Dylan Farrow speaks out on Woody Allen molestation accusations: 'He was my hero'

Woody Allen's adopted daughter Dylan Farrow continues to speak out against the Oscar-winning director, with her first television interview Thursday.

Talking to CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King, Farrow maintained that Allen sexually molested her when she was a child, which she has written about in op-eds and open letters but not addressed previously on camera.

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“I loved my father," Farrow said. "I respected him. He was my hero. And that doesn't obviously take away from what he did. But it does make the betrayal and the hurt that much more intense."

Farrow described how, on Aug. 4, 1992, her father took her to an attic crawl space in her mother's country house in Connecticut. "He instructed me to lay down on my stomach and play with my brother's toy train that was set up. 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 he touched my private parts, which I did say."

She described how Allen was "always touching me, cuddling me and if I ever said, you know, like I want to go off by myself, he wouldn't let me...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."

King asked Farrow about Allen's assertions that her mother coached her into making false claims against him. 

"You could see why he might make that claim," King said. "He would say that she was filled with rage after his affair with Soon-Yi had been discovered, and that she was out for revenge and full of rage."

"And 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 replied. "Except every step of the way, my mother has only encouraged me to tell the truth. She has never coached me."

Farrow began crying after King showed her a clip of Allen denying the allegations in a 60 Minutes interview, in which he called Farrow's version of events "so insane." 

"He's lying and he's been lying for so long," Farrow told King. "And it is difficult for me to see him and to hear his voice. I'm sorry."

Allen has always denied the allegations made by Farrow and has never been criminally charged.

The 82-year-old director released a statement to CBS saying, "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."

In another segment, King asked if Farrow wanted to bring Allen "down."

"Why shouldn't I want to bring him down? Why shouldn't I be angry? " Farrow asks. "Why shouldn't I be hurt? Why shouldn't I feel some sort of outrage that after all of these years of being ignored, disbelieved and tossed aside?"

Farrow wrote an Op-ed for the Los Angeles Times  in December asking why Allen had been spared in the #MeToo movement.

"I have long maintained that when I was 7 years old, Woody Allen led me into an attic, away from the babysitters who had been instructed never to leave me alone with him. He then sexually assaulted me," Dylan wrote. "I told the truth to the authorities then, and I have been telling it, unaltered, for more than 20 years."

Allen responded to the Op-ed via a statement to USA TODAY through rep Leslee Dart, saying the allegations had been examined by law enforcement.

"No charges were ever filed, and the reason is simple: because Woody Allen is innocent,” the statement read. 

On Monday, Timothée Chalamet, one of the breakout stars of the 2018 awards season, announced that he's donating his entire salary from Allen's upcoming film A Rainy Day in New York to charities fighting sexual abuse and harassment. Rainy Day star Rebecca Hall donated her salary to Time's Up as well.

Maeve McDermott contributed to this report.