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Dylan Farrow speaks out on alleged sexual abuse by Woody Allen, calls out Hollywood celebs
Director Woody Allen faces reporters briefly in New York, June 7, 1993, following a judge's ruling ending his attempt to gain custody of children Moses, Dylan and Satchel. The ruling followed a bitter custody battle with former lover actress Mia Farrow.
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Michael Albans/AP
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File: Actress Mia Farrow (C-L) leaves Yale- New Haven Hospital with her daughter Lark (C-R) March 18, 1993 after a 2.5-hour meeting with child sexual-abuse experts and Woody Allen. Allen later told reporters that the team of experts cleared him of Farrow's charge that he sexually abused their 7-year-old daughter Dylan.
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Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images
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Actor-Director Woody Allen (L) speaks to reporters in New York City after a pre-trial hearing Dec. 15, 1992 on the custody fight between Allen and former girlfriend Mia Farrow. Farrow's lawyers asked that Allen not be allowed to contact his adopted daughter Dylan and not seek custody when his wife dies.
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File: Actress Mia Farrow (R) is escorted past photographers March 26, 1993 by her attorney Eleanor Alter (C) as she heads into court for another day of testimony in her custody hearing. Farrow claimed that her daughter Dylan told her that Woody Allen "touched her in certain places."
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Filmmaker and comedian Woody Allen's alleged sexual abuse of his adopted daughter, Dylan, received renewed attention following his lifetime achievement award at this year's Golden Globes Awards, and now Dylan is speaking out in an open letter in the New York Times and calling out the casts of Allen's recent films.
Dylan (who has since changed her first name to Malone, but published the editorial as Dylan) describes the alleged abuse in the article.
"When I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me," Dylan writes.
She writes that her adoptive father tried to comfort her.
"He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies," Dylan writes.
Allen was never prosecuted in the case and has continued to deny any wrongdoing, but his former partner, Mia Farrow, and her son Ronan took to Twitter on the night of the Globes to remind the world of those allegations.
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Mia Farrow tweeted about the 1993 allegations and cited a Vanity Fair article from last October where the magazine spoke with Mia and eight of her children.
Dylan also uses the column to call out the actors in several of Allen's films, including "Blue Jasmine" stars Cate Blanchett, Louis CK and Alec Baldwin, asking what they would have done if one of their children had said they were abused. She asks what if the victim had been Emma Stone or Scarlett Johansson; Stone stars in Allen's upcoming "Magic in the Moonlight," and Johansson has appeared in several of his films.
She also criticizes Diane Keaton, who accepted Allen's lifetime achievement award on his behalf at the Golden Globes.
After the allegations received renewed attention during the Globes, filmmaker Robert Weide, who produced and directed a two-part special on Woody Allen for PBS, wrote a counterpoint to the allegations for the Daily Beast. He pointed out that an investigative team that had looked into the charges against Allen at the time said it was possible Dylan was coached in her allegations, along with other potential problems with the allegations against Allen.
Dylan writes that she has fallen apart throughout her life whenever she's seen Allen's face, but with Allen receiving an Oscar nomination last week for his latest film "Blue Jasmine," she chose to speak out.
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"The survivors of sexual abuse who have reached out to me – to support me and to share their fears of coming forward, of being called a liar, of being told their memories aren’t their memories – have given me a reason to not be silent, if only so others know that they don’t have to be silent either," Dylan writes.
The open letter from Dylan was published by Times columnist Nick Kristof, who also wrote a column on the case that was released Saturday. He notes that he is a friend of Mia Farrow and Ronan Farrow, which is how he was put in touch with Dylan.
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