Thanks to Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times for publishing an open letter from Dylan Farrow about her famous adoptive father, Woody Allen, and the sexual abuse she remembers from more than two decades ago, when she was 7:
Rhode Island's Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) washed their hands of two sisters, "Sara" and "Molly," after taking them from a devoted mother when they were 9 and 5. DCYF held them in foster homes and separated them in a state shelter for more than a year, before giving them to their father -- even though the girls had accused him of kicking their mother down the stairs and playing "sausage games."
I have seen the huge red erect penis the older child drew years ago. It was unforgettable and too graphic to post. I have posted the younger girl's portrait of their father grinning as he ejaculated. It is hard to imagine how their mother could have brainwashed these images into her daughters as their father's lawyer argued. A cabal of women lawyers and mental health experts earned tens of thousands of dollars in their campaign to take these girls from their mother. The father had money; the mother did not.
It's too bad the case now being heard in federal court against DCYF http://www.providencejournal.com/news/courts/20140201-rhode-island-seeks-dismissal-of-lawsuit-against-department-of-children-youth-and-families.ece could not have included Sara and Molly and the case documents referenced throughout our LittleHostages blog, including http://littlehostages.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-did-lise-iwon-do-it.html
DCYF worked hard to rid its system of this case and these children. I believe the girls now live in France with their father. I do not know whether they see their mother at all.
But I know this: they are growing up. "Sara" will turn 18 this year. I hope that she and "Molly," like Dylan Farrow, will know how many of us always believed they were telling the truth. From my interviews, police believed them. I have scores of letters written by neighbors who knew and believed them. The relatives of their child care provider believed them. Some staff at DCYF believed them, but feared for their jobs.
We will keep confronting the system that failed Sara, Molly, and countless children as well as the parents who tried to protect them.
