14 DAY TRIAL // Actor Woody Allen has spoken out for the first time since Dylan Farrow has accused him in an open letter published in the New York Times of child molestation. Through his publicist, Allen says that he found the allegations “untrue and disgraceful.”
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the claims go back to 1992, when Allen was in a relationship with actress Mia Farrow. Dylan claims that it is during this time she was molested by her adoptive father at the age of seven.
Dylan alleges that in 1992, while she was at the family's Connecticut home, Allen took her to a “dim, closet-like attic” where he molested her. She didn't specify what he actually did to her, but she did describe other abusive behavior.
The news was also dismissed by Allen's lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz, “It is tragic that after 20 years a story engineered by a vengeful lover resurfaces after it was fully vetted and rejected by independent authorities. The one to blame for Dylan's distress is neither Dylan nor Woody Allen.”
It has to be mentioned that the molestation case was investigated at the time it surfaced, but the actor was never charged of the crime from lack of credible evidence of the abuse.
Other people and media sources came to Allen's defense. Sony Pictures Classics, a regular distributor for his film, urged caution in the matter, asking that Allen be given the benefit of the doubt as he “deserves our presumption of innocence.”
Whatever the truth may be, the statute limitations on Dylan Farrow's accusations ran out more than fifteen years ago, meaning that the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice can't re-examine the case unless the office is asked to.
The molestation accusations was made by Dylan in 1992, shortly after Allen became involved with Soon-Yi Previn, Mia Farrow's adopted daughter. Allen, who was at the time in his mid-fifties, was not Previn's adopted father who was nineteen at the time.
The couple was married in 1997 and have two adopted daughters together. Following the publishing of the open letter, there is now a general consensus of the need for a retrial, but in the eyes of the law, this is unlikely to happen.