Famous actress Scarlett Johansson who is also a major advocate for the #MeToo movement told interviewers last week that she believes Woody Allen is innocent of the charges being brought against him.
Director Woody Allen is being accused of sexually abusing his former stepdaughter Dylan Farrow. Farrow claims that she was just 7-years-old when she was abused by her stepfather.
Johansson told The Hollywood Reporter, “I love Woody. I believe him, and I would work with him anytime.”
Likewise, Vicky Cristina Barcelona said, “I see Woody whenever I can, and I have had a lot of conversations with him about it. I have been very direct with him, and he’s very direct with me. He maintains his innocence, and I believe him.”
Farrow responded back to Johansson on Twitter saying, “Because if we’ve learned anything from the past two years it’s that you definitely should believe male predators who ‘maintain their innocence’ without question. Scarlett has a long way to go in understanding the issue she claims to champion. (And my apologies in advance for disrupting her google alerts again).”
Farrow claimed in the letter she wrote about the assault,
“[W]hen I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.”
Let me stop here and address a problem.
The issue shouldn’t be whether we “definitely believe males” or “definitely believe females”, it shouldn’t be either one of those things.
We shouldn’t believe the female just for the plain fact that she’s female. We shouldn’t not believe them either though.
We must offer the same courtesy to males. We shouldn’t believe men just because they’re men, nor should we not believe them because they’re men.
As a civil society, we should assume that there is more than meets the eye and an investigation should occur if there is an allegation with sufficient evidence.
Why is evidence required? Because without evidence, it’s only rumor and hearsay. Anyone could say anything about anybody without evidence.
The prime example of this was the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation and all the trouble he had to endure to secure his nomination.