NEW YORK -- Mia Farrow took the witness stand Thursday for the first time in her child custody battle with Woody Allen and testified that she worried that the movie actor-director might be a homosexual and would abuse their son, Satchel, 5.
Under examination by Allen's attorney, Elkan Abramowitz, the demure blonde actress said she did not tell investigators looking into charges Allen had sexually molested their 7-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan, that she suspected he might have the same 'inappropriate' relationship with Satchel.
'Did you tell your therapist you were afraid he would abuse Satchel?' Abramowitz asked.
'Yes,' Farrow answered.
'Were you afraid he had (sexual) relations with another man?' Farrow was asked.
'Yes, I was afraid of all these things at that point,' she replied.
Earlier, Farrow exprssed concern about the relationship Allen developed with Dylan prior to her adoption, but said she went ahead with the adoption anyway.
'There was some sexual thing...but sexual is not the name I used at the time,' she explained. 'Inappropriate is the word I used.
'First of all there was the whole quality of it, the intensity, the wooing quality of it, the neediness....It was relentless and overpowering.'
Abramowitz asked her when this 'inappropriate' behavior took place, and she replied, 'All the time.'
'Hugging?' the attorney asked.
'Yes.'
'Kissing?
'Yes, in bed. He took her into his bed if she visited. They always ended up in bed, playing with her. The quality of the playing aroused her so that she would grab him. It happened three times.'
'What did you do?' Abramowitz asked.
'I pulled her away,' Farrow replied. 'I said, 'Don't do that' and changed the subject.'
Later in her testimony, Farrow detailed the circumstances surrounding the alleged sexual molestation of Dylan by Allen inside her Connecticut home.
Farrow told the court that a friend had alerted her a day after the alleged incident that Allen may have abused the child in the attic and she immediately questioned Dylan.
'He asked if she had wanted father-daughter time and took her to the attic,' Farrow said.
'I asked Dylan whether Daddy had had his face in her lap yesterday. She said,'Yes.'
'I asked what did he do then, and she said 'he was breathing' into her legs and was 'holding her around her waist.''
Farrow said the child then told her that Allen 'had his hand underneath and was touching her.'
Her attorney asked where. 'Her behind,' Farrow said.
Shortly after she learned of his affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, Farrow accused Allen of molesting Dylan, but child abuse experts from the Yale-New Haven Medical Center in Connecticut last week said in a confidential report that they had found no signs that Allen sexually abused the child.
Farrow was composed, sitting upright in the witness chair with her hands in her lap as she testified. She wore a dark blue blazer over a cream-colored shirt and a lighter blue pleated skirt.
Allen stared steadily at her as she testified, occasionally taking notes on a yellow pad.
He ended his testimony before State Supreme Court Justice Elliott Wilk Tuesday, denying his relationship with Satchel and Dylan was anything but proper.
He admitted that a third child involved in the custody case, Moses, 14, had written him that he hoped Allen would 'get so humiliated you will commit suicide.'
Moses Farrow's expressed bitter disapointment in his adoptive father in a letter he wrote Allen early last year, after Allen's love affair with Moses' stepsister, Soon-Yi, was discovered by Farrow.
The letter, read by Farrow's attorney, Eleanor Alter, said, 'Everyone knows not to have an affair with your son's sister...You have done a horrible, unforgivable, ugly, stupid thing.'
Farrow found out about the affair when she found nude pictures of Soon-Yi taken by Allen in Allen's apartment. She testified that about a week after her discovery feelings of anger built up in her and boiled over when she encountered Soon-Yi sitting on the floor, making a telephone call.
'I kicked the phone into her legs and I just pounced on her,' Farrow said, her voice showing distress although she was outwardly calm. She added that she struck Soon-Yi several times before she was interrupted by the housekeeper. Asked if this was the only time she attacked her daughter, she replied, 'Yes.'
'I'm not proud of it,' she said.
Abramowitz asked her if she had ever described Soon-Yi as retarded and Farrow said she had not.
'I said she had a low average IQ,' she said. 'She's not retarded.'
Allen testified that Moses, Dylan and Satchel always were separate from the eight other children Farrow either had with conductor Andre Previn or adopted when she was married to him, 'even though they called each other brothers and sisters.'
'I was never a part of the whole family,' he said.
As his testimony drew to a close Tuesday, Judge Elliott Wilkin asked Allen if he thought Farrow had 'brainwashed' Dylan to make false charges against him.
'I think she did it over the course of time,' Allen replied. 'I believe that she had been brainwashing (the children) for weeks or months.'
Allen said Farrow called him a 'rapist and molester' in front of the children, and told Dylan 'your father did a dirty thing to Soon-Yi, and now he's doing it to you.'
