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Dylan Farrow accuses Woody Allen of sexual abuse on TV for the first time

The daughter of actress Mia Farrow details her alleged molestation

Ilana Kaplan
New York
Thursday 18 January 2018 17:14 GMT
Dylan Farrow accuses Woody Allen of sexual assault for the first time on television

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Dylan Farrow has accused Woody Allen of sexual abuse for the first time on TV.

The daughter of actress Mia Farrow appeared on CBS This Morning with Gayle King on Thursday to speak out about her sexual abuse claims from 25 years ago.

Dylan first told Mia about being molested at the age of seven, but it wasn’t until 2014 when she went public with the allegations in an open letter to The New York Times.

She detailed the molestation in her interview: “I was taken to a small attic crawl space in my mother’s country house in Connecticut by my father,” she said. “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.”

She then added, “As a 32-year-old, he touched my labia and my vulva with his finger.”

Back then, she thought “she had done something wrong”.

After the molestation occurred, she told her mother who took her to the paediatrician.

Because she was “embarrassed,” when asked by the paediatrician where she had been touched, she initially pointed to her shoulder. But then she went back into speak with the doctor again and she told him what she had told Mia.

After Dylan spoke out, Allen “suggested” Dylan was coached by her mother to deliver her story. But just a few months earlier, Mia found naked photos of her adopted daughter Soon-Yi in Allen’s apartment. Allen admitted to their affair, and he and Soon-Yi have been married for over two decades.

Dylan further explained that Allen “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”.

According to Connecticut state prosecutor Frank Maco, there was “probable cause to charge Allen but he thought Dylan was too fragile to face a celebrity trial”.

Maco claimed, “There was no manipulation by Mia Farrow.”

Allen made a statement to CBS News saying: “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 always denied the allegations of sexual abuse from Farrow.

Dylan’s brother Ronan was one of the first reporters to publish a story on the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

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