Woody Allen fought back against allegations he molested Dylan Farrow some 21 years ago in a scathing New York Times opinion piece where he vehemently denied the charges in a missive the newspaper posted on its website Friday evening.
The normally press and publicity shy Allen, 78, took several shots at ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow, who he says coached her then-7-year-old daughter Dylan on what to tell cops about the alleged incident at Farrow's Connecticut home.
'Twenty-one years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn't give it a second thought,' Allen writes. 'We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn't even hire a lawyer to defend myself. '
Allen goes on to quote the report filed by a Yale-New Haven Hospital child sex abuse clinic, which concluded 'Dylan was not sexually abused by Mr. Allen' and instead had been coached by Mia Farrow or made up the allegations.
In the piece, Allen lashes out at Farrow, whom he dated for 12 years during the 1980s and early 1990s. He also takes several shots at her credibility, noting her relationship with a much older Frank Sinatra and the ongoing paternity question involving her son, Ronan Farrow, 26.
'Not that I doubt Dylan hasn't come to believe she's been molested, but if from the age of 7 a vulnerable child is taught by a strong mother to hate her father because he is a monster who abused her, is it so inconceivable that after many years of this indoctrination the image of me Mia wanted to establish had taken root?' he wrote. 'Is it any wonder the experts at Yale had picked up the maternal coaching aspect 21 years ago?'
Allen, who waited a week to respond to the open letter Dylan Farrow wrote last week, said his scathing response would be 'my final word on this entire matter.'
The allegations of child sex abuse came up last month after Mia and her son Ronan Farrow, tweeted about the two decades old allegations during the Golden Globes, when Allen was honored with a tribute.
sgoldstein@nydailynews.com or follow on Twitter
{ 0 comments... Views All / Send Comment! }
Post a Comment