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On "CBS This Morning," Woody Allen's adopted daughter Dylan Farrow gave co-host Gayle King more disturbing details about her alleged sexual assault by Allen.
Allen has denied the accusations, and said that Dylan's mother, Mia Farrow, brainwashed her.
- Dylan Farrow told King that it's shocked her that the story that she was brainwashed by her mother seems to some more believable than her story.
On "CBS This Morning" Thursday, Dylan Farrow gave a detailed and emotional interview about her alleged sexual assault by her adopted father, filmmaker Woody Allen. Farrow said that Allen touched her "private parts" while she played with a toy train at her Connecticut home in 1992. She was seven.
Farrow, now 32, has recently criticized actors, including Justin Timberlake, who have supported the anti-harassment Time's Up initiative (and the #MeToo movement) while continuing to work with Allen.
On "CBS This Morning," Farrow gave co-host Gayle King more disturbing details about the alleged assault than she has ever shared publicly.
"I was taken to a small attic crawl space in my mother's country house in Connecticut by my father," Farrow said. "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. As a seven year old I would say, I would have said he touched my private parts."
Farrow said that as a 32 year old, she would now more precisely describe it as "he touched my labia and my vulva with his finger." Farrow also told King that Allen would behave inappropriately with her, asking her to get into bed with him while he was in his underwear.
Allen, who has denied the accusation for years, said in a statement to CBS that "the Farrow family is cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time's Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation."
King asked Farrow about the contention of Allen and her brother, Moses, that her mother, Mia Farrow, brainwashed her into telling this story to get revenge on Allen for cheating on her with their other adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, whom Allen had an affair with and has been married to for 20 years.
"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," Farrow said.
Farrow told King that every step of the way, her mother encouraged her to tell the truth, and never coached her.
King played a clip from a previous interview Allen did for "60 Minutes," in which he denies the alleged assault. In the interview, Allen said, "I could if I wanted to be a child molester, I had many opportunities in the past."
Farrow cried while the clip played.
"I thought I could handle it," she said. "He's lying and he's been lying for so long. And it is difficult for me to see him and to hear his voice. I'm sorry."
Watch the full interview below:
In a statement to CBS, Allen, who was never charged with a crime in this case, 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."