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Woody Allen denies abuse allegations Woody Allen denies abuse allegations
(about 3 hours later)
Woody Allen has vigorously denied molesting his estranged daughter, Dylan Farrow, in a scathing response published in the New York Times that portrays his ex-wife, Mia Farrow, as a “raging adversary” who vindictively came up with the allegation and brainwashed the seven-year-old girl into believing it. Woody Allen has struck
Allen insisted in his response that the allegation about their adopted daughter was back against allegations he molested Dylan Farrow in a blistering reply that accuses Mia Farrow of spite, deceit and hatefulness.
fabricated by Farrow when they were fighting a custody battle. The film director cast
The response by Allen, 78, to the accusations of sexual assault by himself in a New York Times article as the persecuted victim of his former partner, denouncing her as a “raging
Dylan Farrow, now 28, was published on the New York Times website five adversary” who destroyed their family and coached their daughter to
days after she gave the newspaper her own account that repeated and invent stories of sexual abuse.
elaborated on those allegations. “Of course, I did not
“I did not molest Dylan,” Allen wrote. “I loved her and hope one day molest Dylan. I loved her and hope one day she will grasp how she has
she will grasp how she has been cheated out of having a loving father been cheated out of having a loving father and exploited by a mother
and exploited by a mother more interested in her own festering anger more interested in her own festering anger than her daughter’s
than her daughter’s wellbeing.” wellbeing.
“Being taught to hate
your father and made to believe he molested you has already taken a
psychological toll on this lovely young woman, and Soon-Yi [Allen’s wife] and I are
both hoping that one day she will understand who has really made her
a victim and reconnect with us.”
The 2,000-word column,
which Allen, 78, vowed would be his “final word” on the subject,
was published on Friday in response to an open letter from Dylan a week earlier in which she repeated the longstanding
accusations against her father.
Allen said he did not
doubt Dylan, 21, believed she had been molested. “But if from the
age of seven a vulnerable child is taught by a strong mother to hate her
father because he is a monster who abused her, is it so inconceivable
that after many years of this indoctrination the image of me Mia
wanted to establish had taken root?”
The story erupted in
1992 during an acrimonious split between Allen and Farrow, who had
starred in several of his films. Dylan, then aged seven, alleged her
father abused her in the attic of the family home in Connecticut.
A panel of experts
investigated the claims and found no evidence of abuse. No charges
were filed. Allen claimed Farrow concocted the story to punish him
for an affair with their adopted teenage daughter, Soon-Yi, now his
wife.
“Even the venue where
the fabricated molestation was supposed to have taken place was
poorly chosen but interesting. Mia chose the attic of her country
house, a place she should have realised I’d never go to because it
is a tiny, cramped, enclosed spot where one can hardly stand up and
I’m a major claustrophobe. The one or two times she asked me to
come in there to look at something, I did, but quickly had to run
out.”
Despite Allen’s
repeated denials over the years, suspicion has endured, tainting his
reputation even amid critical acclaim with recent films such as Blue
Jasmine and Midnight in Paris.
The row flared anew
last month when Ronan Farrow, 26, who has always sided with his
mother, revived the accusation in response to Allen winning a Golden
Globe lifetime achievement award. His sister followed up with the
open letter.
Allen said the
accusation stemmed from “great enmity” during a bitter end to his
12-year relationship with Farrow. “The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn’t even hire a lawyer to
defend myself.”
He took a lie detector and passed, Allen said, but Mia Farrow declined to do so. She tried to persuade one of Allen’s former girlfriends, Stacey
Nelkin, to falsely tell authorities she had been underage when their
relationship began.
The director accused Farrow of duplicity over her relationship with Frank Sinatra,
whom she recently suggested may be the father of Ronan. “Granted,
he looks a lot like Frank with the blue eyes and facial features, but
if so what does this say? That all during the custody hearing Mia
lied under oath and falsely represented Ronan as our son? Even if he
is not Frank’s, the possibility she raises that he could be,
indicates she was secretly intimate with him during our years.”
Allen lamented that his
former partner isolated him from Ronan and Dylan, saying he felt
guilty that the latter was used as a pawn for revenge. “Soon-Yi and
I made countless attempts to see Dylan but Mia blocked them all,
spitefully knowing how much we both loved her but totally indifferent
to the pain and damage she was causing the little girl merely to
appease her own vindictiveness.”
He quoted the couple’s
other son, Moses, now a 36-year-old family therapist, who has
protested Allen’s innocence.
He concluded: “No one
wants to discourage abuse victims from speaking out, but one must
bear in mind that sometimes there are people who are falsely accused
and that is also a terribly destructive thing.” There was no
immediate response from Farrow.
The controversy is
likely to hang over next month’s Oscars, where Blue Jasmine is up for
three awards.