The record indicates that Ms. Previn when not at college spends most of
her time with Mr. Allen. Contact between Ms. Previn and her siblings in
the context of the relationship with Mr. Allen would be virtually
unavoidable even if Mr. Allen chose to insulate his children from the
relationship. Expert medical testimony indicated that it would be
harmful for Ms. Previn not to be reintegrated into the family. However,
the inquiry here concerns the bests interests of Dylan, Moses and
Satchel. Their best interests would clearly be served by contact with
their sister Soon-Yi, personally and not in Mr. Allen's presence. Seeing
both Ms. Previn and Mr. Allen together in the unsupervised context
envisioned by Mr. Allen would, at this early stage, certainly be
detrimental to the best interests of the children.
It has been held that the desires of the child are to be considered, but
that it must be kept in mind that those desires can be manipulated
(Friederwitzer v Friederwitzer, supra, at 94). In considering the
custody and visitation decision concerning Moses, who is now a teenager,
we cannot ignore his expressed desires. The record shows that he had a
beneficial relationship with the petitioner prior to the events of
December 1991. However, that relationship has been gravely damaged.
While Moses' feelings were certainly affected by his mother's obvious
pain and anger, we concluded that it would not be in Moses' best
interests to be compelled to see Mr. Allen, if he does not wish to.
Therefore, we hold that in view of the totality of the circumstances,
the best interests of these children would be served by remaining
together in the custody of Ms. Farrow, with the parties abiding by the
visitation schedule established by the trial court.
With respect to the award of counsel fees we note that the record
demonstrates that Mr. Allen's resources far outpace those of Ms. Farrow.
Additionally, we note the relative lack of merit of Mr. Allen's
position in commencing this proceeding for custody. It became apparent,
during oral argument, that there was serious doubt that Mr. Allen truly
desired custody. It has been held that "in exercising its discretionary
power to award counsel fees, a court should review the financial
circumstances of both parties together with all the other circumstances
of the case, which may include the relative merit of the parties'
positions" (DeCabrera v Cabrera-Rosete, 70 N.Y.2d 879, 881). We find no abuse of discretion in the court's award of counsel fees in this case.
Accordingly, the judgment of Supreme Court, New York County (Elliot
Wilk, J.), entered July 13, 1993, which, inter alia, denied the
petitioner Woody Allen's request for custody of Moses Amadeus Farrow,
Dylan O'Sullivan Farrow, and Satchel Farrow, set forth the terms of
visitation between the petitioner and his children and awarded Ms.
Farrow counsel fees, is affirmed in all respects, without costs.
All concur except Carro and Wallach, JJ who dissent in part in an Opinion by Carro, J.
CARRO, J. (dissenting in part)
I agree with the majority's conclusions, except for the affirmance of
the order of visitation with respect to Mr. Allen's son Satchel, which I
find unduly restrictive.
 |
Woody Allen - Alleged Sex Offender
|
There is strong evidence in the record from neutral observers that Mr.
Allen and Satchel basically have a warm and loving father-son
relationship, but that their relationship is in jeopardy, in large
measure because Mr. Allen is being estranged and alienated from his son
by the current custody and visitation arrangement. Frances Greenberg and
Virginia Lehman, two independent social workers employed to oversee
visitation with Satchel, testified how "Mr. Allen would welcome Satchel
by hugging him, telling him how much he loved him, and how much he
missed him." Also described by both supervisors "was a kind of sequence
that Mr. Allen might say, I love you as much as the river, and Satchel
would say something to the effect that I love you as much as New York
City * * * then Mr. Allen might say, I love you as much as the stars,
and Satchel would say, I love you as much as the universe." Sadly, there
was also testimony from those witnesses that Satchel had told Mr.
Allen: "I like you, but I am not supposed to love you;" that when Mr.
Allen asked Satchel if he would send him a postcard from a planned trip
to California with Ms. Farrow, Satchel said "I can't [because] Mommy
won't let me;" and on one occasion when Satchel indicated that he wanted
to stay with Mr. Allen longer than the allotted two-hour visit,
"Satchel did say he could not stay longer, that his mother had told him
that two hours was sufficient." Perhaps most distressing, Satchel
"indicated to Mr. Allen that he was seeing a doctor that was going to
help him not to see Mr. Allen anymore, and he indicated that he was
supposed to be seeing this doctor perhaps eight or ten times, at the end
of which he would no longer have to see Mr. Allen."
In contrast to what apparently is being expressed by Ms. Farrow about
Mr. Allen to Satchel, Mr. Allen has been reported to say only positive
things to Satchel about Ms. Farrow, and conveys only loving regards to
Moses and Dylan through Satchel. Thus I find little evidence in the
record to support the majority's conclusion that "Mr. Allen may, if
unsupervised, influence Satchel inappropriately, and disregard the
impact exposure to Mr. Allen's relationship with Satchel's sister, Ms.
Previn, would have on the child."
The majority's quotation of Mr. Allen's testimony with respect to
Soon-Yi in support of its conclusion respecting visitation should be
viewed in the context of Dr. David Brodzinsky's testimony. Dr.
Brodzinsky is an expert in adoption with considerable experience in
court-related evaluations of custody and visitation disputes, who was
retained by the guardian for Dylan and Moses in a pending Surrogate's
Court proceeding involving the parties. Dr. Brodzinsky was thus a
completely neutral expert, jointly called by Mr. Allen and Ms. Farrow,
and he had extensive contact with the relevant family members and mental
health professionals and reviewed the pertinent reports and transcripts
prior to testifying. It was his clinical judgment that Mr. Allen had
more awareness of the consequences of his actions than he was able to
articulate in the adversarial process, and he was optimistic about Mr.
Allen's ability to accept his share of responsibility for what had taken
place in light of his love for his children, his capacity for
perspective-taking and empathy, and his motivation and openness toward
the ongoing therapeutic process. In addition, Dr. Susan Coates,
Satchel's therapist until December 1992, and the only expert to testify
about Satchel's mental health, stated that Mr. Allen's parental
relationship with Satchel was essential to Satchel's healthy
development.
"It is the firmly established policy of this State * * * that, wherever
possible, the best interests of a child lie in his being nurtured and
guided by both of his natural parents." (Daghir v Daghir, 82 A.D.2d 191, 193, 441 N.Y.S.2d 494 [MOLLEN, P.J.], affd 56 N.Y.2d 938, 453 N.Y.S.2d 609,
439 N.E.2d 324.) "Simply stated, a parent may not be deprived of his or
her right to reasonable and meaningful access to the children by the
marriage unless exceptional circumstances have been presented to the
court * * * [i.e.] where either the exercise of such right is inimical
to the welfare of the children or the parent has in some manner
forfeited his or her right to such access." (Strahl v Strahl, 66 A.D.2d 571, 574, 414 N.Y.S.2d 184 [TITONE, J.P.], affd 49 N.Y.2d 1036, 429 N.Y.S.2d 635, 407 N.E.2d 479.)
I do not believe that Mr. Allen's visitation with Satchel for a mere two
hours, three times a week, under supervision, is reasonable and
meaningful under the circumstances, or that exceptional circumstances
are presented that warrant such significant restriction on visitation
with Satchel. Mr. Allen and Satchel clearly need substantial quality
time together to nurture and renew their bonds and to foster a warm and
loving father-son relationship. Obviously this cannot occur overnight;
but more significantly, it is almost inconceivable that it will occur
even over an extended period of time if visitation is limited to three
two-hour periods per week under the supervision of strangers, as ordered
by the trial court and affirmed by the majority. Accordingly I would
modify the judgment appealed from to provide that Mr. Allen shall have
unsupervised visitation with Satchel for four hours, three times weekly,
plus alternate Saturdays and Sundays for the entire day, plus alternate
holidays to be agreed upon by the parties (see, Cesario v Cesario, 168 A.D.2d 911, 565 N.Y.S.2d 653; Shink v Shink, 140 A.D.2d 506, 528 N.Y.S.2d 847; Armando v Armando, 114 A.D.2d 875, 495 N.Y.S.2d 192).
Motion 104 by respondent-respondent to strike portions of appellant's reply brief is denied.
Cross-Motion 229 by appellant for costs and counsel fees in responding to Motion 104 denied.
ENTER: May 12, 1994.
19940512
____________________________________________________________________________________
Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen Defend Child Rapist Roman Polanski, Why Shouldn't You?
By Edecio Martinez
CBS News - October 2, 2009
NEW YORK –– If a truly great artist engages in a truly
awful crime, should our feelings about the art mitigate our feelings
about the crime?
That is just one of the gut-churning questions
being asked across the Web, as people consider the predicament of
Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski, sitting now in a Swiss jail and
facing possible extradition to the United States for fleeing the country
more than 30 years ago after he pleaded guilty in a sex case involving a
13-year-old girl.
And to many people, the answer is clear: Brilliant filmmaker or not, the
man violated a young girl and needs to face justice for it.
"I
wish to God he hadn't done it," said Frances Willington, a longtime
Polanski fan and one of many who vented her frustrations online.
"I
think he's the greatest film director of my generation," said
Willington, who is British, in a follow-up interview from her home in
southern France. But she was incensed by the immediate embrace of
Polanski by some French cultural leaders, including the culture
minister, who expressed outrage that Polanski was being "thrown to the
lions."
"They're calling on people to sign a petition when this
man is escaping the law!" said Willington, who works in marketing. "I
don't care if he's made great films. I don't believe that cultural and
artistic ability exempts you from being morally correct."
Though
it was impossible to measure the balance of sentiment, on most sites
there seemed to be many more postings calling for Polanski to face
justice — particularly from people in the United States, but also from
other countries.
Many mentioned the sordid details of the case, which have grown foggy over time but have now resurfaced for all to see.
"All
you fans need to read the court transcripts on thesmokinggun.com,"
wrote one poster, Paul Cooper, on a Facebook page devoted to Polanski.
"Roman is a pig. Read and learn."
Polanski was accused of plying
the 13-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer, with champagne and Quaaludes
during a modeling shoot in 1977 and raping her. He was initially
indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child
molesting and sodomy.
He agreed to plead guilty to the lesser
charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. In exchange, the judge agreed to
drop the remaining charges and commute the sentence to the 42 days
already served. But Polanski fled the country Feb. 1, 1978, the day he
was scheduled to be sentenced, after hearing that the judge planned to
add more prison time to the sentence.
Geimer long ago identified
herself, and she has joined in Polanski's bid for dismissal. She
testified at the time that Polanski forced himself on her — which he
acknowledged in his guilty plea — but has said she forgives him and
wants the ordeal to be over.
Meanwhile, the director of
"Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist," which won him a best
director Oscar, is in jail, arrested just as he arrived in Zurich to be
honored at a film festival — a development that stunned his colleagues.
A petition was immediately organized calling for his release, signed by
prominent fellow directors including Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese,
Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Demme, Ethan Coen and David
Lynch, as well as actresses Penelope Cruz and Tilda Swinton.
Actress
Debra Winger, presiding over the Zurich festival jury, complained:
"This fledgling festival has been unfairly exploited." She also blamed
Swiss authorities for their "Philistine collusion." And producer Harvey
Weinstein said in a statement: "We are calling every filmmaker we can to
help fix this terrible situation." (Representatives for Winger, Demme
and Allen did not respond to requests for comment, and Weinstein and
Aronofsky declined.)
But it would be a mistake to assume that the
American figures on the list speak for all Hollywood, said Richard
Walter, a longtime industry observer and a screenwriting professor at
UCLA.
"Because they're celebrities, their voices are heard much
more than others," Walter said. "But there's not a shred of evidence
that the majority of people in the entertainment business are
sympathetic with Polanski's position."
To another observer, the
support from Hollywood elite is a case of colleagues closing ranks.
"This is people attempting to protect their own," said Todd Boyd,
professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California.
In
online postings, some people noted that Polanski's difficult past must
be taken into account. He escaped the Krakow ghetto during the
Holocaust, lost his mother at Auschwitz, and later in life endured the
murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by followers of Charles Manson.
Other defenders said they understood why Polanski had fled the country, and noted that the victim had already forgiven Polanski.
"In
a way, I don't blame Roman for fleeing," wrote Donna Mummery, 52, of
Shreveport, La., on Facebook. "Let him enjoy the rest of his life now.
"He's done a lot of good since that hard time in his life."
Miami filmmaker Rodrigo Diaz-McVeigh agreed, adding that Polanski has shown over the years that he is not a danger to anyone.
"He's
not a threat to any child," said Diaz-McVeigh, 22. "He's gone through
so much in his life. And then he went to Switzerland to do good deeds."
Diaz-McVeigh called himself a Polanski fan. "I just love his films," he
said.
But most people seemed to think this was the moment to
separate Polanski the man from Polanski the artist — just as many did in
June, when Michael Jackson died, leaving memories both of his
professional greatness and his darker personal side.
"I still
dance to Michael Jackson's songs," wrote commentator Susan Jane Gilman
on npr.org. "Just as I buy Rolling Stones albums, watch Woody Allen
films and adore Hemingway's novels. The fact that many of these artists
have treated women abominably and some have been accused of molesting
minors does nothing to diminish their art in my eyes."
"Great
achievements should not be judged on the basis of personal conduct," she
wrote from Geneva. "But nor should a person's conduct be excused by
their achievements, either. At the end of the day, would we be OK with
our 13-year-old daughter being drugged and raped by a 44-year-old?"
________________________________________________________________________
The quiet victory of Mia and the kids Woody Allen left behind
By Maureen Callahan
New York Post - January 8, 2012
As celebrity scandals go, it’s probably second only to the O.J. trial: Woody Allen leaving Mia Farrow, his girlfriend and muse of 14 years, for her adopted teenage daughter Soon-Yi.
That was way back in 1992, and what was unthinkable then has long since come to pass: Woody Allen has been forgiven by the public at large. His most recent film, “Midnight in Paris,” has made over $56 million at the US box office to date — his highest-grossing film ever. Along with Elaine May and Ethan Coen, he contributed a one-act play to Broadway’s “Relatively Speaking,” which opened this past October. He was recently the subject of a worshipful, two-part “American Masters” special on PBS.
Farrow, meanwhile, largely gave up acting to focus on her humanitarian work, with a special interest in the war-torn regions of Africa. In 2000, she became one of UNICEF’s most prominent ambassadors; in 2008, with a Wall Street Journal op-ed co-authored by her son Ronan, she got Steven Spielberg to step down from the advisory board for the Olympics in Beijing over human-rights abuses.
Today, however, it’s Ronan who’s the star. He is the former couple’s only biological child, and was originally named Satchel; Farrow changed his name after the split, as she did with Dylan, the daughter she and Allen adopted together. (She is now Malone.)
The young adult that Ronan has become — he turned 24 on Dec. 19 — is a testament to Farrow’s parenting: A child genius, he was, at 15, the youngest student ever to graduate from Bard College. He’s also a graduate of Yale Law School and has worked for the US State Department since 2009. This past November, he was named a Rhodes Scholar.
Ronan has had no contact with Woody Allen since the split. “He’s my father married to my sister,” Ronan has said. “That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression . . . I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.”
If Farrow finds Allen’s great, nearly untrammeled success galling, she will not say. Instead, she has largely withdrawn from public life, finding pleasure in her quiet victories.
Raising her and Allen’s only son to be secure and capable, modest in his own abilities and achievements, well-adjusted despite all his early childhood trauma — is the kind of contentment, one suspects, that Woody Allen will never know.
Farrow and Ronan have always been particularly close. He, too, has been a UNICEF ambassador, and as early as 2001 began traveling throughout Africa, lobbying the United Nations for humanitarian aid and writing op-eds in The Washington Post, Boston Herald and International Herald Tribune, among others.
Curiously, it was Ronan who got his mother to return to acting.
“I’d wanted Mia from the get-go,” writer-director Todd Solondz tells The Post. He approached Farrow last year about starring in his new film, “Dark Horse,” but considered it a long shot.
“Really, it’s because her son Ronan is a big admirer of my work,” Solondz says. “He said, ‘Mom, you’ve gotta do it!’ Without reading the script, she agreed. Because of him.”
In the film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival this past September, Mia plays Phyllis, mother to a grown man who lives at home and collects toys. Given her relationship with Allen — whom she has described as something of a child-man — the role wasn’t much of a stretch.
Mia Farrow met Woody Allen in the fall of 1979; she was 34, a mother to seven children, and twice divorced (married to Frank Sinatra at 19, then to Andre Previn, himself married when they met). Allen was 43, also twice divorced, an Academy Award-winning writer-director, professional humorist and neurotic who told Farrow he had “zero interest in kids” on one of their first dates.
In her 1997 memoir, “What Falls Away,” Farrow recounts Allen’s multiple failings as a partner and a father: Allen would have his secretary call her to make dates. He would rarely call her by her name. Upon the adoption of their first child, he tells her, “Look, I don’t care about the baby. What I care about is my work.”
Farrow starred in 13 Woody Allen movies — from 1982’s “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” to 1992’s “Husbands and Wives” — and he reportedly only ever paid her $200,000 a film.
Her friend Leonard Gershe told Vanity Fair that Woody often disparaged Farrow’s talent, saying “she was only good in his pictures, not anybody else’s. Nobody would ever hire her again.”
He and Farrow never lived together — she and the children stayed in her massive Upper West Side apartment, Allen on the Upper East Side — and though Allen saw the children every day, Farrow has said he mostly ignored them.
“One of my greatest regrets,” she has said, “is that I permitted this to continue through 12 irreplaceable years of their childhoods.”
No one’s quite sure when Allen’s affair with Soon-Yi, whom Farrow had adopted with ex-husband Previn in 1978, began. As a girl, Soon-Yi reportedly told her mother that Allen was “nasty and ugly,” but by the summer of 1991, he was taking her to Knick games and encouraging her to pursue an a career as an actress.
This was heady stuff, no doubt, for a girl who had been rescued by Farrow from the slums of Seoul, Korea. Her mother was a prostitute whose primary form of discipline was to slam a door against Soon-Yi’s head; eventually, she abandoned Soon-Yi on the street.
Farrow spent a year waiting to adopt Soon-Yi, who had lived through such neglect and abuse that she was nearly feral, unable to speak or recognize herself in the mirror. No one even knew how old she was, but when Farrow got her back to the States, a bone scan determined she was somewhere between 5 and 7 years old.
Farrow put her in private school, and though Soon-Yi made great strides, she struggled: The early trauma she’d suffered resulted in learning disabilities, difficulty socializing and showing affection. It’s been reported that she has an IQ of less than 100.
That Woody had taken an interest in the girl must have seemed — while out of character — utterly harmless.
In late 1991, while shooting Allen’s “Husbands and Wives” — in which Woody and Mia played a married couple who split up after the Woody character meets a 21-year-old girl — that Mia discovered nude Polaroids of Soon-Yi on Allen’s mantelpiece.
Incredibly, she agreed to finish the film, shooting the breakup scene in the immediate aftermath of her discovery. And for months, she went back and forth on whether to reconcile with Allen. “She was in denial, obviously,” her sister Tisa told Vanity Fair. “Her whole life was tied up with this man.”
For his part, Allen couldn’t see what the big deal was. As he so famously said: “The heart wants what it wants.”
Farrow unloaded her New York City apartment — which had belonged to her mother, actress Maureen O’Sullivan, and which figured prominently in Allen’s 1986 film, “Hannah and Her Sisters” — years ago. She and Allen went through a bruising custody battle, during which she accused him of molesting their daughter, Dylan. (The case was dropped in 1993.)
Today, Farrow is known to have 15 children, and it’s believed one still lives with her at her Connecticut farmhouse.
She has not publicly dated anyone since her split from Allen, although in 2008 she alluded to a budding relationship with — of all people — the novelist Philip Roth, another misanthropic Jewish humorist who has issues with women.
Farrow, in fact, seems to have spectacularly poor taste in men: She married Sinatra when she was 19 and he 51. When, against Sinatra’s wishes, she took the lead in Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby,” Sinatra had her served with divorce papers on set.
She has retained great affection for Polanski, despite his conviction, in 1977, of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Farrow has been one of his staunchest defenders, testifying on his behalf in a 2005 libel suit and appearing in the 2008 documentary “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.”
Even her intimates can’t explain why Farrow — otherwise described as incredibly bright, warm and well read — is drawn to such men. Freudians might look to her relationship with her father, the director John Farrow, a heavy drinker and philanderer who, in many ways, Sinatra resembled. It’s a theory she has always dismissed, saying her attraction to Sinatra — long-suspected to have serious Mafia ties — was based on his “very strong moral structure.”
Farrow’s mother was also a drinker, and despite her husband’s well-known carousing, they had seven children together.
At age 9, Farrow contracted polio and spent three weeks in a hospital, partly in an iron lung. She was never the same.
“I was 9 when my childhood ended,” she wrote in “What Falls Away.”
In 1958, her 17-year-old brother, Michael, died in a plane crash. “My parents are Irish, and they started drinking, and my father couldn’t work again,” she has said. “We felt his heart just broke. He died at 58, after a series of heart attacks.”
In June of 1998, her mother died at the age of 87, and it was the first in a decade of devastating losses. March of 2000, her adopted daughter Tam died of heart disease at 19. Another adopted daughter, Lark, died of AIDS on Christmas Day, 2008; she was 35. In June 2009, Farrow’s brother Patrick committed suicide at his home in Vermont; he was 66.
“My faith has helped me through many difficult times,” she said in 2006.
Despite the many tragedies she has survived, her great humanitarian work, and the spectacular way her son has turned out, she knows she will always be defined by the Allen-Soon-Yi scandal.
She has had no contact with either of them to this day but has said she is willing to forgive. “I’ve got over it, you know,” she said in 2006. “You can get over almost anything. You just can’t go on mourning forever. And so I’ve moved on.”
The son she had with Allen, though, doesn’t feel the same way. “I cannot see him,” Ronan has said. “I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent.”
________________________________________________________________________
Woody Allen pals around with child-sex creep
By Kate Sheehy
Page Six - September 24, 2013
This “New York Story” may not be fit for children.
Schlubby director Woody Allen was seen palling around Manhattan with billionaire convicted child-sex creep Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein put his arm around the cradle-robbing director-actor and quietly talked as the pair strolled on the Upper East Side Sunday with Allen’s 35-years-younger wife, Soon-Yi, in tow.
“[Epstein] was hugging him and talking close to his ear . . . [He] had his arm on Woody’s shoulder,’’ a spy told The Post.
“They appeared to have been walking together’’ along Madison Avenue beforehand, and the three then started “talking and laughing’’ as they neared Epstein’s East 71st Street town house, the source said.
Allen, 77, and his 42-year-old wife — the adopted daughter of ex-love Mia Farrow — live on East 70th Street.
They all went into Epstein’s building after the walk, the source said.
Epstein’s conviction hasn’t apparently put a damper on his high-flying lifestyle: State records show the convicted sex offender lists his addresses as St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, Paris, Palm Beach in Florida and on New York’s Upper East Side.
Among his current vehicles, records show Epstein counts a pair of Cadillac Escalades and a Bentley Arnage in New York, another Escalade and a Mercedes-Benz in Florida, and another Escalade in the Virgin Islands.
A rep for Allen did not respond to a phone call or e-mail seeking comment about the trio’s afternoon out, and no one answered 60-year-old Epstein’s door when a Post reporter knocked Monday afternoon.
It’s not the first time that Epstein and Allen have been seen together.
Allen was a guest at a celeb-packed party Epstein threw at the town house for his old pal, Britain’s Prince Andrew, in December 2010.
Allen was said to have asked the prince about his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, and Andrew replied, “She’s very well — we live together.”
Epstein, a former hedge-fund big, did time in 2008 under a deal in which he confessed to two counts of soliciting a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution.
His victim was identified in court papers as a 14-year-old girl identified only as “Jane Doe.”
Epstein was accused of paying the youngster — one of a string of girls who allegedly visited him — $200 for a massage at his Palm Beach retreat in 2005.
And Farrow once accused Allen of molesting their then 7-year-old adopted daughter, but the allegations were never proven.
_______________________________________________________________________
Woody Allen spotted with millionaire convicted child sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein on Upper East Side stroll
Daily Mail - September 24, 2013
Woody Allen has been spotted strolling on New York's Upper East Side with millionaire child sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein, who served time for hiring minors to 'massage' him at his Florida mansion.
A source told The New York Post's Page Six the former hedgefunder was 'hugging (Allen) and taking close to his ear' on Sunday, with the eccentric film director's effective step daughter-turned-much younger wife, Soon-Yi, in tow.
'[He] had his arm on Woody's shoulder,' the spy added.
The three were walking together along Madison Avenue and began 'talking and laughing' as they neared Epstein's $50 million East 71st Street town house and went inside, the source told The Post.
Allen, 77, who lives on East 70th Street with his 42-year-old wife, has rubbed shoulders with convicted sex-offender before.
The sometime actor was a guest at a celebrity-filled soiree Epstein threw for his best pal Britain's Prince Andrew in December 2010.
Epstein served 13 months of an 18 month sentence for soliciting a 14-year-old for prostitution.
In court papers, the victim was only identified as 'Jane Doe.'
At one point, Epstein was facing 10 years to life on multiple sex offenses, The Post reported.
Court documents in that case claimed he routinely sought out underage girls and paid them $200 to $1,000 for sexual massages in his homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and Manhattan.
But the financier avoided a longer possible sentence after he signed a secret non-prosecution deal under which the government agreed to drop its investigation into the string of sex-crime allegations if Epstein confessed to prostitution felonies in Florida state court.
Epstein settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by underage girls since his sentence, with many recieving payouts in excess of $1 million.
In 2011, a New York judge ruled Epstein should be listed as a level 3 sex-offender - the highest and most dangerous level.
This was despite the millionaire joking to The Post that his crimes were comparable to 'stealing a bagel.'
