In the past two years, Dylan Farrow has published two pieces regarding her alleged assault at the hands of director Woody Allen, but she's never given an on-camera interview. Thursday morning, she sat down with Gayle King on CBS This Morning to discuss the matter in detail for the first time. In the interview, Farrow retold the story that, if you've been following the controversy, should be very familiar: In 1992, when Farrow was seven, she was allegedly sexually assaulted by her adoptive father.
"I was taken to a small attic crawl space in my mother's country house in Connecticut by my father," Farrow, 32, recounted. "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 added that, in the language of a 7-year-old, she would have said he "touched her private parts."
Allen has denied Farrow's allegations since they first arose in the '90s. Both New York State Child Welfare and the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital investigated Farrow's claims in 1992, each concluding that no sexual abuse had taken place. In response to Farrow's CBS This Morning interview, Allen provided another statement, his first public acknowledgement of the case since Farrow published a searing op-ed in the LA Times in December.
The statement argues, "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."
Farrow was overcome with emotions when King played an old clip of Allen denying the allegations on 60 Minutes. "It is difficult for me to see him and to hear his voice. I'm sorry," she said as King comforted her.
Our 8 a.m. report: Dylan Farrow calls on actors who work with Woody Allen to "acknowledge their complicity." #FarrowThisMorning https://t.co/rHFtIwX69d
— CBS This Morning ❄️ (@CBSThisMorning) January 18, 2018
The conjoined #metoo and Time's Up movement have brought Farrow's decades-old allegations to the forefront, although only because Farrow herself has made a point of it. In December, Farrow wrote in the LA Times that the #metoo movement had "excluded" her. The op-ed denounced specific actors for refusing to acknowledge the allegations in interviews — Farrow cited Blake Lively, Kate Winslet, and Greta Gerwig as actors who were complicit in silencing Farrow. Since the op-ed, actors Ellen Page, Natalie Portman, Gerwig, Rebecca Hall, Mira Sorvino, and Timothée Chalamet have acknowledged the controversy. Portman, who has never worked with Allen, said in an interview with CBS that she "believes" Farrow, while Hall, Gerwig, and Sorvino have all apologised for working with him. Chalamet, who is still under contract for the forthcoming Allen movie A Rainy Day in New York, claimed he could not comment on the matter, but he donated his salary to three separate charities.
So, what is the goal of bringing these allegations back to light? Farrow hopes to hold Hollywood accountable for condoning Allen's actions for so many years. Farrow says she's not "angry" with Hollywood for continuing to work with Allen; instead, she's hopeful that the #metoo movement can hold these people accountable for their actions of the past.
"If they can't acknowledge the accusations of one survivor's how are they going to stand for all of us?" she said.
During the interview on CBS, King replayed a clip of Portman saying she believes Farrow. Farrow began to cry.
Explained Farrow, "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."
Read the full transcript of the interview here.
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