Dylan, who now goes by a different name, has opened up about the child molestation allegations brought up against her adopted father, Woody Allen. In 1992, at seven years old, Dylan told her mother, Mia Farrow, that Allen had “touched her private part” and asked her mother if “her daddy ever did that to her”. Farrow videotaped Dylan speaking about the abuse and her accusations led to a court case that eventually was dropped in order to prevent Dylan from testifying.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Dylan discusses what she remembers and how Allen’s behavior and actions have traumatized her, to the point where she can no longer say his name. The childhood sexual abuse that she endured in the attic was her breaking point.
“There’s a lot I don’t remember, but what happened in the attic I remember…The things making me uncomfortable were making me think I was a bad kid, because I didn’t want to do what my elder told me to do. For all I knew, this was how fathers treated their daughters. This was a normal interaction, and I was not normal for feeling uncomfortable about it,” she stated.
Victims of childhood sexual abuse often feel how Dylan has felt, and suffer from immeasurable pain and intense feelings of guilt, fear, and shame. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adult retrospective studies show that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men were sexually abused before the age of eighteen, which means that there are more than 42 million adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse in the United States.
Childhood sexual abuse can also have a devastating impact on others. Farrow’s son, Fletcher Previn, even eliminated Allen from all of the family photos and videos, and briefly discussed the effects that these traumas had on the entire family.
In one of her last statements, Dylan commented, “I have never been asked to testify. If I could talk to the seven-year old Dylan, I would tell her to be brave, to testify.”
To learn more about the long-term effects of sexual abuse, you may click here.
Image via Wikimedia Commons