And allegedly molesting Dylan Farrow as well.
So, this Babi Christina Engelhardt person... she was 16 and apparently a successful model already, and she says she pursued him. I am not sure how I feel about that. As I mentioned above with Anna Kournikova... not all 16 year olds are the same. Some are still kids, others are much more mature than their age. I can imagine that Engelhardt might have had a lot more life experience than typical teenagers.
From that article...
She's proud of her teenage self as an up-by-her-bootstraps heroine who successfully beguiled a "celebrated genius." Even now, she holds herself largely responsible for remaining in the relationship as long as she did and for the frustration and sorrow that ultimately came with the liaison — one in which, by her description, she never held any agency. (Most experts would contend that such an uneven power dynamic is inherently exploitative.)
This is the conflict you find in this sort of thing... on the one hand she pursued him and "beguiled him", yet on the other hand she feels like she never had any agency in this. A while back I skimmed over an essay penned by a woman who'd dated a much older man for several years... I believe she was in her early twenties while he was in his forties. I couldn't tell whether she was mad at him or mad at herself. She invested those years in a relationship that she knew wouldn't give her the things she wanted in life (he'd already had children and didn't want more) and isolated her from her peers. When it was over, she resented him for that.
I was just about 18 when I set my sights on the older guy I was interested in. I was very disinterested in guys my own age, felt they were immature idiots, felt like I was so much more clever than other people my age. I was quite full of myself (and still am, obviously) and felt like a more mature man would be more my equal than the hapless mooks in my age group. Like most people that age, I didn't know how much I didn't know. But at the same time, I feel like I was old enough and mature enough to make choices for myself. I was on the brink of adulthood, old enough to work and own a car and live on my own if I'd wanted, and when you get to that point in your life you have to be be responsible for your own choices. Others can't stop you from making choices, for better or worse. I saw what I wanted, "I moved on it like a
****", and although in hindsight I was wrong about just about everything that made me want him in my life, it was still an experience that I'm very glad was part of my life.
Englehardt again:
Even with hindsight, though, she's unwilling to indict Allen, who declined to comment for this story. "What made me speak is I thought I could provide a perspective," she offers. "I'm not attacking Woody," she says. "This is not 'bring down this man.' I'm talking about my love story. This made me who I am. I have no regrets."
-k