Filmmaker Woody Allen has dismissed his adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow’s, sex assault claims saying he “never molested her”.
Allen’s reaction comes after Farrow gave her first public TV interview about the claims hoping that appearing on camera would convince people she was telling the truth. In his response the filmmaker has accused Farrow of “cynically” using Hollywood’s Time’s Up movement to renew her claims of sexual assault, reported Entertainment Weekly.
“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… Dylan’s older brother Moses has said that he witnessed their mother relentlessly coaching Dylan, trying to drum into her that her father was a dangerous sexual predator.
“It seems to have worked and, sadly, I’m sure Dylan truly believes what she says. 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,” Allen said in a statement.
Allegations against the Oscar-winning director were dropped by state prosecutors in 1993 but Farrow repeated them in an open letter in 2014, claiming he had molested her in the family home when she was seven. Allen again denied these accusations, writing in The New York Times in 2014. However, in light of the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and other men in Hollywood, Farrow penned an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times that called out actors who have worked with Allen and not denounced him over her claims.
Following Farrow’s piece, actors Rachel Hall, Greta Gerwig, Mia Sorvino, Colin Firth, Rachel Brosnahan, and Timothee Chalamet have come forward to publicly announce their regret over working with Allen. Hall and Chalamet, who star in Allen’s upcoming project “A Rainy Day in New York,” said they will donate their salaries from the film to charity.