Allen’s Friends Challenge Sexual Abuse Accusations : Custody battle: His colleagues portray him as a devoted family man. They say Farrow may be putting words in her children’s mouths.

As charges and countercharges fly between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow in their bitter child custody battle here, relatives and friends of the famed actor-director have rallied to his defense, painting a sympathetic picture of him and blasting Farrow for accusing him of sexually abusing one of their children.

Allen was described as a devoted father and family man whose character is being viciously slandered because of Farrow’s wrath over Allen’s love affair with her adopted daughter from a previous marriage.

“It really is the essence of ‘Hell hath no fury,’ ” Letty Aronson, Allen’s sister and only sibling, told The Times. “She will do anything. Anyone interested in the welfare of her children would not parade them in front of TV cameras.”

Aronson was alluding to recent television interviews given by two of Farrow’s children, 14-year-old Moses Amadeus Farrow and 17-year-old Daisy Previn, in which the youngsters assailed Allen as a disturbed and violent man.

Aronson contended that Farrow treats her 11 children almost like servants and that Allen seeks custody of the three who call him father because of his concern for their welfare.

“He is absolutely appalled at the treatment of the children,” she said.

But the idea that the actress is using her children as mouthpieces to attack and discredit Allen was dismissed by Gary Springer, a member of John Springer Associates, the Manhattan-based firm that handles Farrow’s publicity.

“She’s not parading anybody,” he said. “It’s not like a plot on Mia’s part, with her saying, ‘You kids go here, you kids go there.’ These kids are old enough not to be manipulated. They say what they want.”

Marshall Brickman, a screenwriter and longtime collaborator with Allen, said that he finds Farrow’s accusations of sexual abuse “hard to reconcile” with the man he has known and worked with for so long.

“The stuff I have been reading in the papers, it doesn’t compute,” he said. “I would have no problem leaving my children with Woody. It seems like (Farrow) is very distressed about something. She’s probably very (peeved) that he got involved with the older girl.”

Brickman added that he had talked to Allen recently and that his friend was distraught over the charges being leveled against him.

“I think this thing is breaking his heart,” he said. “It must be very sad for him. He has a very strong moral sense.”

Film critic Judith Crist, another longtime friend of Allen’s, added: “I think that having a family relationship meant a good deal to him. I regard him as a very decent human being, sensitive, and a creative man with great loyalties.”

The vitriolic attacks between Allen and Farrow began last week after the 56-year-old director and actor sued his live-apart companion of 12 years, calling Farrow an unfit mother and saying that their relationship was over.

Allen seeks custody of Moses, who is adopted; their adopted daughter, Dylan, 7, and the couple’s biological son, Satchel, 4 1/2.

Legal proceedings in the case are set to began Monday in state Supreme Court, New York’s trial-level court, before Justice Phyllis Gangel-Jacob.

Farrow has eight other children: three biological children from her marriage to pianist-conductor Andre Previn and five others that they adopted. Previn was her second husband. She previously was married to singer-actor Frank Sinatra.

Allen confessed to reporters this week that he is in love with one of Farrow’s adopted daughters from her marriage to Previn, Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, a Korean orphan who has no birth certificate but is believed to be 21.

She is expected to return to Rider College in Lawrence, N.J., next week for her final week of summer classes, school officials told the Associated Press.

“We knew she had a boyfriend, but we didn’t know who,” said Rachel Coffman, a junior from Schenectady, N.Y., who lives in the same dormitory as Soon-Yi Farrow Previn.

Farrow has accused Allen of molesting Dylan and maintains that she has a videotape of Dylan describing her adopted father’s unwanted attentions toward her.

State police in Connecticut, where Farrow has a country estate, reportedly have a copy of the tape and have confirmed that Allen is under investigation, although they decline to discuss any of the allegations against him.

“I believe he molested Dylan and I can say that honestly,” Daisy Previn told reporters Thursday as she stood in the hallway of the family’s elegant Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan. “I believe he’s sick, and he could do something like that.”

But Jean Doumanian, a Manhattan-based independent film producer who describes herself as a close friend of Allen’s for more than 25 years, says that she finds such a charge preposterous and believes that Farrow may be putting words in her children’s mouths to bolster her case in the custody battle.

“She’s been with Woody for 12 years,” Doumanian told The Times on Friday. “Has he all of a sudden become this child molester? It’s unconscionable, it’s just stupid to even imply that. I don’t blame Mia for being pained, but why take this rage and get your children involved and start these charges against Woody?”

Doumanian was also critical of Moses Farrow’s allegations that Allen once threatened to punch out his teeth. “Do you think Woody has ever said anything like that to anybody in his life?” she asked rhetorically. “I’ve known him 25 years and never known him to speak harshly to anyone.”

Farrow was not available for comment but Springer, her publicist, branded as absurd allegations by Soon-Yi Farrow Previn that Farrow beat her, hit her with a chair, shredded her clothing and locked her in her room after learning that she was involved in a romantic affair with Allen.

“It’s inconceivable in terms of what I know about this woman,” he said. “Anna Strasberg, (stage director) Lee Strasberg’s widow, just the other day was comparing Mia to Mother Teresa. She’s a caring, concerned mother.”

But talk show host Dick Cavett, a longtime friend of Allen’s, said “not for one millisecond” does he believe the allegations of sexual abuse.

“If Woody Allen’s a child molester, I will publicly kiss Pat Buchanan,” Cavett told reporters. “Things like this don’t suddenly erupt in middle-age men.”

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