Director Woody Allen released a statement on Thursday to CBS This Morning denying the molestation allegations against him by his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow, who detailed the claims on television for the first time.
“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,” Allen’s statement read. “I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago.”
Farrow, 32, told This Morning host Gayle King that Allen touched her vagina when she was seven years old while her mother and Allen’s girlfriend at the time, Mia Farrow, was out shopping.
“He instructed me to lay down on my stomach and play with my brother’s toy train that was set up. 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,” Dylan Farrow explained. “As a 32-year-old, he touched my labia and my vulva with his finger.”
Allen has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Connecticut authorities never charged the four-time Oscar-winning filmmaker with a crime. The controversial claims, however, remerged after Dylan Farrow penned an open letter published in the New York Times in 2014.
“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,” Allen wrote in his statement to CBS.
“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,” Allen said (the “breakup” referring to the split between himself and Mia Farrow, who had recently discovered Allen’s relationship with Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn).
Dylan Farrow, in her CBS interview, denied allegations that she was “coached” by her mother to accuse Allen of molestation.
“What I don’t understand is how is this crazy story of me being brainwashed and coached more believable than what I’m saying about being sexually assaulted by my father?” Dylan Farrow said.
The allegations against Allen also took on a new light in the wake of the MeToo and Time’s Up anti-sexual harassment campaigns spurred by the throng of powerful Hollywood men who’ve been accused of sexual abuse over a period of decades. Allen even weighted in on the allegations against Harvey Weinstein in October, calling the misconduct claims against the disgraced Hollywood producer “tragic for the poor women that were involved.”
In recent weeks, several actors set to star in Allen’s upcoming romantic drama A Rainy Day in New York have vowed to donate their salary from the film to sex abuse survivor organizations.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
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