Dylan Farrow accuses Woody Allen of sexual abuse in TV interview

Allen's adoptive daughter makes the accusation for the first time on TV.

ByABC News
January 18, 2018, 1:16 PM

— -- For the first time on television, Dylan Farrow accused her adoptive father Woody Allen of sexual abuse.

"I want to show my face and tell my story," Farrow told "CBS This Morning" earlier today. "I want to speak out. Literally."

Now married and the mother of a 16-month-old girl, Farrow 32, told Gayle King that she was speaking out to have her voice included in the #MeToo and Time's Up conversations.

"With so much silence being broken by so many brave people against so many high profile people, I felt it was important to add my story to theirs because it's something I've struggled with for a long time and it was ... it was very momentous for me to see this conversation finally carried into a public setting," she said.

Farrow, who first shared her story publicly in 2014 in an op-ed piece in The New York Times, has stood by her story -- that she was molested by Allen -- for more than two decades.

Allen has consistently denied the allegations, maintaining that his ex and Farrow's mother, actress Mia Farrow, coached Dylan Farrow into making the claims during the couple's breakup and custody battle.

In a statement to ABC News following Dylan Farrow's interview, Allen said: "When this claim was first made more than 25 years ago, it was thoroughly investigated by both the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and New York State Child Welfare. They both did so for many months and independently concluded that no molestation had ever taken place. Instead, they found it likely a vulnerable child had been coached to tell the story by her angry mother during a contentious breakup.

"Dylan’s older brother Moses has said that he witnessed their mother doing exactly that -- relentlessly coaching Dylan, trying to drum into her that her father was a dangerous sexual predator. It seems to have worked – and, sadly, I’m sure Dylan truly believes what she says.

"But 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. I never molested my daughter -- as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago."

PHOTO: Dylan Farrow appears on "CBS This Morning," Jan. 18, 2018.
Dylan Farrow appears on "CBS This Morning," Jan. 18, 2018.

Dylan Farrow described the incident she said occurred in August 1992.

"I was taken to a small attic crawl space in my mother's country house in Connecticut by my father," she told King. "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 continued, "As a 7-year-old I would say, I would have said he touched my private parts. As a 32-year-old, he touched my labia and my vulva with his finger."

She recalled other alleged instances. "He 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," she said.

PHOTO: Dylan Farrow appears on "CBS This Morning," Jan. 18, 2018.
Dylan Farrow appears on "CBS This Morning," Jan. 18, 2018.

When King pressed Dylan Farrow about whether she had been coached by her mother to make these allegations against Allen, Dylan Farrow responded, "What I don't understand is how is this crazy story of me being brainwashed and coached more believable than what I'm saying about being sexually assaulted by my father?"

She added, "Every step of the way, my mother has only encouraged me to tell the truth. She has never coached me."

When King played a clip from a 1992 "60 Minutes" interview in which Allen strongly denies the allegations, Dylan Farrow became visibly upset.

"He's lying and he's been lying for so long," she said, wiping away tears. "And it is difficult for me to see him and to hear his voice. I'm sorry."

Allen was investigated on child molestation claims for the alleged 1992 incident in Connecticut, but prosecutors elected not to charge him.

Dylan Farrow told King she now wishes prosecutors had filed charges so that she could have testified.

"I do wish that they had, you know, even if I'm just speaking in retrospect. I was already traumatized," she said. "Here's the thing. I mean, outside of a court of law, we do know what happened in the attic on that day. I just told you."

PHOTO: Director and screenwriter Woody Allen  attends the "Wonder Wheel" New York screening at the Museum of Modern Art, Nov. 14, 2017, in New York.
Director and screenwriter Woody Allen attends the "Wonder Wheel" New York screening at the Museum of Modern Art, Nov. 14, 2017, in New York.