The Woody Allen matter is in the news once more, as it is occasionally and probably still will be, long after everyone is involved is dead, buried and reincarnated as a cocker spaniel. Nothing I have read has convinced me he is guilty of anything more than, quite arguably, having a tacky relationship at the outset with a woman to whom he has now been happily wed for 23 years. Maybe it was scandalous and wrong but it also seems to me irrelevant to the central charge, which is that a woman still insists he molested her in 1992 when she was seven years of age.
Also irrelevant to me is the charge — with which I certainly don't agree — that he made only lousy movies. I don't know what that proves with regard to the serious accusation but online commenters who believe that he's guilty of the molestation charge keep bringing it up as if it proves something.
One thing that helped convince me he just might be innocent is how filled with misinformation (and ignored facts) the attacks against him have been. The majority of them refer to his spouse Soon-Yi as his adopted daughter or stepdaughter, neither of which is true. Some say he groomed her as his bride while acting as a father figure to her but in one of the few cases where the claims of Woody and Soon-Yi match up with Mia Farrow's book, that is not so.
So you take the fact that two separate investigations around that time not only found that there was no evidence Allen had abused Dylan Farrow but that there was no evidence she had been physically abused at all. Then add in that there don't seem to be any other accusations against Allen of "improper sexual contact" with any female of any age anywhere. A man who has cast and directed more than 65 movies would have had ample opportunities.
This all may not add up to absolute proof of innocence but that's not how we do it in this country. We go by proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and I think there's more than a reasonable doubt there. Could he have done it? It's not impossible but the certainty some folks have of his guilt seems way out of proportion to the facts.
You might or might not know that one of Mia Farrow's other adopted kids, Moses, has stated quite explicitly that he is sure the accusation is bogus. He was in the house that day (and others) and much older than Dylan or her brother now known as Ronan, meaning he should have some real value as a witness. The reason you might not have heard this is that the anti-Woody accusers have largely responded to the testimony of Moses by pretending he never existed.
They insist we should believe her because she was there but ignore him even though he was right nearby. "Believe the woman" does not apparently extend to "At least listen to her older brother who says he was abused in other ways." Much of what Moses has said is quoted in this piece by Kyle Smith. Smith's is one of the few articles on the matter to even mention Moses at all.
All that said, I think it's within the rights of Hachette Book Group USA to decide they don't want to publish Woody Allen's memoirs. It's chickenshit, especially after proudly announcing they would, but that's a privately-owned business. Presumably, the folks who run Hatchette read the book and felt it worthy of publication but they allowed themselves to reverse course by the demands of people who hadn't read it and just believed Woody Allen should not be allowed to tell his side of that story or share all the other things that have happened in an amazing life and career.
If and when someone does publish it, we'll have another firestorm and given the way Hatchette folded on this one, Allen is probably better off being with some other publisher or maybe publishing it himself.