Earlier this week, famed director Woody Allen‘s daughter Dylan Farrow wrote an open letter detailing her sexual assault allegations against her father. Now, the consistently mum Allen is responding to the claims in the New York Times.
The 78-year-old denies any abuse and blames his tumultuous relationship with Dylan’s mother, Mia Farrow, for creating a catalyst to essentially turn his daughter against him.
He writes:
I naïvely thought the accusation would be dismissed out of hand because of course, I hadn’t molested Dylan and any rational person would see the ploy for what it was. Common sense would prevail. After all, I was a 56-year-old man who had never before (or after) been accused of child molestation. I had been going out with Mia for 12 years and never in that time did she ever suggest to me anything resembling misconduct. Now, suddenly, when I had driven up to her house in Connecticut one afternoon to visit the kids for a few hours, when I would be on my raging adversary’s home turf, with half a dozen people present, when I was in the blissful early stages of a happy new relationship with the woman I’d go on to marry — that I would pick this moment in time to embark on a career as a child molester should seem to the most skeptical mind highly unlikely. The sheer illogic of such a crazy scenario seemed to me dispositive.
He also says he passed a lie detector test, and questions whether Dylan even wrote her open letter, pointing the finger at her mother Mia.
One must ask, did Dylan even write the letter or was it at least guided by her mother? Does the letter really benefit Dylan or does it simply advance her mother’s shabby agenda? That is to hurt me with a smear. There is even a lame attempt to do professional damage by trying to involve movie stars, which smells a lot more like Mia than Dylan.
Allen closes out, saying the NY Times piece will be the last time he speaks out on the matter. To read the full article, click over to the Times.
Dylan Farrow has responded to Woody’s statement with the NY Times, and told Us Weekly in her own statement:
“Once again, Woody Allen is attacking me and my family in an effort to discredit and silence me – but nothing he says or writes can change the truth,” Dylan, now 28, has told Us. “For 20 years, I have never wavered in describing what he did to me. I will carry the memories of surviving these experiences for the rest of my life.”
“His op-ed is the latest rehash of the same legalese, distortions, and outright lies he has leveled at me for the past 20 years. He insists my mother brought criminal charges – in fact, it was a pediatrician who reported the incident to the police based on my firsthand account,” she continued of Allen, 78. “He suggests that no one complained of his misconduct prior to his assault on me – court documents show that he was in treatment for what his own therapist described as ‘inappropriate’ behavior with me from as early as 1991.
“He offers a carefully worded claim that he passed a lie detector test – in fact, he refused to take the test administered by the state police (he hired someone to administer his own test, which authorities refused to accept as evidence).”
“With all the attempts to misrepresent the facts, it is important to be reminded of the truth contained in court documents from the only final ruling in this case, by the New York Supreme Court in 1992,”
She even gave a step-by-step of what allegedly happened in 1992:
– Debunked the ‘experts’ my father claims exonerated him, calling them ‘colored by their loyalty to Mr. Allen’, criticizing the author of their report (who never met me) for destroying all supporting documentation, and calling their conclusions ‘sanitized and therefore less credible.’
– Included testimony from babysitters who witnessed inappropriate sexual behavior by my father toward me.
– Found that there is no credible evidence to support Mr. Allen’s contention that Ms. Farrow coached Dylan or that Ms. Farrow acted upon a desire for revenge against him for seducing Soon-Yi. Mr. Allen’s resort to the stereotypical ‘woman scorned’ defense is an injudicious attempt to divert attention from his failure to act as a responsible parent and adult.
– Concluded that the evidence ‘…proves that Mr. Allen’s behavior toward Dylan was grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.’
– Finally, the Connecticut State prosecutor found ‘probable cause’ to prosecute, but made the decision not to in an effort to protect ‘the child victim,’ given my fragile state.”
She even thanked those who were giving her support during this time:
“From the bottom of my heart, I will be forever grateful for the outpouring of support I have received from survivors and countless others. If speaking out about my experience can help others stand up to their tormentors, it will be worth the pain and suffering my father continues to inflict on me,” she told Us. “Woody Allen has an arsenal of lawyers and publicists but the one thing he does not have on his side is the truth. I hope this is the end of his vicious attacks and of the media campaign by his lawyers and publicists, as he’s promised. I won’t let the truth be buried and I won’t be silenced.”
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SOURCE: NY Times/Us Weekly | VIDEO SOURCE: NDN
