Woody Allen Declares His Innocence In Aggressive Open Letter

A week ago, Dylan Farrow accused Woody Allen of sexual assault in a haunting open letter. Today, the Oscar winner fired back against the allegations and pointed the finger directly at his ex-girlfriend and Dylan’s mother Mia Farrow.

In his own blistering, highly aggressive open letter, Allen uses the pages of The New York Times to unequivocally deny he ever molested Dylan and to offer up some fairly logical reasons for why he never molested his adopted daughter. Here are some of the reasons he lists...

First, he hasn't been accused of any sexual misconduct with children before or after Dylan. Second, he took a lie detector test and passed. Third, Dylan originally told a doctor she wasn’t molested after the supposed incident. Fourth, an independent review of experts ruled he never molested Dylan. Fifth, no charges were ever filed. Sixth, the alleged incident occurred inside an attic he was known to be terrified of inside Mia’s house after the break-up during a three hour window in which a ton of people were around.

You can check out an excerpt of Allen’s letter below…

”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. 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.”

Of course, the allegations did anything but disappear. They were later investigated by a team of experts, the local police department, a judge and millions of Americans who picked up newspapers and/ or tabloids. Charges were never filed, and the controversy hid and reemerged in the year since, at least until Allen was honored with a lifetime achievement award, Farrow fired off her open letter and numerous other family members decided to go public and choose sides.

Here’s the closing of Allen’s letter…

”Of course, I did not molest Dylan. I loved her and hope one day she will grasp how she has been cheated out of having a loving father and exploited by a mother more interested in her own festering anger than her daughter’s well-being. Being taught to hate your father and made to believe he molested you has already taken a psychological toll on this lovely young woman, and Soon-Yi and I are both hoping that one day she will understand who has really made her a victim and reconnect with us, as Moses has, in a loving, productive way. No one wants to discourage abuse victims from speaking out, but one must bear in mind that sometimes there are people who are falsely accused and that is also a terribly destructive thing.”

Allen has vowed that this will be his final word on the matter. Given how long he maintained his silence, it seems highly unlikely he’ll change his mind. As such, there will probably never be any firm resolution as to what actually did or did not happen. Hopefully, however, those who deserve it can find some honest peace.

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Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.