This kind of squirming seems like a way of avoiding a larger topic: the still-hidden subject of rape within families and how frequently it takes place. (According to a study by the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, in about a third of juvenile-assault cases the attacker is a family member.) The public attention given to sensational rape cases in recent years has usefully spotlighted the conservative and misogynist social norms that give cover to rapists, as in Delhi, and, as in Steubenville, the sports culture that lionizes teen-age boys and seems to put them beyond the law, and the ways communities shame victims. It’s much rarer to see a big public airing (except perhaps in the realm of TV melodramas) of a sexual assault that takes place within a household.
Many people writing about the case have essentially said, “We don’t know what really happened.” In qualifying the discussion, they are upholding the American right of innocent until proven guilty. But they are also upholding another difficult-to-combat belief: that what goes on within the confines of family life, especially a family life as messy and complex as the Farrow-Allen household’s, is essentially unknowable and private. That each member of a family has his or her own idea of what occurred, and that all of these stories have some bearing on the truth—and that the real truth, if there is such a thing, may be unrecoverable.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/02/woody-allen-dylan-farrow-sexual-assault-allegations.html
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