Return to Transcripts main page
AC 360 Later
Woody Allen Allegations; Philip Seymour Hoffman's Final Hours
Aired February 04, 2014 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Evening, everyone. Welcome to "AC360 Later." Thanks for joining us.
On the table tonight: Dylan Farrow's renewed charges that her adopted father, Woody Allen, sexually abused her as a child. Woody Allen's attorney is going to be here to talk about it. And the new head of GM is getting paid less than the company's last CEO. Is it because she's a woman?
You can join the conversation. Tweet us using #AC360Later. Or weigh in at Facebook/AC360. We will show your comments at the bottom of the screen tonight.
We begin though tonight with the latest on Philip Seymour Hoffman's death and how his tragic death has turned a harsh spotlight on the terrifying effects of heroin. Hoffman's family and loved ones are making arrangements for a private funeral service and planning for a memorial service later this month.
His legacy will be his amazing talent, the work he did and the lives he touched. There's also a lot to be learned how Hoffman, how anyone could spiral out of control after decades of apparently being clean and sober.
Joining me on the panel tonight, Andrew Sullivan, founder editor of The Dish at AndrewSullivan.com, CNN political commentator and "New York Times" op-ed columnist Charles Blow, CNN political commentator and Republican consultant Margaret Hoover, Dr. Drew Pinsky, addiction specialist and host of "DR. DREW ON CALL" on HLN will be here shortly, and with us, Ric Curtis, professor and chair of anthropology department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He has studied heroin use and addiction for decades, particularly here in New York City.
You're not surprised. You have studied this for decades now here in New York. You're not surprised when you see someone like Philip Seymour Hoffman dying from an overdose.
RIC CURTIS, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Not at all.
New York City has about 900 overdose deaths per year, three times as overdose deaths as we have homicides practically.
COOPER: In the city of New York alone?
CURTIS: Yes. COOPER: And the kind of heroin that people are using now, what should we know about it?
CURTIS: It varies in its potency obviously. I think this is one lesson that we have learned and it's cut with very many different things. But I don't think this is new. This is something that has been the case all along.
MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: When somebody overdoses, is it because they misjudged the caliber of the potency or do they think they got out of control when they were cooking and misjudged what they were taking? How did this...
CURTIS: They misjudge the potency usually.
HOOVER: It was the same kind of heroin. He had all the same kind of bags in his apartment, apparently, it's reported.
CURTIS: Yes, but dealers will very frequently vary the potency of the stamp of the brand.
HOOVER: Speaking of stamps.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: You have with you hundreds of bags of heroin.
CURTIS: Yes, I'm a stamp collector.
COOPER: They're each stamped with a different brand name, basically.
CURTIS: They are.
COOPER: What a lot of people probably don't realize is that dealers stamp a brand name, like any kind of product.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: There's no heroin obviously inside these.
(CROSSTALK)
CURTIS: We used it all before we started here today. No.
COOPER: But when you talk about the branding of it, the idea is, what, to develop loyalty?
CURTIS: Well, yes. It's to develop -- well, to have customers understand that this belongs to you without putting your name on it, so to speak.
And so frequently dealers will have two or three or four different stamps that belong to them or their organization, if they have an organization, and they will vary the potency of them, sort of a shell game. So the users have to guess which one is the potent one today.
And they used to -- the organizations used to hire touts actually that would stand on the corner, and like a carnival barker, bark out the name of the one that they got paid to bark. And the users would frequently come to the touts and tip them to tell them which one -- I know you're barking this one, but which one is the good one today? Some organizations actually made advertising like this from the early '90s.
COOPER: But that's a brand called No Joke?
CURTIS: It was a brand called No Joke. It says ask for it by name here at the bottom. And this was a corporate-style organization, had many employees. They had their employees actually wearing leisure suits, like Adidas leisure suits, with the logo emblazoned on the back.
COOPER: And now there's messenger services.
CURTIS: Now there are messenger services that you can call. They're a corporate-style messenger. You call the dispatcher and you tell them where you're at and they come and they will deliver for you.
COOPER: And there's a report, we should point out, that Philip Seymour Hoffman was seen with two people at an ATM. Both of them had messenger bags. Whether or not it was messengers for that, we don't know.
CURTIS: Some are messenger services, which they're just -- it's like a taxi service type thing.
And some are, you know, private individuals that run a service to a exclusive clients. Some are actually a big organization. Some, it's just one person on some can be a tandem, group, a small group.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Explain, Dr. Drew. You deal with people that face addiction. I just can't get over somebody who sought treatment at age 22, as Philip Seymour Hoffman did, had this extraordinary career, now at 46, dies from an overdose.
<22:05:09>
DR. DREW PINSKY, HLN HOST: Yes. Yes. You try and get your head around all this.
I love the drug culture we're visiting today. Really, when you talk about drug culture, this is what we're talking about here. But Philip Seymour Hoffman had terrible addiction at a young age. We call it poly drug addict young. Those have very bad prognoses associated with them.
COOPER: Poly drug addict? You mean multiple drugs.
(CROSSTALK) PINSKY: Used everything and anything. Opiates usually take over in poly drug addicts.
He got sober. Apparently, he was sober for a long, long period of time and was actually someone who was a source of inspiration to other people. That's often how people stay sober. They are of service to others. He was someone of great wisdom and of great resource for others.
Now, when those guys relapse, they are deeply ashamed. And often in my world, when they relapse -- I don't know how you feel about this, but their relapse usually gets going because of prescription meds. That's usually where it starts these days. They are get given some psychostimulant or benzodiazepine or something. And no one alerts them that, hey, your disease is going to reawaken when you do that.
And then they find their way back to their drug of choice, are deeply ashamed, withdraw, hide, start lying and manipulating and off they go.
COOPER: You and I went out in, I can't even remember, I think it was '97, maybe, out to Bushwick, Brooklyn. You brought me to a heroin shooting gallery where a guy name Blue (ph) was shooting people up in the neck with heroin.
Are those shooting galleries still where people go, or have those been closed down by police?
CURTIS: Well, those have been closed down, not so much by police, but by housing developers who have snapped up all the vacant properties.
So, there's no place for the users to go anymore. Of course, the police have been very efficient at what they do as well.
COOPER: Where do people now go to buy, to use?
CURTIS: The bathroom at McDonald's, the bathrooms, public bathrooms, alleyways, rooftops.
It's a very, very unsafe environment for them. You know, it was reported I think that he was in a room with double locked doors or something, right? So people are looking for places where they can hide and do it, but they tend to be very unsanitary and very safe.
PINSKY: And that's how a lot of the medical problems happen, not the heroin. The heroin does not hurt you, unless you take too much. Then you stop breathing.
CURTIS: Correct.
PINSKY: But it's route of administration and what goes in with the I.V. that really causes the medical problem.
COOPER: What do you mean? What do you mean? It's not heroin that...
(CROSSTALK)
PINSKY: Morphine and opiates were a great advance, because we could finally relieve pain without hurting the patient. The drug itself has no harmful affect on your body, except you can stop breathing or it triggers this horrible thing we call addiction.
CURTIS: Right, but long-term, it doesn't really have bad effects on you.
(CROSSTALK)
PINSKY: The administration does, which are using -- how you're using.
CURTIS: The other thing is, of course, in New York, and pretty much everywhere, you're not just injecting heroin.
In New York, typically, there are six or seven other things in the bag. But the heroin is usually the minority ingredient. They're cutting it with both inert ingredients, sugars and things like that, but other psychoactive ingredients, for example, Xanax, or even Tylenols or things like that they put in it.
Or things like quinine -- they put quinine in it frequently to cause an itchy and scratchy feeling, which there is a sort of mythology that if you have an itchy and scratchy feeling from the heroin that it's good heroin. You know, mythology behind why do they put quinine goes back to the '20s, when malaria was on the Lower East Side, and the dealers were adding quinine to the heroin back then to do with also the malaria symptoms.
COOPER: In terms of treatment, for people out there who have a loved one struggling with this or facing this, what kind of treatment is it? Is it effective?
PINSKY: Is it effective? The treatment is controversial.
You're a harm avoidance advocate. And harm avoidance has a place. What I would say is if you or I or an airline pilot got addiction to opiates, pretty much have to go to abstinence in order to return to your full functioning life. You can't fly an airplane on suboxone and methadone. You just can't do that. You can't be a doctor on suboxone and methadone. But it is an effective treatment, it does save lives.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Before we go, I just want to introduce you to a woman, a former heroin user named Tracey Helton Mitchell. I talked to her earlier tonight.
Here's how she described the continued craving for heroin, even after years of being clean. She's been clean for some 15 years now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRACEY HELTON MITCHELL, RECOVERING ADDICT: I think the cravings set in. Something happens. There's a stimulus in your life and the cravings set in and you feel like you're trapped and there's no other way, there's no other solution.
When I think about heroin, it's that instant sense of relief. And so you may not think about the consequences in that moment. You think about simply just having some kind of relief, and you know in those instances that that drug provides instantaneous relief.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: You, Ric, of an advocate of harm reduction, for people who continue to use, for people who are not seeking treatment to use safely. Is that correct?
CURTIS: I would like them to be abstinent, but I realize it's a difficult journey for some people.
PINSKY: Expensive too.
CURTIS: And it's expensive as well.
But, eventually, given time, people will become abstinent. You just have to be patient with them. The first, second, third, 14th, 15th, 16th time going to treatment may not work, but the 17th time may.
(CROSSTALK)
<22:10:10>
PINSKY: It's common.
CURTIS: Exactly. It's repeated.
What I think is that I need to help them stay alive long enough to reach the 17th time, so to speak.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: I'm sorry. You do that by trying to educate them about how to use safely?
CURTIS: To educate them to, yes, use safely, to not spread disease to others, to keep themselves healthy and to encourage them to think about their own health and their own well-being and the well- being of the others around them.
We want them to be conscious about what it is they're doing and to engage them sort of with people that want to help them, so that they will think about what it is that they're doing a bit more. They feel tremendous guilt about it, but we need to bring them out of the closets and the locked rooms that they're in, and help them.
HOOVER: Socioeconomically, is there a white-collar heroin program -- problem or is it relegated to a specific segment of the...
(CROSSTALK)
CURTIS: Oh, no, it's every.
(CROSSTALK)
HOOVER: So white-collar heroin use is...
PINSKY: What I see a lot of is youth white collar, like young people in middle and upper middle classes.
HOOVER: How about high-functioning adults who are in academia?
(CROSSTALK)
PINSKY: I have seen it. I have seen all kinds of places. Yes, they hide all over the place. Yes.
COOPER: You were saying recently you have been seeing body builders.
CURTIS: Yes. There were reports in Long Island a few years back when I visited a methadone clinic out there of body builders who have started off with steroids and had roid rage.
PINSKY: Steroids, you can't stay sober on a steroid. That's been a problem out there in the world. There's a lot of cross- addiction with steroids and stimulants. But then they injure themselves. Then they get the opioids that will treat the steroid rage.
CURTIS: Yes. And so the guy at the methadone program explained to me that these guys had used steroids to pump up and they got roid rage. To control it, they started using opiates and then they got addicted and they went over to methadone.
It was really a funny sight, because when you go to the methadone programs and it's usually filled with Vietnam era people, right, of that age, and then there were these guys with these bulging muscles. It was like a really odd sight. So there are some unusual demographics getting into it.
PINSKY: But the problem now is the pill thing. I see it all over. The pills is the big problem. So people that are interfacing with the medical system, have doctors, can pay for doctors, have insurance, their kids and their young adults are the ones that end up on the her heroin.
CURTIS: That's the new point of entry for heroin addiction is the pills.
In New York City, it's somewhat the opposite still, because there are existing markets to introduce to some young people. But outside the city...
(CROSSTALK)
PINSKY: Let me be clear about that. It used to be marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, heroin. Now it's pills, heroin.
CURTIS: Yes.
And let me just say though that the pharmaceutical companies and many of the programs which monitor problematic populations, ones that are locked up and so forth and mentally ill people, are complicit in this, because they are overprescribing, in my opinion, some of these drugs, not just the opiates, but many other things, and creating a system whereby people are encouraged to take pharmaceuticals and trade them in.
PINSKY: Let's remind ourselves there was a time in the standard endorsed practice of pain medicine, people were encouraged to come in and tell what they wanted. They would be given exactly what they asked for. I will take a little Fentanyl, 100 milligrams of Demerol, some benzodiazepine to go home with, and that's what they would get.
COOPER: Fascinating.
We have got to leave the discussion here.
Ric Curtis, thank you very much. It's great to see you again, Dr. Drew Pinsky as well.
Coming up, let us know what you think. Follow me Twitter @AndersonCooper. Tweet us about this using #AC360Later..
Coming up, Dylan Farrow's renewed that Woody Allen molested her as a child. Allen's attorney joins us next with his opinion on what is behind those accusations.
We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
<22:17:26>
COOPER: Welcome back.
Today, Woody Allen's attorney was on television speaking strongly and publicly defending his famous client against renewed accusations by Allen's adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, that she was molested by Woody Allen as a child more than 20 years ago. Dylan Farrow is now 28 years old.
Allen's attorney, Elkan Abramowitz,says he thinks she truly believe she was assaulted because her mother, actress Mia Farrow, implanted the story in her mind when Dylan was only 7 years old. Now he says it's a story that will never go away.
He joins us tonight. Also with us is CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Sunny Hostin.
Good to have you both.
ELKAN ABRAMOWITZ, ATTORNEY FOR WOODY ALLEN: Thank you.
COOPER: So your contention is that Mia Farrow, angry over the situation between Woody Allen and her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, implanted this idea?
ABRAMOWITZ: Well, it's not my contention, as much as it was the finding of the Yale New Haven sex abuse clinic.
COOPER: This was a six-month investigation?
ABRAMOWITZ: Six-month investigation that was referred by the Connecticut state authorities.
COOPER: Once the initial allegation...
ABRAMOWITZ: Once the initial allegations were made by Mia Farrow.
The Connecticut authorities did the right thing. They referred it to the Yale New Haven sex abuse clinic, which was the leading, is the leading agency of its kind. They conducted a six-month investigation. They concluded that the molestation did not occur, period.
So it's not my contention. It's what they found. And they found that, after Woody Allen took a lie-detector test, and Mia Farrow didn't, they interviewed everybody, including Woody Allen, and everybody involved, and they determined it didn't happen.
They also determined that the story was coached by Mia Farrow, and that's one of the reasons they found the story to be incredible.
COOPER: A judge, though, however, in the custody hearing did not -- basically kind of negated some of that report, saying he found it inconclusive.
ABRAMOWITZ: The judge had different issues in front of him.
Obviously, the relationship with Soon-Yi was something that affected the custody battled, which was what the judge in New York was doing. I'm here to tell you that the criminal charges that are being renewed by Dylan today, 20 years later, were found to not have occurred.
Whether the custody decision was a different one, whether any other decision was different, the case was handled totally appropriately actually.
When we're talking -- and I'm sympathetic, obviously, to any child abuse situation. They got their process. Mia Farrow and Dylan went to the authorities. They were treated seriously, respectfully.
<22:20:04>
COOPER: There was a Connecticut prosecutor, though, who said that he believed there was credible evidence.
ABRAMOWITZ: Yes.
There is probable cause.
COOPER: Probable cause.
ABRAMOWITZ: when a claimant comes to you and gives the story that Dylan gives, although a 7-year-old version of it, rather than a 28-year-old version, that's credible evidence. That must be investigated.
And that's exactly what happened. They did the right thing. They got heard. They were sent to experts who are in the business of determining whether there are false accusations, and you know that there have been historically false allegations, often, statistically, in cases of custody battles and divorces.
But they determined after six months where everybody was interviewed that it didn't happen.
COOPER: So you're not saying that you believe Dylan Farrow is lying now at the age of 28? You believe she believes it because this idea was...
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMOWITZ: I believe that. I don't know is the short answer. I do know what the Yale New Haven people found.
I believe that people can be implanted with memories as a child, and that stays with you, and especially if it's reinforced.
(CROSSTALK)
ANDREW SULLIVAN, ANDREWSULLIVAN.COM: How child abuse cases do you think -- claims of child abuse do you think that applies to?
ABRAMOWITZ: I don't know.
SULLIVAN: For example, all the children that were abused by Catholic priests...
SUNNY HOSTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: And Jerry Sandusky.
SULLIVAN: ... do you think...
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: ... implanted in them by...
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: ... people? What proportion of them have just imagined this? ABRAMOWITZ: I don't have the statistics, but I do know -- and I was told by Linda Fairstein, who headed the sex abuse unit in the Manhattan DA's office, that there are many false accusations of child abuse.
Now, she said that it comes up more often than not in matrimonial situations where there's...
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: I take issue with that.
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: But I would like to address this, because I think it's sort of this popular myth.
There have been studies done there, there are stats that do not support the contention that children that are alleging sex abuse have either these memories implanted or that they're making it up in the context of custody, something like less than 2 percent. I know Linda, but Linda is wrong on that. And the other thing is...
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMOWITZ: But Yale New Haven decided it.
HOSTIN: But you got to agree with me that I think the investigation of sex abuse claims, especially with children, has really come a long way.
And so my understanding is that her attorney, Mia Farrow's attorney said that that report was incomplete, that it was inaccurate and that there was a sloppy assessment made. And that really was what happened in the sex abuse cases 20-something years ago.
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: Mia Farrow's lawyer can say that, but it's not what happened here.
You don't do something for six months, with the best known clinic in the country for that, for this. The investigation was totally complete. And you have to give the fact that sometimes there are false allegations made.
HOSTIN: It is rare, though. It is rare.
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLES BLOW, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: But do you believe that those assessments are infallible? I'm just trying...
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMOWITZ: Nothing is infallible. BLOW: Right. That's what I'm trying to get...
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMOWITZ: But do you think that Dylan is infallible? I don't know.
BLOW: I'm not asking that question. I'm not saying that her story is true or not. I'm just trying to get a sense of what your opinion of how credible you can take anything that comes from -- I have twins, three kids, and when they were 7 years old, I can't get a straight answer. I'm trying to figure out how credible, no matter how professional you are, what is the fallibility of any...
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: It was very fallible at least 20 years ago.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: The six-month investigation, this is not just -- there was an initial doctor visit, Mia Farrow taking Dylan Farrow to that Dylan Farrow didn't repeat the accusations. Then there was another doctor visit. But that was not the six-month investigation. The six- month investigation was subsequent to all of that.
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMOWITZ: Subsequent to all of that, when the Connecticut authorities referred it to the Yale clinic.
COOPER: And a videotape was made by Mia Farrow, but there were numerous edits, and a nurse, a nanny reported that it was a video that had been made over the course of several days.
ABRAMOWITZ: Right.
And so credibility about what she said was on that videotape was relevant to their investigation. Look, nothing is infallible. We have a process.
HOSTIN: Sure.
ABRAMOWITZ: The process here, I agree with everybody that thinks that this is a crime that should -- that is not treated seriously. It was treated extremely seriously.
HOSTIN: Can you agree that no prosecution does not mean no guilt?
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMOWITZ: But the difference here -- no. The difference here is they found as a fact it did not occur. That's not saying...
(CROSSTALK) SULLIVAN: So, here's my question, because I have read about Dylan Farrow's life.
And she's had...
ABRAMOWITZ: An awful life.
SULLIVAN: ... PTSD. She's had extraordinary difficulties.
ABRAMOWITZ: Extraordinary.
SULLIVAN: At the time, whenever Allen would show up at the house, she would feel sick.
You think all of that is implanted in her mind by her mother at the age of 7?
(CROSSTALK)
<22:25:00>
SULLIVAN: Is Mia Farrow that...
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: Is she Svengali? Is she a brainwasher?
ABRAMOWITZ: No, she's not Svengali.
She was angry at Woody Allen, and let's assume justifiably angry at Woody Allen. When you're angry and your kids see you angry and say the things that she said about Soon-Yi, you pick that up. I don't know...
HOSTIN: In such detail? Dylan's account of what happened with her with such detail is all a false memory that Mia Farrow, the Svengali brainwasher, implanted in her brain?
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMOWITZ: The short answer is yes.
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: You're accusing Mia Farrow of child abuse? That's what you're doing right now.
ABRAMOWITZ: I really believe that. That's exactly why Woody Allen sued for custody.
HOSTIN: That's incredible.
ABRAMOWITZ: He sued for custody because...
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: It's a brilliant way to avoid charges, credible charges of child abuse, to blame the mother.
ABRAMOWITZ: He didn't avoid anything.
Everybody is talking about Dylan and everybody is talking about Mia Farrow. This stain hurts him, too. And if it's false, it's a disaster for a person like that, to have a false accusation 20 years later carry the day, and everybody wants to believe it.
SULLIVAN: I don't want to believe it. I really hope it didn't happen.
ABRAMOWITZ: It didn't happen, according to the people that were charged..
HOSTIN: But she says it did. The child since she was 7 years old has maintained the same consistent account, same consistent account.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: But for accuracy's sake, the immediate accounts did differ.
HOSTIN: But that's not abnormal when you're talking about interviewing a child victim.
(CROSSTALK)
HOOVER: Where did authorities go wrong? You have done this before. You have put people away. Where did authorities go wrong, in your view?
HOSTIN: Several ways.
One is you have to make -- we have these interviews now with children. And we have one-on-one interviews. We don't have two and three and four doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists interview the child. You have the child do it one time.
The reason you get inconsistencies with child victims is because you start asking them questions over and over again.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: But you're saying do it one time. The first doctor that she was brought to, according to my understanding, she said he touched me here and indicated the shoulders.
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: And she indicated to her mother that she didn't want to say it to this doctor.
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: One time, and in a safe environment with someone that is a specialist.
What happened in this case would never happen today, because we have come such a long way.
ABRAMOWITZ: You actually don't know what happened.
The report has not been made public. But the fact is that they interviewed Dylan many times in one on one, groups together with her mother, without her mother. It happened in all different ways.
HOSTIN: That wouldn't happen today.
ABRAMOWITZ: It was tested in every which way.
She had her own therapist there. Mia had her own therapist. Woody has his therapist.
HOSTIN: But listen to what you're saying . You're subjecting a 7-year-old and asking her to recount sexual abuse to all these different adults over and over and over again in front of her mother, in front of the therapist.
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMOWITZ: Their decision was not made only on the basis of what Dylan had to say.
It was made on the basis of Woody Allen, what Woody Allen had to say, the fact that he passed a lie-detector test, the fact that Mia Farrow didn't take a lie-detector test, the fact that Mia Farrow's statements were totally inconsistent.
When you make a prosecutorial decision -- I was a prosecutor for many years.
HOSTIN: Yes, I know.
ABRAMOWITZ: Inconsistent statements sometimes can tell you what to do.
And what happened here is they conducted a thorough, professional investigation. Yale New Haven is not known to whitewash. They have not whitewashed historically.
SULLIVAN: But there's been no investigation into your claim that Mia Farrow abused her own daughter.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Well, actually, Yale New Haven indicated it was possible that she had coached the child.
SULLIVAN: Just tonight, he just said that he believed Mia Farrow's abused Dylan.
COOPER: You said it was a form of abuse. (CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: My point is, I don't see the symptoms for this person that has had that abuse to be of the kind of order that might be a mother...
ABRAMOWITZ: There was testimony at the custody trial that Mia Farrow said that -- to Woody Allen and to Woody Allen's sister that, "You took my daughter," referring to Soon-Yi. "I'm going to take your daughter." OK?
Now, that's testimony that indicates to me, if true, that Mia Farrow started a campaign to poison the atmosphere for Woody Allen in her custody fight because she was furious.
HOSTIN: And her daughter. I think it's so easy to blame the mother here.
ABRAMOWITZ: I'm not blaming anybody.
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: But you are. And it's a classic defense tactic to blame the woman that is trying to protect her child. We see it over and over and over again.
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMOWITZ: Did you ever get involved in a case where you have had a false complainant?
HOSTIN: on.
ABRAMOWITZ: Oh, there have been plenty.
HOSTIN: I haven't had one.
ABRAMOWITZ: There have been prosecutions made where witnesses come forth and lie.
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: And everyone always brings that up, but it's rare.
Let me ask you this. When I was reading some of these reports, they said that Woody Allen was seeing a Dr. Coates, because he was so obsessed with Dylan that people thought his behavior was so wildly inappropriate that he needed treatment for it. Is that true?
ABRAMOWITZ: That's a construct of Mia Farrow at the trial.
HOSTIN: So, was he not being seen by a doctor for his obsession with Dylan?
ABRAMOWITZ: Susan Coates, I believe, was one of the therapists for the kids, not for Woody Allen. COOPER: There's also now another story that there's another child, another son who has now sort of broken away from Mia Farrow and is now -- seems like it's tragic that he's taken sides, but seems to have repaired relationships with...
ABRAMOWITZ: Yes.
COOPER: Did I hear you say that he's giving interviews?
ABRAMOWITZ: I believe it's in "People" magazine. He said that the atmosphere in the house was poison and that...
SULLIVAN: Of course it was. We know (ph) who poisoned it.
ABRAMOWITZ: Well, meaning that Mia Farrow was controlling the children's thoughts. And he said this didn't happen.
HOSTIN: I can't imagine that she is such a Svengali that she can control people's minds, including, you know, every single person in the house. And I think it's interesting...
ABRAMOWITZ: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) anything.
(CROSSTALK)
HOSTIN: ... about Woody Allen's part on this.
ABRAMOWITZ: I'm trying to tell you what was found in a case that's 20 years old. It is very easy to sit around and relive the case. The case is over. It was...
HOSTIN: It's not over for Dylan.
COOPER: We've got to go. Sorry. We're just out of time on this one. Appreciate you being here. Thank you very much. Elkam Abramowitz, Sunny Hostin, as well. Thank you.
Just ahead, General Motors' new CEO getting -- is she getting short shrift in her pay package because she's a woman? That's what some are saying. How do the numbers really add up? We'll take a look, ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
<22:35:02>
COOPER: Welcome back. The new CEO of GM, Mary Barra, is at the center of a controversy over her pay. She's the first woman to lead any global car maker. And what she's being paid, compared to what the man she's replacing made is at the heart of a firestorm. Here's how it stacks up.
Her base pay is $1.6 million. Her predecessor, Dan Akerson's, base pay last year was $1.7 million.
She is getting $2.8 million in short-term compensation. He got $7.3 million. I'm sorry, $7.35 million, I should point out.
She will get a long-term stock bonus, the amount we don't yet know. It's not been made public, won't be made public till April. He got long-term -- he got zero long-term compensation last year, since he was close to retirement.
But the bottom line: $4.4 million for her, not including her long-term stock bonus; $9.1 million for Akerson.
So is she yet another example of a woman making less than a man for the same job? President Obama praised her promotion in the State of the Union speech, but some have taken issue with that.
Back to the panel. Joining the conversation is Pattie Sellers, senior editor at large at "Fortune" magazine.
So we don't know her long-term pay package, and a lot of times in these cases salary isn't really -- you know, the real money is the long-term pay package.
PATTIE SELLERS, SENIOR EDITOR AT LARGE, "FORTUNE": Right.
COOPER: But is this unfair?
SELLERS: In this case, long-term compensation will be higher than the base pay and the short-term compensation; we're almost sure of it. The more this chatter goes on, the more the uproar goes on about Barra's package, the more pressure GM is going to be under to deliver a package that is at least as big as Dan Akerson's.
BLOW: I read something today that, you know, they were trying to fire back and say, well, that he was the CEO and the chairman, and she's just the CEO, so she's not the chairman. So there would be some differences in pay. But does that hold water?
SELLERS: That's true. Well, when they brought him in, you know, to basically take care of bring GM out of bankruptcy, the government was basically in charge of GM. They hired him from Carlyle Group. Carlyle is a private equity.
COOPER: Right. He said he left over $100 million on the table.
SELLERS: Over $100 million on the table.
HOOVER: And he'd been a CEO previously.
SELLERS: Yes. He'd been a CEO previously, a Fortune 500 CEO. Mary Barra has been with the company for 34 years. This is the price of loyalty. When you're in a company that long...
COOPER: Surprising (ph) to me. If you're loyal to the company, you don't get paid as much as the person who's left and then comes back.
HOOVER: And by the way, his compensation package -- rather, he's getting paid as a consultant right now $4.6 million, which is more than what's reported as her total package.
SELLERS: His price -- his pay, his price, his pay as a senior adviser to GM now is higher than we know Mary Barra's CEO pay to be, but he is an interim adviser. He's being paid on a pro-rated basis, which means he may not get the whole package. We really don't know the whole number...
SULLIVAN: There's no -- there's no basis...
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: There are actually two stories here. The first is just an issue, aside from this particular case, which is that...
(CROSSTALK)
BLOW: Give me one second. Give me one second. Give me one second. Women do get paid less, just in a general sense.
SULLIVAN: That's a misleading statistic.
BLOW: It's not misleading. There are some things -- there are some things involved in it where women do take long-term jobs. I'm saying that, in general -- and that's not even in cases, on some cases where women and men do the same work. That's where I think it becomes a moral issue. It's a problem; it's a huge problem.
On the other side, I must say that...
SULLIVAN: On what basis that...
BLOW: I must say that...
SULLIVAN: That's not true.
BLOW: On the other side I must say that there's a part of me that says CEO pay is a runaway negative, and I look at numbers like this and I flinch because I know that the average worker is still struggling. Their pay has not increased. And you look at somebody and say, "Well, in this case, I don't want it to be taken out on the first woman to be CEO."
COOPER: Andrew, are you saying that women are being paid less...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: ... as men for the same less.
SULLIVAN: For the same or equal work? It's a much more complicated picture than that. The actual number, 77 cents, as the president probably misleadingly presented, is the median female income compared to the median male income. If you take into account different numbers of hours worked, full-time, part-time and so on, there is a payback (ph). There really is. But it's a lot less than that. It's probably somewhere between 87 percent to 91 percent. I've seen various studies on this. SELLERS: Yes. This number is surprisingly complicated to come up with a hard-core number. Yes, women are generally paid less than men, and one of the reasons is, women don't ask for raises, don't ask for promotions enough.
I talked to Mary Barra a few weeks ago. I said to her, "Did you ever in your career ask for a promotion?"
She said, "No, I have not."
COOPER: In 34 years she never asked for a promotion?
SELLERS: Never asked for a promotion. "Did you ever ask for a raise?" I asked.
"No, I have not," and she actually said it proudly. Proudly.
<22:40:13>
COOPER: And you think a man would be more likely to ask for a promotion, to ask specifically for a raise?
SELLERS: Yes, and that's what her predecessor did.
HOOVER: And also didn't stay at the same company for 33 years. Yes. There are characteristics that are consistent: not asking for raises and staying with the same company. If you feel like you should get more, ask.
COOPER: It's so interesting to me, though, that corporations view you as more valuable if you have left that corporation, worked somewhere else, and then want to come back.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: And a loyal employee won't get as much as somebody who's threatening to leave. You know, loyal -- it's so interesting to me.
SULLIVAN: It just shows you the sheer amoralism of capitalism. They won't promote any virtue except for cutthroatism and aggressiveness and being a bit of a -- you know, I won't go there. But you have to be a little rude and aggressive and nasty.
(CROSSTALK)
SELLERS: You do.
SULLIVAN: I'm not saying there isn't payback.
BLOW: I think there is payback.
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: You said they're paid less for the same work.
BLOW: In some cases they are paid less for the same work. That is true.
SULLIVAN: You find that statistic...
(CROSSTALK)
HOOVER: How about this?
BLOW: Do you need to Google right now...
HOOVER: Is Meg Whitman -- is Meg Whitman paid -- Hold on. Is Meg Whitman paid less than her predecessor?
SELLERS: Yes.
HOOVER: Was Rometty paid less than her predecessor?
SELLERS: ... her predecessor.
BLOW: Is that the same work?
SELLERS: And he made more money than Meg Whitman did. And Ginni Rometty is making less money than her predecessor.
COOPER: Meg Whitman -- Meg Whitman had been a CEO before.
SELLERS: Yes, she had.
COOPER: At EBay.
SELLERS: At EBay.
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: I'm saying what you said is not true, Charles.
BLOW: It is not -- it is not the case.
SULLIVAN: Women are not paid 70 cents -- 70 cents for every dollar.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Thank you for being with us. We've got to go to a commercial break.
Up next, are children pulling the fun out of parenting? It's the focus of a new book. The author joins us ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
<22:46:02>
COOPER: Hey, welcome back. So when it comes to parenthood, is it all joy and no fun? A new book suggests that parents need to stop the mantra "I just want my kids to be happy." The author suggests that parents should ignore those cries of "I'm bored." Never heard that back in my day. We do today, certainly. Actually, I said, "I'm bored" all the time.
It reminded -- it reminds us of this clip from the movie "This is 40." Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL RUDD, ACTOR: Do some playing outside.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, you could build things. You could build a fort outside.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, build a fort. Play with your friends.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Make a fort, outside? And do what? Do what in the fort?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I was a kid, we used to build tree houses and play with sticks.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nobody plays with sticks.
RUDD: You and Charlotte can have a lemonade stand.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
RUDD: Look for dead bodies.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's fun. That's fun to do.
RUDD: Get a tire and then just take a stick and run down the street with it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nobody does that crap. It's 2012!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You don't need technology.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No technology.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Charlotte, put that down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Jennifer Senior is the author of the book, "All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood." She joins us now.
It's great to have you here. So what does it mean, all joy and no fun?
JENNIFER SENIOR, AUTHOR, "ALL JOY AND NO FUN": Well, I guess the distinction is the no fun part is the drudgery part. And it's true that, day to day, parents do not seem to be as happy moment to moment. I shouldn't say they -- moment to moment. Parents don't seem to be as happy as nonparents, at least according to a large body of social scientists. The joy is something that often sort of slips away from the scientific community. Scientists are often measuring for it. It's much more elusive. And if you specifically try to find it, you can't. But, you know, right now...
COOPER: It's more of a longer term...
SENIOR: Well, here's the thing. So the way that this lovely psychiatrist, George Valiant (ph) put it to me, and I've never forgotten this, is so fun's internally focused gratification. You eat a snickers bar, fun. Fun.
Joy is outwardly focused, your -- it's an abiding connection with somebody else. And it's the kind of feeling that's actually, in some cases, very hard to tolerate. Even harder to tolerate, in some ways, than sadness. Because you are so tied to something. You love that thing so much that it's hard to look at that person and not suddenly be afraid of losing it. Think about it.
COOPER: You say in the book -- you say in the book that moms should sort of take a cue from fathers in terms of their attitudes toward kids in some ways. How so? I've seen a lot of moms do that (ph). How so?
SENIOR: I think in the context -- yes, if you say it like that, probably. In the context, there's quite a bit of ramp-up up to that moment, which it seems pretty clear, at least in the case -- this is a lovely couple that I still keep in touch with on Facebook, Clint and Angie .
Angie is being really tyrannized by some set of standards that -- about how to be a good mother. And mothers already, as we know, spend about twice as much time with their kids as fathers do. This is according to the American timing (ph) survey. They do twice as much housework. They are sort of alive to all the emotional undercurrents in the house. They feel deadlines very acutely. They're kind of on the clock the minute they come home. And fathers just are more apt to be kind of monotasking as opposed to multitasking.
And what's amazing is that watching Clint, he was so forgiving of himself. He just looked at me and said, "I'm the standard when I came home." I mean, that was it. Very uncomplicated, "I'm the standard." He was more nervous at work, thinking he wasn't doing a good job, and he worked at a desk.
Angie was very confident at work, and she works with psychiatric patients, who like bite and kick and scream all day long. She felt like she was the standard there. She didn't feel like she was the standard when she was at home.
COOPER: So what else is your advice for parents? What's your takeaway from this?
SENIOR: It's not prescriptive. Like, I'm very -- I'm trying to hold up a mirror here at the way we all live. I think if you squint, you'll see that. You know, maybe emulate fathers. You know, I think women...
SULLIVAN: What you're getting at it seems to me is this concept of joy that the -- in modernity we have kind of lost. I mean, it was the title of Pope Francis' first apostolic exhortation, "Evangelii Gaudium." "Gaudium" is the Latin term for joy. This is a commitment to something long-term and serious.
<22:50:18>
SENIOR: Thank you.
SULLIVAN: At Oxford, my alma mater, when you go back for a reunion, it's called a gaudy, G-A-U-D-Y, which is -- which is rooted in the Latin "gaudium," for joy. It means that you're committed to this place, this college, for your life and you're bound to it, and you are happy about it.
And I think we've lost that, because we are so busy seeking fun and entertainment that we don't understand the joy, which can be part of drudgery is the deeper human virtue.
SENIOR: This connects so -- that's beautiful, and here's another way to think about it that plays right into this.
Having obligations and duties are a lovely thing. And I don't think that we think enough about this, and the joys of service and just giving and things like that.
Kids are the last thing, in a way, that you can't abandon. You can abandon your spouse and you can abandon your job. You can pick up roots and change cities. You can -- but you really can't abandon your commitment to your kids, and you should -- and ideally, you wouldn't abandon commitments to many things. But you actually really can't abandon your kids.
SULLIVAN: Unless you're Woody Allen.
SENIOR: That was so one segment ago. Yes -- I'm not going to weigh in on that.
But so I think that there's -- and you'll appreciate this. And I invoke C.S. Lewis who talks a lot about the joy of loving something beyond oneself.
SULLIVAN: Surprised by joy.
SENIOR: Surprised by joy. I actually talk about the four loves. But this is like a running undercurrent in everything he wrote.
COOPER: Margaret, you're a new parent.
HOOVER: You comment, too, you talk about the parents being in the center of the family, versus children being in the center of the family and building a family around either children or the other way around, and one creates more joy or less joy. What is your critique there? SENIOR: OK. Well, what happened was, somewhere around the 1950s, everything kind of restructured itself, and kids started becoming the center of the family. They used to work, you know. I mean, literally they worked, you know, on our farms...
BLOW: And in my house, they still work.
SENIOR: No, good. They've lost their productive value, and that's kind of a problem. I mean, we're not pining for the Dickensian days when...
COOPER: In the book -- we only have about 30 seconds -- you were pointing out how people used to call themselves homemakers, because their job was to care for the actual house.
SENIOR: And now what are they?
COOPER: They're stay-at-home moms.
SENIOR: Stay-at-home moms.
COOPER: And there's a shift in that?
SENIOR: Because -- yes, because we're professional parents; we're not professional homemakers. But either way, you know, we're responsible for making our kids happy, and that's hard, too.
COOPER: Jennifer Senior, thank you very much. Very fascinating discussion.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
<22:57:05>
COOPER: Hey, welcome back. We have some breaking news to report. A New York law enforcement official says the NYPD, New York Police Department, has taken four people in for questioning, believed to be connected to the drugs that were found in Philip Seymour Hoffman's apartment. That's the only information we have on it. We'll have more throughout -- on CNN.com throughout the evening and tomorrow.
That does it for this edition of AC 360 LATER. Thanks very much to everybody on our panel. Thanks for watching.
"ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" is up next.
