Celebrity News February 08, 2014
Woody Allen Writes Open Letter Denying Sex Abuse Claims, Dylan Hits Back
Last week, Dylan Farrow posted an explosive open letter on the New York Times website, renewing claims that her adoptive father Woody Allen sexually abused her when she was 7 years old. Now, he is publicly denying the allegations in his own NYT letter.
Essentially, he says he never abused Dylan, and that he blames Mia Farrow for creating a smear campaign against him.
He wrote, “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.”
Woody, 78, continued, “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.”
Allen (seen denying the sex abuse claims in the above video) went on to say that after the custody battle, he never had contact with Dylan again. “I still loved [Dylan] deeply, and felt guilty that by falling in love with Soon-Yi I had put her in the position of being used as a pawn for revenge.”
He later added that he believed Dylan was “coached” by Mia, and that his ex was using Dylan to advance her own "shabby agenda" to "hurt me with smear." Read the entire letter here.
Dylan, 28, was quick to hit back, telling Us Weekly, "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.” Read her full response here.
