NEW YORK -- One of the nation's top sex crimes experts testified Tuesday he doubted actor-director Woody Allen sexually abused his 7- year-old adopted daughter on the basis of video tape 'proof' offered by actress Mia Farrow.
Retired New York Police Lt. Richard Marcus, formerly head of the Manhattan Sex Crimes Unit, testified at the child custody trial in state Supreme Court he had reviewed the tape Farrow made of Dylan Farrow's accounting of her alleged molestation and found it 'rehearsed.'
'I concluded that the child lacked credibility in that the manner in which the questions were asked (by Farrow) and the statements that were elicited did not convince me that the incident had, in fact, taken place,' Marcus said.
Marcus said that such leading questions as, 'What did he do? Did he take your underpants off' and such statements as 'After touching you, he said...' smacked of 'prompting or remind the child of what she said previously.'
He described it as a form of 'rehearsal' so that subsequent investigators 'will start with a very worked-over trail.'
The witness said it was the first time in his experience that a mother had taped her child to obtain evidence in an abuse case and he found it 'violated athe principles of objective investigation.'
Justice Elliott Wilk asked him if he felt there ever could be an objective investigation in such as case, Marcus replied that it was dubious.
'It lends itself to all kinds of suspicions by the investigators, not the least of which is that the child has a desire to seek apiproval from the mother doing the video that might taint any future investigation.'
