Before some
of these “Hollywood Menagerie” families that seem to grab the media attention
of modern terms, there was that floating kind of thing over twenty years ago as
the “Nuclear” (?) “Extended” Woody Allen – Mia Farrow breakup and or “Marital”
meltdown in Manhattan Family Court in the early 1990s.
That people
like Madonna raised a social consciousness of poor third world babies worthy of
adoption led to others in the Hollywood Hierarchy, notably the Brad Pitt – Angeline
Jolie “Marital” alliance with a family of all adopted types of children to make
one big “Morphed” family.
The definitions of Nuclear or Extended Families are
stretched or obsolete in modern light. And wondering the motives of the
unmarried Jolie-Pitt “Marital” alliance one sees that diversity negates a
childhood of Angeline at least of the life as a child of notorious actor father
and racial redneck bigot Jon Voight.
That aside,
back to the Woody Allen Menagerie family of children, adopted, step, natural etc.
of the early 1990s under the financial umbrella of famous rich parents not
married, came rumblings of rumors of Woody Allen’s possible misuse of the sexual privacy of his children and their being possibly abused.
In the
Family Court, marriage was not dissolved so much as the merger of finances,
child support, custody, visitation etc. were being disconnected and realigned
with of course "the best interests" of the children concerned.
And the
Allen-Farrow “divorce” was being handled in the New York Media Market full of
PR, publicists, and Hollywood handlers.
I do
remember that the proceeding of the Allen-Farrow Demerger in the Family Court
got handled in the rich people’s family court where the rich and famous do not
have to sit for hours in the Regular Manhattan Family Court with the little
people, the welfare people etc. in terms of divorce, visitation, child support
and custody which is the meat and potatoes of that court.
That the
hideous looming concrete architectural monster, with architecture awards, was
in the middle of its first of one or two or three major redo-s, re-fabs of a
building that should have been torn down considering the years of scaffolding
outside and inside creating a surreal web work of a strange mixed sci-fi like territory of family justice in Manhattan.
That the
Woody Allen and Mia Farrow paid a "fee" to be treated differently than the "regular" family court, and sat with an appointment with a Family
Court Judge in some other building after hours, to work out the details of finance,
support, custody and visitation of a modern extended, perhaps Menagerie media type family.
That
allegations of spousal abuse or spousal abandonment is the primary language of
divorce and such. That Ms. Farrow's past accusations about her adopted children are nothing new in the press.
That
allegations of parents abusing children are taken care of in turn by court
related bureaucrats in direct or outsourced government investigations.
And in case you are wondering, unless there
is a smoking gun with photos, accusations of abuse of children usually are
documented and little else done in a twisted almost obscene place built more
for the guaranteed employment of lawyers and judges, bureaucrats and their
pensions than for the true welfare of any abused child and or children.
That it is
not surprising that it took decades for the Child Abuse problem in the RC Church
to come to light, let alone be dealt with etc. Yet to be fully dealt with?
That there are extraordinary parallels illustrated here on how large Secular institutions treat allegations of sexual abuse in similar fashion to Religious interests, and in that the institution comes first because of its functions and only secondly in terms of considerations of other things, human things, namely children.
That is no
surprise that one of Woody Allen’s adopted children is now coming out in public
to air the family’s dirty laundry that has taken a back seat to Woody Allen’s
Fame, lawyers and publicists for the past many decades.
I do not
want to say much further, take sides etc., except to say that it is not surprising to me that
more famous children of famous people have not sought a public forum to try and
heal old seemingly unhealable sexual abuse wounds.
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Manhattan Family Court in the Time of the Allen-Farrow Marital Demerger |
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