who are you to rip us apart?"

But I started to see through him, and by the time I was a sophomore in college, he was out my life. Physically, at least. When I fell into the most severe depression imaginable, I knew I needed to tell the police.

The case took a while, but he pled guilty to sexual abuse of a minor and will serve jail time.

I'll never forget how nauseated I felt during that cold call, pretending to have even the slightest bit of affection for this guy. I made myself talk sweetly, but the whole time I was so angry, I kept giving the phone the finger! After I hung up, one of the detectives said, "I almost started laughing when you did that. I'm so proud of you."
—Liz Rattan, 25, a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania

Congratulations to all three of these courageous young women. Child sexual abuse is not easily overcome. God bless you.

10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation

by Maureen Orth - Vanity Fair

Maureen Orth

This week, a number of commentators have published articles containing incorrect and irresponsible claims regarding the allegation of Woody Allen’s having sexually abused his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow.

As the author of two lengthy, heavily researched and thoroughly fact-checked articles that deal with that allegation—the first published in 1992, when Dylan was seven, and the second last fall, when she was 28—I feel obliged to set the record straight. As such, I have compiled the following list of undeniable facts:

1.   Mia never went to the police about the allegation of sexual abuse. Her lawyer told her on August 5, 1992, to take the seven-year-old Dylan to a pediatrician, who was bound by law to report Dylan’s story of sexual violation to law enforcement and did so on August 6.

2.   Allen had been in therapy for alleged inappropriate behavior toward Dylan with a child psychologist before the abuse allegation was presented to the authorities or made public. Mia Farrow had instructed her babysitters that Allen was never to be left alone with Dylan.

3.   Allen refused to take a polygraph administered by the Connecticut state police. Instead, he took one from someone hired by his legal team. The Connecticut state police refused to accept the test as evidence. The state attorney, Frank Maco, says that Mia was never asked to take a lie-detector test during the investigation.

4.   Allen subsequently lost four exhaustive court battles—a lawsuit, a disciplinary charge against the prosecutor, and two appeals—and was made to pay more than $1 million in Mia’s legal fees. Judge Elliott Wilk, the presiding judge in Allen’s custody suit against Farrow, concluded that there is “no credible evidence to support Mr. Allen’s contention that Ms. Farrow coached Dylan or that Ms. Farrow acted upon a desire for revenge against him for seducing Soon-Yi.”

Dylan Farrow

5.   In his 33-page decision, Judge Wilk found that Mr. Allen’s behavior toward Dylan was “grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.” The judge also recounts Farrow’s misgivings regarding Allen’s behavior toward Dylan from the time she was between two and three years old. According to the judge’s decision, Farrow told Allen, “You look at her [Dylan] in a sexual way. You fondled her . . . You don’t give her any breathing room. You look at her when she’s naked.”

6.   Dylan’s claim of abuse was consistent with the testimony of three adults who were present that day. On the day of the alleged assault, a babysitter of a friend told police and gave sworn testimony that Allen and Dylan went missing for 15 or 20 minutes, while she was at the house. Another babysitter told police and also swore in court that on that same day, she saw Allen with his head on Dylan’s lap facing her body, while Dylan sat on a couch “staring vacantly in the direction of a television set.”

A French tutor for the family told police and testified that that day she found Dylan was not wearing underpants under her sundress. The first babysitter also testified she did not tell Farrow that Allen and Dylan had gone missing until after Dylan made her statements. These sworn accounts contradict Moses Farrow’s recollection of that day in People magazine.

7.   The Yale-New Haven Hospital Child Sex Abuse Clinic’s finding that Dylan had not been sexually molested, cited repeatedly by Allen’s attorneys, was not accepted as reliable by Judge Wilk, or by the Connecticut state prosecutor who originally commissioned them.

The state prosecutor, Frank Maco, engaged the Yale-New Haven team to determine whether Dylan would be able to perceive facts correctly and be able to repeat her story on the witness stand. The panel consisted of two social workers and a pediatrician, Dr. John Leventhal, who signed off on the report but who never saw Dylan or Mia Farrow. No psychologists or psychiatrists were on the panel. The social workers never testified; the hospital team only presented a sworn deposition by Dr. Leventhal, who did not examine Dylan.

All the notes from the report were destroyed. Her confidentiality was then violated, and Allen held a news conference on the steps of Yale University to announce the results of the case. The report concluded Dylan had trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. (For example, she had told them there were “dead heads” in the attic and called sunset “the magic hour.” In fact, Mia kept wigs from her movies on styrofoam blocks in a trunk in the attic.) The doctor subsequently backed down from his contention. I mean, she was 6 years old. Who at 6 flawlessly distinguishes fantasy from reality?
The Connecticut state police, the state attorney, and Judge Wilk all had serious reservations about the report’s reliability.

8.   Allen changed his story about the attic where the abuse allegedly took place. First, Allen told investigators he had never been in the attic where the alleged abuse took place. After his hair was found on a painting in the attic, he admitted that he might have stuck his head in once or twice. A top investigator concluded that his account was not credible.

9.   The state attorney, Maco, said publicly he did have probable cause to press charges against Allen but declined, due to the fragility of the “child victim.” Maco told me that he refused to put Dylan through an exhausting trial, and without her on the stand, he could not prosecute Allen.

10.   I am not a longtime friend of Mia Farrow’s, and I did not make any deal with her. I have been personally accused of helping my “long-time friend” Mia Farrow place the story that ran in Vanity Fair’s November 2013 issue as part of an effort to help launch Ronan Farrow’s media career. I have also been accused of agreeing to some type of deal with Mia Farrow guaranteeing that the sexual-abuse allegation against Woody Allen would be revisited.

For the record, I met Mia Farrow for the first time in 2003, more than 10 years after the first piece was published, at a nonfiction play she appeared in for a benefit in Washington, D.C. I saw her and Dylan again the next day. That is the last time I saw her until I approached her in April 2013 to do a story about her family and how they had fared over the years. I talked to eight of her children, including Dylan and a reluctant Ronan. There was no deal of any kind. Moses Farrow declined to be interviewed for the 2013 piece.

Read: The scathing 33-page decision from the presiding judge in Woody Allen’s 1992 custody suit against Mia Farrow.

Woody or Dylan: Whose Story to Believe?

Excellent opinion piece by Kimberly Dark, Huffington Post. Speaks to the believability of victims or alleged victims of child sex abuse. 

There are no new allegations against Woody Allen and yet, the story of his family is once again the subject of public debate. Dylan Farrow wrote an open letter to Allen's fans published in the NYT blog on February 1. She gives a first person account of being sexually abused by Allen, telling her mother, being questioned by authorities and dismissed by the public. She tells of experiencing panic and pain at the public's adoration of her abuser, and of her concern over his access to other children.

Much of the online kerfuffle is focused on how no one can know what happened, and therefore, her view of events must be dismissed. These logical non sequiturs in public opinion about the two parties in question are a lesson in how women's stories are dismissed, men are protected and how often "we don't know" comes to mean, "she's wrong."

Dylan Farrow

Woody Allen

 One of the more popular articles, for instance, by Allen's film-biographer and friendly acquaintance, Robert Weide, casts doubt on Farrow's story using a variety of tangentially related facts that lead the reader to a spurious conclusion. For instance, the addition of doubt about whether Allen and Mia Farrow's son Ronan is actually the product of "infidelity" between Farrow and the late Frank Sinatra is utterly irrelevant to the question of child sexual abuse. It assumes a monolithic agreement to monogamy that has not been established. It places decisions about sex within adult relationships against the decision to sexually abuse a child as though they are related or equal or... something. This logic mash-up is common -- discredit one or more of the participants and dismiss the argument. Most readers don't even know what's happening there; they just know something doesn't "feel right" about Dylan Farrow's story after reading Weide's article.

This is the stuff we're great at: scooping up any stories that support a view we already hold. I mean "we" as in, the general public, media, law, including me and you and any commentator on public issues. We have to put forth effort to create and discern logical arguments.

If it's true that we can't know, and assuming that both parties have reasonable credibility as sane adults, let's look at what's likely. Child sexual abuse is extremely common. While actual rates are difficult to determine because of vast under-reporting, at least 1 in 5 women were sexually abused as children.

A huge majority of abusers are men and children living with non-biological parents are far more likely to be abused. See this story for confirmation.

Further, Dylan Farrow's account is very common. The alleged abuse seemed so "normal" and routine. The trauma she suffered included self-abuse and eating disorders. These responses are especially common among survivors who were not believed or not well-supported in healing. Lastly, the rate of false accusations about child sexual abuse is under ten percent. Of these, only a handful of accusations are made by the victim -- as in Dylan Farrow's case -- rather than by a caregiver.

Statistically speaking, it's far more likely that Woody Allen abused his daughter, as she says.

So, the question is, why are so many people -- including those like Robert Weide who have a connection to Allen but no experience with the incident in question -- so quick to disbelieve Dylan Farrow's story and to amass doubt-inducing anecdotes to do so? The combination of rape culture/victim blaming and our cultural comfort and ease with faulty logic are to blame.

Certainly, it's tough to believe something terrible about someone whose work and personality are well loved. The state of Connecticut also found insufficient evidence to arrest Woody Allen back in 1993 when the case was being investigated. This is often true with criminal investigations of child sexual abuse -- it takes a lot to "prove" that a child is telling the truth if there were no witnesses.

Perhaps more significantly, we've all been trained to believe, since childhood, that sexual predators are true crazies, deviants, and the stranger in the black sedan cruising the playground for victims. We've all been trained to believe -- despite massive evidence to the contrary, that attractive or employed or smart or famous men are less likely to be pedophiles. We've all been trained to make excuses for men and to support and protect their abilities to make a living and maintain a good reputation. We see this again and again in cases like the gang rape in Steubenville, Ohio last year where news stories focused on the boy's reputations being ruined rather than the victim's experiences. This was true even in a case with witnesses and recorded evidence.

Rather than rushing to decide whom to believe, without questioning our own socialization, stories like Dylan Farrow's should be carefully analyzed for their consistency with other stories like them. We may come to see that our cultural inability to stop child sexual abuse lies in how we treat its victims, how unquestionable abuse feels to many victims and how quickly we move to defend perpetrators who seem "normal" or indeed, laudable. Then we can begin to question the status quo in men's entitlement to the sexualization of children.

Follow Kimberly Dark on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Kimberly Dark

He Said, She Said - Woody Allen, Dylan Farrow

Woody Allen is again denying he molested adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow and is calling ex-partner Mia Farrow vindictive, spiteful and malevolent in an open letter published online Friday by The New York Times.

The 78-year-old filmmaker says Dylan Farrow's open letter published last week by The New York Times includes "creative flourishes that seem to have magically appeared during our 21-year estrangement."

"Of course, I did not molest Dylan," writes Allen. "I loved her and hope one day she will grasp how she has been cheated out of having a loving father and exploited by a mother more interested in her own festering anger than her daughter's well-being."

Woody Allen's adopted daughter Dylan Farrow renews molestation claim

Allen was investigated for the alleged molestation, but was never charged. A team of child abuse specialists from the Yale-New Haven Hospital, brought in to the case by prosecutors and police, concluded that Dylan Farrow had not been molested.

"Now it's 21 years later and Dylan has come forward with the accusations that the Yale experts investigated and found false," Allen said.

At the time of the breakup of their 12-year relationship more than two decades ago, Mia Farrow accused Allen of molesting Dylan Farrow. Allen has consistently denied the abuse allegation.

Their split followed the discovery of an affair between Allen and the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow, Soon-Yi Previn, when Previn was 19 or 21. (Her official date of birth is uncertain.) Allen and Previn married in 1997 and have two adopted daughters.

"I still loved (Dylan) deeply, and felt guilty that by falling in love with Soon-Yi I had put her in the position of being used as a pawn for revenge," Allen said.

The "Annie Hall" and "Blue Jasmine" director again claims in his open letter that seven-year-old Dylan Farrow was coached by Mia Farrow.

"Not that I doubt Dylan hasn't come to believe she's been molested, but if from the age of seven a vulnerable child is taught by a strong mother to hate her father because he is a monster who abused her, is it so inconceivable that after many years of this indoctrination the image of me Mia wanted to establish had taken root?" Allen said.

In a statement made to The Hollywood Reporter late Friday, Dylan Farrow called Woody Allen's op-ed "the latest rehash of the same legalese, distortions, and outright lies he has leveled at me for the past 20 years."

She wrote that Mia Farrow was not the one who brought criminal charges — "in fact, it was a pediatrician who reported the incident to the police based on my firsthand account." She also stated that the prosecutor found probable cause to prosecute Allen, but decided against it to protect what they called "the child victim."

In her letter last week, Dylan Farrow said that in 1992 at the family's Connecticut home, Allen led her to a "dim, closet-like attic" and "then he sexually assaulted me." She didn't specify Allen's actions, but described other abusive behaviour.

Allen said in his letter he believes Mia Farrow concocted those details, and they were inspired by the song "With My Daddy in the Attic."

"Does the letter really benefit Dylan or does it simply advance her mother's shabby agenda?" Allen said. "That is to hurt me with a smear. There is even a lame attempt to do professional damage by trying to involve movie stars, which smells a lot more like Mia than Dylan."

In his letter, Allen recounts several anecdotes to call Mia Farrow's integrity into question. He also addressed the claim by Mia Farrow that her ex-husband Frank Sinatra could be the father of son Ronan Farrow, not Allen.

Ronan Farrow - no chance this is the birth son of Woody Allen

"Even if he is not Frank's, the possibility she raises that he could be, indicates she was secretly intimate with him during our years," said Allen. "Not to mention all the money I paid for child support. Was I supporting Frank's son? Again, I want to call attention to the integrity and honesty of a person who conducts her life like that."

Say what? You who had an affair with your other adopted daughter while married to Mia, calling her integrity into question? How utterly hypocritical!

The 28-year-old Dylan Farrow, now married, currently lives in Florida under another name. Her letter caused an uproar, reawakening a case more than two decades after it made headlines.

"For 20 years, I have never wavered in describing what he did to me," she said Friday in the statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

Some have challenged Dylan Farrow's account, most notably her 36-year-old brother, Moses Farrow. He told People magazine this week that "of course" Allen didn't molest Dylan Farrow, which she called "a betrayal."

Allen said his open letter "will be my final word on this entire matter and no one will be responding on my behalf to any further comments on it by any party."

He ended the letter by saying, "Enough people have been hurt."

Messages left by The Associated Press for Dylan Farrow, Mia Farrow and Ronan Farrow were not immediately returned.