Dylan Farrow Responds to Woody Allen’s Response to Dylan Farrow

I really hope we can let this issue rest soon – not because I’m sick of hearing about it (because wouldn’t that be convenient for Woody Allen), but because unfortunately, Dylan Farrow ends up being more and more discredited while Allen gets more lauded because of his “legendary status”, undermining her experience. Allen has managed to turn this whole thing – which is literally about a grown man’s desire for – and sexual abuse of – young girls – into an attack on how “crazy” Mia Farrow is. Paltry defense, but for some reason, people just don’t seem to want to look at the facts.

Regardless, Dylan read Woody’s New York Times diatribe after he read her piece and now she’s issued a new rebuttal to The Hollywood Reporter:

Once again, Woody Allen is attacking me and my family in an effort to discredit and silence me – but nothing he says or writes can change the truth. For 20 years, I have never wavered in describing what he did to me. I will carry the memories of surviving these experiences for the rest of my life.

His op-ed is the latest rehash of the same legalese, distortions, and outright lies he has leveled at me for the past 20 years. He insists my mother brought criminal charges – in fact, it was a pediatrician who reported the incident to the police based on my firsthand account. He suggests that no one complained of his misconduct prior to his assault on me – court documents show that he was in treatment for what his own therapist described as “inappropriate” behavior with me from as early as 1991. He offers a carefully worded claim that he passed a lie detector test – in fact, he refused to take the test administered by the state police (he hired someone to administer his own test, which authorities refused to accept as evidence). These and other misrepresentations have been rebutted in more detail by independent, highly respected journalists, including this most recent article here: 

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts

With all the attempts to misrepresent the facts, it is important to be reminded of the truth contained in court documents from the only final ruling in this case, by the New York Supreme Court in 1992. In denying my father all access to me, that court:   

• Debunked the “experts” my father claims exonerated him, calling them “colored by their loyalty to Mr. Allen”, criticizing the author of their report (who never met me) for destroying all supporting documentation, and calling their conclusions “sanitized and therefore less credible”. 
• Included testimony from babysitters who witnessed inappropriate sexual behavior by my father toward me.
• Found that “there is no credible evidence to support Mr. Allen’s contention that Ms. Farrow coached Dylan or that Ms. Farrow acted upon a desire for revenge against him for seducing Soon-Yi. Mr. Allen’s resort to the stereotypical ‘woman scorned’ defense is an injudicious attempt to divert attention from his failure to act as a responsible parent and adult.”
• Concluded that the evidence “…proves that Mr. Allen’s behavior toward Dylan was grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.”
• Finally, the Connecticut State prosecutor found “probable cause” to prosecute, but made the decision not to in an effort to protect “the child victim”, given my fragile state.

From the bottom of my heart, I will be forever grateful for the outpouring of support I have received from survivors and countless others. If speaking out about my experience can help others stand up to their tormentors, it will be worth the pain and suffering my father continues to inflict on me. Woody Allen has an arsenal of lawyers and publicists but the one thing he does not have on his side is the truth. I hope this is the end of his vicious attacks and of the media campaign by his lawyers and publicists, as he’s promised. I won’t let the truth be buried and I won’t be silenced.

I feel so awful for Dylan – and for sex abuse victims everywhere, who are ignored or told they’re lying because the man charged seems so respectable and honourable, or is a fancy lawyer, or has a lot of money, or is beloved in the community or whatever the case is. I love that it’s easier for people to believe that Mia Farrrow is so fucked up that she BRAINWASHED her daughter into thinking she’d been sexually molested on several occasions by Woody Allen (to the point that Dylan is speaking publicly and in detail about something that’s actually never happened) than it is to believe that a man who took naked pictures of a girl he was like a father figure to and later married her while she was still a teenager could molest a child. Does that not seem like a major fucking problem to anyone else?

Ugh, how awful.