Dylan Farrow accuses Woody Allen of abuse in first TV interview: 'I want to show my face and tell my story'
Dylan Farrow, daughter of Mia Farrow, gave her first television interview to Gayle King of CBS This Morning. In the interview, which aired Thursday morning, Dylan directly addresses allegations of sexual molestation that she made against her adoptive father, director Woody Allen, which she first described in an essay for the New York Times in 2014. “I want to show my face and tell my story,” she told King. Allen has denied the allegations. (Please note that this story contains graphic descriptions of child abuse.)
“I loved my father. I respected him. He was my hero. And that doesn’t obviously take away from what he did,” she told King. “But it does make the betrayal and the hurt that much more intense.”
King then asked Dylan to describe the alleged abuse, which she says took place in a small attic crawlspace in her mother Mia’s country house in Connecticut. “And he sat behind me in the doorway, and as I played with the toy train, I was sexually assaulted. … As a 7-year-old I would say, I would have said he touched my private parts. … As a 32-year-old, he touched my labia and my vulva with his finger.” Dylan then told her mother, who immediately took her to see a doctor.
Allen has long maintained that Dylan was “coached” by Mia, to allege abuse. He states that Mia was attempting to exact retribution for discovering that Allen was having an affair with Mia’s adopted daughter, Soon-yi Previn. Allen points to how Dylan’s story changed when she visited the pediatrician. She initially told the doctor that Allen touched her shoulder, then alleged abuse. Dylan tackled this charge head-on, telling King that “[My mother Mia] said, ‘Why didn’t you tell the doctor what you told me?’ And I told her that I was embarrassed. And then we went back in. … And I told the doctor.”
In the interview, Dylan fought back against suggestions that she has lied about the abuse, or that her mother brainwashed her into concocting the claims. “…Every step of the way, my mother has only encouraged me to tell the truth. She has never coached me,” she told King.
Dylan began crying as she was shown an old 60 Minutes clip of Allen calling the allegations “illogical.”
“Isn’t it illogical,” says Allen in the 60 Minutes clip, “that I’m going to at the height of a very bitter acrimonious custody fight, drive up to Connecticut where nobody likes me and I’m in house full of enemies? I mean Mia was so enraged at me and she had gotten all the kids to be angry at me — that I’m going to drive up there and suddenly on visitation, pick this moment in my life to become a child molester. It’s just, it’s just incredible. I could, if I wanted to be a child molester, I had many opportunities in the past. I could have quietly made a custody settlement with Mia in some way and done it in the future. You know, it’s so insane.”
“He’s lying and he’s been lying for so long,” Dylan said. “It is difficult for me to see him and hear his voice.”
Allen responded to CBS’s story with a statement, which reads:
“When this claim was first made more than 25 years ago, it was thoroughly investigated by both the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and New York State Child Welfare. They both did so for many months and independently concluded that no molestation had ever taken place. Instead, they found it likely a vulnerable child had been coached to tell the story by her angry mother during a contentious breakup.
Dylan’s older brother Moses has said that he witnessed their mother doing exactly that – relentlessly coaching Dylan, trying to drum into her that her father was a dangerous sexual predator. It seems to have worked – and, sadly, I’m sure Dylan truly believes what she says.
But even though the Farrow family is cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time’s Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation, that doesn’t make it any more true today than it was in the past. I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago.”
CBS spoke to the prosecutor of this case, Frank Maco, who said that in his opinion, “There was no manipulation by Mia Farrow.” Although there probably was cause to bring charges against Allen, Maco declined to bring the case to trial in order to spare Dylan the trauma of court proceedings.
Allen, and his projects, have been the subject of intense scrutiny since the #MeToo movement began. Actress Kate Winslet defended her participation in his latest release, Wonder Wheel, telling a roundtable with the Los Angeles Times that, “Woody Allen is an extraordinary writer and he’s obviously known for having created extraordinary roles, very powerful, complicated roles for women.”
Earlier this month, actress and director Greta Gerwig told the New York Times, “If I had known then what I know now, I would not have acted in the film. I have not worked for him again, and I will not work for him again. Dylan Farrow’s two different pieces made me realize that I increased another woman’s pain, and I was heartbroken by that realization.” Actor Timotheé Chalamet, who stars in Allen’s upcoming film A Rainy Day in New York, wrote on social media that he “doesn’t want to profit” from the film and that he is donating his salary from the movie to three charities: RAINN, the “LGBT Center in New York,” and the #TimesUp legal defense fund.
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