Image Source: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What Was the Accusation?
Filmmaker Woody Allen faced an allegation that he sexually abused his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow in August 1992, when she was seven years old. Farrow has alleged that Allen took her into an attic at the Connecticut home of her mother, actor Mia Farrow, and sexually assaulted her. Allen has consistently denied that any abuse occurred. The allegation emerged during the highly publicized breakdown of Allen’s relationship with Mia Farrow and their ensuing custody dispute, after Farrow had discovered Allen’s sexual relationship with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom Allen later married.
The allegation was investigated but did not result in criminal charges against Allen. A team at the Yale-New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic concluded that Dylan had not been sexually abused, although that evaluation and its methodology later became disputed. Connecticut State’s Attorney Frank Maco reached a different conclusion in September 1993, saying he believed there was probable cause to prosecute Allen but that he would not bring charges because he wanted to spare Dylan the trauma of a criminal trial. Allen disputed Maco’s conclusion and maintained his innocence.
Dylan Farrow continued to publicly affirm her allegation as an adult, including in a 2014 open letter and a 2018 CBS television interview. Public attention intensified again in 2021 with the HBO documentary series Allen v. Farrow. Allen and Previn rejected the documentary’s account and said the allegations were false. Allen then addressed the controversy in an extensive CBS interview conducted by correspondent Lee Cowan in July 2020 and released on Paramount+ on March 28, 2021. Allen again categorically denied abusing Dylan, argued that the accusation was implausible, and maintained that Mia Farrow had influenced Dylan’s understanding of what happened. At the same time, he said he did not believe Dylan was consciously lying, explaining instead that he believed she genuinely believed her account. The interview became a prominent example of defensive apologia centered on rejecting the accusation and challenging the circumstances and interpretations supporting it.
Key Apologia Strategies
Denial, Attacking the Accuser, Bolstering
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Transcript
Excerpts from Woody Allen’s interview with CBS correspondent Lee Cowan, recorded July 2020 and released March 28, 2021:
“It’s so preposterous, and yet the smear has remained and they still prefer to cling to, if not the notion that I molested Dylan, then the possibility that I molested her.”
“Nothing that I ever did with Dylan in my life could be misconstrued as that.”
“There was no logic to it on the face of it.”
“She was a good kid… I believe she thinks it. I don’t believe she’s making it up. She’s not lying. I believes she believes that.”
Allen suggests the fact that he and Soon-Yi were allowed to adopt two girls supports his innocence: “They don’t give two baby girls to someone they think is a pedophile.”
Allen downplays his relationship with Mia Farrow in the interview: “I never lived with Mia, I never slept at Mia’s house in all of the years I went out with her. We had a relationship, but it was never going to be a marital relationship.”
Excerpts from Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn’s response to Allen v. Farrow, February 2021:
Allen and Previn described the allegations as “categorically false” and called the documentary a “hatchet job riddled with falsehoods.”
