|
In her first television interview, Dylan Farrow
told the CBS show "This Morning" that Allen touched her private
parts when she was 7 years old.
"I loved my father. I respected him. He was my hero. And that
doesn't obviously take away from what he did. But it does make
the betrayal and the hurt that much more intense," Farrow, now
32, told Gayle King in the interview.
Allen, 82, has repeatedly denied the accusation, which was first
made in 1992 in the midst of his bitter split with his
then-partner, actress Mia Farrow.
In a statement on Thursday, Allen repeated his denial, and said
Farrow was using the sexual misconduct scandal that has swept
Hollywood to renew her accusation.
Sentiment in Hollywood against the "Annie Hall" director has
grown in recent months with several actors distancing themselves
from him or donating earnings from his films to sexual
harassment support groups.
Dozens of powerful men in Hollywood, media and politics have
been fired, forced to stand down, or dropped from projects in
the past several months after being accused of sexual
misconduct.
The recent spread of the hashtag #MeToo has highlighted the
ubiquity of sexual harassment and has given rise to Time's Up, a
group lobbying for anti-harassment legislation and providing
legal support for victims of harassment and assault.
"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," Allen said in a statement.
"I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded
a quarter of a century ago," he added. Allen was never charged.
Farrow alleged that she was molested when Allen visited her
mother's Connecticut home in August 1992, in the middle of a
custody fight.
"I was taken to a small attic crawlspace... He instructed me to
lay down on my stomach and play with my brother's toy train that
was set up. And he sat behind me in the doorway and as I played
with the toy train I was sexually assaulted," she told King.
She added that Allen "often asked me to get into bed with him
when he had only his underwear on and sometimes when only I had
my underwear on."
Allen, who won Oscars for his comedies "Annie Hall," "Hannah and
Her Sisters" and "Midnight in Paris," has continued to turn out
a movie almost every year.
His most recent film "Wonder Wheel," distributed by Amazon.com
Inc's Amazon Studios, has fared poorly at the North American box
office, taking only $1.4 million since its Dec. 1 release.
His next film, "A Rainy Day in New York" which is also from
Amazon Studios, is due for release later this year.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bill Rigby)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
|
