NEW YORK -- An attorney for Mia Farrow told a Manhattan court Tuesday that the actress's 7-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan, has described watching Woody Allen, her adoptive father, have sex with one of her adopted sisters.
Allen, the 57-year-old film actor-director, vehemently denied that and other lurid allegations made by attorney Eleanor Alter.
'You must be joking!' he replied when asked if what Alter had described was true. 'Of course not.'
Farrow did not attend the pre-trial hearing in the couple's bitter battle over custody of Dylan, their adopted 14-uear-old son, Moses, and their 5-year-old biological son, Satchel.
But Alter said Dylan had told her mother that she saw Allen and Soon- Yi Previn, 21, fooling around in Allen's Fifth Avenue apartment early last year, and that the couple shooed her away for privacy.
Nonetheless, Alter told Judge Elliott Wilk in state Supreme Court in Manhattan that Dylan, using the correct anatomical term for Allen's sex organ, said she then saw Allen and Soon-Yi have sexual intercourse.
'For a child to have seen this is unthinkable,' Alter told Wilk.
Alter made several other charges in an attempt to paint Allen as an unfit father, including that he once pushed Dylan's face into a dish of hot spaghetti and theatened Satchel after the child had displeased him by saying, 'I'm going to break your ------- legs, you little bastard!'
Alter said Farrow had to 'jump on' Allen to restrain him from injuring Satchel.
When asked by reporters about that charge, Allen said, 'Do you think I would try to break my son's legs?'
Allen claimed the hearing was actually a victory for him because Wilk granted his request for a hearing Jan. 26 on whether he should be granted the right to see Satchel, Dylan, and Moses.
Wilk said he wanted to gather information in the meantime from psychiatrists and others who have talked to Dylan.
To counter Farrow's charges, Allen's attorney, Harvey Sladkus, submitted a copy of a December 1991 affidavit taken from Farrow in which she called Allen a 'loving, caring and nurturing father.'
The affidavit was written when Allen was seeking to adopt Dylan and Moses, who already had been adopted by Farrow.
That was shortly before Farrow turned on Allen after she discovered his affair with Soon-Yi, adopted when Farrow was the wife of symphonic conductor Andre Previn.
Farrow later charged that Allen sexually molested Dylan at her Connecticut summer home last August, an allegation currently under investigation by Connecticut State Police.
No criminal charges have been brought against Allen, who claims Farrow was motivated by jealousy over his affair with Soon-Yi and is an unfit mother because she has placed her children, especially Dylan, at 'emotional risk.'
Farrow's affidavit said Allen, her lover for 13 years, was 'far more of a father than most natural fathers are or choose to be.'
'Mr. Allen is a loving, caring, attentive parent to Dylan and she can only benefit from having him as an adoptive father,' Farrow wrote. 'He has acted as Dylan's father almost since her birth and adoption by me....He is present with us during nearly all of Dylan's waking hours.'
Farrow also is seeking to have Allen pay her legal bills for their court battle, estimated at $300,000 so far.
