Dylan Farrow Speaks About Woody Allen Sexual Abuse in First TV Interview, Allen Releases Statement
In 2014, Dylan Farrow wrote an op-ed in The New York Times accusing her adoptive father, Woody Allen, of sexually abusing her as a child in 1992. Allen has long denied the allegation, but in the wake of the massive sexual assault and misconduct reckoning happening in popular culture, Farrow’s story is no longer being dismissed. Recently, multiple actors in Allen’s upcoming film publicly denounced the filmmaker, with more of his previous cast members speaking out. On Thursday, Farrow sat down with Gayle King on CBS This Morning for her first TV interview about the allegations.
In the 2014 op-ed, Farrow wrote about Allen’s alleged pattern of inappropriate behavior with her as a child, such as forcing her to get in bed with him when he was wearing his underwear, and putting his face in her “naked lap.” In that piece she also accused the director of molesting her in August of 1992 in a closet-like attic space in their home. During the first part of Farrow’s CBS interview, which aired Thursday morning, Farrow went into further detail about the assault. When asked by King to describe the events of the assault, Farrow said of Allen:
I was taken to a small attic crawl space in my mother’s country house in Connecticut by my father. 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 7-year-old, I would say he touched my private parts. As a 32-year-old, he touched my labia and my vulva with his finger.
Allen denied Farrow’s claims in a New York Times op-ed in 2014, insisting that Dylan was coached by her mother, Mia Farrow. He previously denied the assault in a 60 Minutes interview in 1992, calling it “illogical” and “insane” that he would have abused Farrow at a time when he was in the middle of child custody battle with Farrow. “If I wanted to be a child molester, I had many opportunities in the past,” Allen said in the 1992 interview, which King played for Farrow. “I could have quietly made a custody settlement with Mia and done it in the future.”
In light of the CBS This Morning interview, Allen released another statement to CBS denying Farrow’s claims on Thursday. In his statement, the Wonder Wheel director pointed to a 1992 investigation by the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital that found Dylan Farrow wasn’t abused. He further claimed Mia Farrow coached her daughter into accusing him and blamed the family for using the Time’s Up movement to discredit him further:
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.
The former Connecticut prosecutor in Allen and Mia Farrow’s 1993 custody case, Frank Maco, told CBS This Morning that he believed there was “no manipulation by Mia Farrow” and “nothing in the state police investigation indicated Dylan was controlled or manipulated by her mother.” During the ‘93 custody case, Maco did find “probable cause“ to prosecute Allen, but dropped the case to spare the then-young Dylan Farrow having to deal with the trial. The judge in the case also found no credible evidence to support Allen’s claim of Farrow coaching her daughter.
Last month, Dylan Farrow wrote an op-ed in the LA Times calling out the many actors who continue to work with Allen. Since then, three stars in Allen’s upcoming film A Rainy Day in New York, including Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Hall, and The Tick‘s Griffin Newman, have spoken out against the filmmaker and donated their salaries from the film to various organizations supporting supporting survivors of sexual abuse.