Recently a woman - Christina Engelhardt - came forward, and said she has been sexually exploited by filmmaker Woody Allen in her youth. (My wording.)
See these previous posts: here and here. ('Incidentally' the woman later worked for convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein)
She was 16 at the time, while the age of consent in NY is 17, which makes this clearly an illegal sexual exploitation of a minor - statutory rape - if true. (And I think she is highly believable.)
Today, the online edition of the British newspaper The Guardian published a defense of Woody Allen's behaviour - although she says it isn't a defense, it's exactly that.
(It starts with the sub header saying the girl was 17, although she was 16 when the illegal contact began.)
Please see for yourself:
The latest Woody Allen story is creepy, but let’s not call it criminal
by Sofka Zinovieff
I don’t defend the film director over his alleged affair with 17-year-old Christina Engelhardt, but the realities of power and sex are complex
I love the #MeToo movement. As the mother of two daughters, I’m delighted to see the rebalancing of a system that was skewed to allow sexual exploitation by men in power.
I also salute the way society is facing up to long-ago crimes, and that adults who were sexually abused as children are bringing charges against people who believed they’d got away with it.
However, as a child of the libertarian 1970s and as a former anthropologist, I am sometimes appalled when the rigidity of the law fails to allow for the complex intrigues of body and heart in matters of sex. Occasionally, our pendulum swings towards puritanism.
This week, former model and actress Christina Engelhardt claimed she had an eight-year relationship with Woody Allen, beginning when she was just under 17 and he was 41.
The movie Manhattan echoes their story. I first watched Allen’s black-and-white eulogy to New York in 1979, when I was 17 – the same age as Tracy, portrayed by Mariel Hemingway. I saw nothing wrong in her affair with Allen’s character, though admittedly it was a heady time of sexual freedom; my own boyfriend was 30.
Things have changed since then. Engelhardt claims that her story is not designed to indict her former lover. “It‘s almost as if I’m now expected to trash him,” she told the Hollywood Reporter.
However, while the relationship would have been legal in the UK, in New York, the age of consent is 17. For a couple of months, Allen allegedly breaking the law.
“Love makes no difference,” announced a social worker I met when researching my novel Putney, in which 13-year-old Daphne believes herself in love with a much older man.
It takes her decades to understand that her secret “love affair” was actually grooming and statutory rape. A child is unable to give consent; emotions are irrelevant. Nevertheless, small age measurements matter during an adolescent’s delicate transformations and when the “child” is almost 17, it looks very different.
My mother got married at 17 (my father was 27), and notwithstanding their doomed marriage, there is a danger of infantilising 17-year-olds by labelling them “children”.
Removing agency (even to make mistakes) from young people and denying them control of their bodies can be questionable, however much we value their safety.
Literature and films are littered with May-December liaisons. Jane Eyre was 18 when she fell for Mr Rochester (about double her age) and Rebecca was in her early 20s when she married a widower in his 40s. Lynn Barber’s excellent memoir (and subsequent film) An Education details her involvement with an older man when she was 16.
As is common in child abuse, Barber’s parents were “groomed” alongside her, favouring her impending marriage over university. In The Graduate, a young man is seduced by the middle-aged Mrs Robinson, and another mid-life crisis pushes Kevin Spacey’s Lester Burnham into lusting after his daughter’s 14-year-old friend in American Beauty.
Nabokov’s Lolita stands as the archetypal story of middle-aged obsession with young flesh and Humbert Humbert’s cynical pursuit of lust still shocks. In Putney, I hoped to give a voice and agency to a 1970s Lolita figure and to explore her emotions, which are manipulated but nonetheless feel real: a terrible tangle.
I would not want to defend Woody Allen in general. He has already joined the ranks of the damned in the film industry and is spurned by many. If his adopted daughter’s accusations of child molestation are true, he deserves this.
However, I would argue that Engelhardt’s “kiss and tell” celebrity claims are too flimsy to constitute another crime. Yes, Engelhardt was very young and Allen was in the position of power, but we couldn’t ban all relationships of unequal power.
I asked my student daughter her opinion of relationships such as Allen’s alleged one with Engelhardt, when the girl is not underage. “It’s not illegal, but it’s creepy,” she replied. And that’s about right.
Allen should have known better. But inside my mind there remains a nagging question about who has the right to peer inside the heart of a beautiful young woman and a skinny, balding man in his 40s and to judge them?
Yes, we must protect the young. But who can designate a particular day in teenagers’ lives, which allows them to fall in love and discover the mysteries of sex?'
I think the exact opposite is true: This clearly WAS a crime, if the allegations are true.
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auralsects ago
This is a kike who married one daughter and was allegedly seen molesting his other.
Why on earth you would bring up this marginal and redundant case and muddy the waters I can't imagine, except that you're just an inept retarded bitch.
And that's why you were made a mod. How does it feel?
think- ago
Islam and auralsect's pedo problem by @darkknight111
auralsects ago
First of all the definition of pedophilia is prepubescent, complain to Websters you silly cunt.
Second it has never been newsworthy that filthy kike movie producers get sex from actresses one way or another, usually cuz they offer. In fact its common knowledge since 100 yrs ago
Looks like a Jew wrote this article you posted too defending a known Jew pedophile, does that surprise you?
auralsects ago
LMAO I completely destroyed that faggot in that thread, which is why he couldn't respond to a single thing. Thanks for reposting it!
It's a beautiful demonstration of how you RANK AMATEURS fail as researchers because you don't know anything about the Jewish manipulation of information.
darkknight111 ago
You destroyed nothing, except maybe in that vain empty head of yours.
Nobody around here gives a shit about what subhuman sand monkeys like you have to say. That’s why I didn’t respond, faggot. That thread got made just to push your buttons. You’re useless unless you can relate a topic to your hate boner. Your emotions are so easy to manipulate. Even the women are more stoic than you.
BTW, not our fault you said that sex with 9 year old girls is justified. That makes you a pedo.
Do whites a favor, remove your inferior genes from the gene pool, jew spawn.
auralsects ago
bahahahaha
Yea I'm the one upset here XD
Bullshit, and it clearly took you 10x as long to "research" it as it took me to refute every last bit -- because that's what I do, faggot: debunk counterjewhad narratives whereas you're cheerleading "regime change in Iran" JewAnon. What a dope.
Say weren't you going to dox me thru your super secret fag-brigade l33t haXorz group? What happened to that, which is probably a threat violating sub rules?
We all hate pedos here -- unless they're Jewish cuz muh Hitler and muh HOLOHOAX oy very you're making us look like nazis, on Voat of all places!!
You're a fucking GIRLY-MAN and obivous homosexual, that's why you hate Muslims and Nazis LOL