Dylan Farrow is opening up about what she says was sexual abuse by her adoptive father, filmmaker Woody Allen, when she was 7 years old.
In her first TV interview, Farrow, 32, alleged Allen sexually assaulted her in the Connecticut home of actress Mia Farrow, her adoptive mother.
“I was taken to a small attic crawl space,” Farrow said in an interview with “CBS This Morning” that aired Thursday. “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 7-year-old, I would say he touched my private parts. As a 32-year-old, he touched my labia and my vulva with his finger.”
Farrow, who is estranged from Allen, first publicly accused him of molesting her in an op-ed published in The New York Times in February 2014. She alleged he routinely did things to make her uncomfortable, such as sticking his thumb in her mouth and placing her head in his lap, and ultimately “sexually assaulted” her in the attic.
“I thought this was how fathers doted on their daughters. But what he did to me in the attic felt different. I couldn’t keep the secret anymore,” Farrow wrote.
Allen, 82, has steadfastly denied Farrow’s allegations. In a statement to HuffPost on Thursday, Allen accused Mia Farrow of coaching Dylan to accuse him of sexual abuse ― a claim he has repeated for more than two decades.
“I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago,” Allen said in the statement.
During the CBS interview, Farrow broke down in tears as she watched a video clip of Allen denying the molestation allegations in a 1992 episode of CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
“He’s lying and he’s been lying for so long,” she said.
“He would follow me around,” she added. “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.”
Farrow was adopted in 1985 by Mia Farrow, and was formally adopted by Allen in 1991. Allen and Mia Farrow began dating 1979, but split in 1992 after she discovered he was having an affair with her 21-year-old adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn.
Mia Farrow adopted Previn in 1978. It’s unclear when Allen began dating Previn, though he released a statement in February 1992 confirming their relationship. They have been married since December 1997.
Several actors have recently come forward to back Dylan Farrow as the #MeToo movement gained momentum. In a blog post for HuffPost earlier this month, actress Mira Sorvino apologized to Farrow for not believing her earlier.
“I am grateful to you and admire your integrity and bravery, one woman who has had to stand virtually alone all these years speaking her painful truth,” Sorvino wrote. “You are a true hero, and I stand with you.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story said Mia Farrow adopted Dylan in 1978. In fact, that was when Farrow adopted Soon-Yi Previn.