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Is Woody Allen proof the system failed to protect victims of sexual assault? Why do we treat this man differently to Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein and Louis C.K.? They are big questions and today his daughter Dylan Farrow spoke to Gayle King on CBS This Morning detailing, again, the events of August 4, 1992 when a then seven-year-old Farrow says she was sexually assaulted by her father Woody 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” Farrow said. “And he sat behind me in the doorway, and as I played with the toy train, I was sexually assaulted … As a seven-year-old I would say, I would have said he touched my private parts.” Farrow described Allen touching “my labia and my vulva with his finger”.
“He would follow me around. He was always touching me, cuddling me and if I ever said, you know, like I want to go off by myself, he wouldn’t let me… He often asked me to get into bed with him when he had only his underwear on and sometimes when only I had my underwear on.”
Perhaps though the most disturbing side to this case is the idea that Farrow was “brainwashed” or “coached” by her mother – who is now divorced from Allen – to speak out against the abuse. Farrow has been forced to deny this ridiculous accusation. ““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?” Farrow told King. “Every step of the way, my mother has only encouraged me to tell the truth. She has never coached me.”
“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?” — @realdylanfarrow #FarrowThisMorning pic.twitter.com/eNbQyXOVv1
— CBS This Morning ❄️ (@CBSThisMorning) January 18, 2018
The abuse allegations first came to light in 1992 during a custody battle between Allen and Farrow’s mother Mia. After police requested an independent child sexual abuse clinic asses Farrow, they reportedly concluded the little girl was “influenced” by her mother. But Allen was deemed “self-absorbed, untrustworthy and insensitive” by the judge and lost out on custody. It should be noted too that Allen, while married to Mia, had an affair with Mia’s 21-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, from another marriage. Previn and Allen are still married today.
Allen issued a statement again denying all allegations. “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,” it read. “I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago. 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.”
Allen has continued a successful career in Hollywood. He is currently working on his latest film A Rainy Day In New York starring Selena Gomez, Timothée Chalamet, Suki Waterhouse, Jude Law and Elle Fanning.
