When Woody Allen was honored with the Cecil B. Demille lifetime achievement award at this year’s Golden Globes–by his good friend Diane Keaton, who praised him during her speech as she accepted on his behalf–his son Ronan Farrow and ex-wife Mia took to Twitter to express their dismay.

“Missed the Woody Allen tribute – did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?” Ronan wrote.

Shortly after that, the media went into a bit of a frenzy covering the scandal, which has laid dormant for a number of years, and the alleged victim came forward with an open letter detailing the abuse she suffered at Allen’s hands. Dylan Farrow, Allen’s adopted daughter with Mia, says he repeatedly assaulted her as a child, and now Allen has asked for the opportunity to defend himself with an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times.

“They asked and we said, ‘Yes, send it in,’ ” Andrew Rosenthal, The Times’s editorial page editor, said, noting that just because there is a request, that doesn’t mean it will automatically be published. “It comes down to the editing process,” he said. “Normally, we don’t publish a direct response….in this case, it was so personal, we thought that we should.”

After the allegations re-surfaced, friends of Allen came to his defense, including Barbara Walters, who says she never saw him be anything but a doting father.

“I have rarely seen a father as sensitive, as loving and as caring as Woody is and Soon-Yi to [their daughters]. I don’t know about Dylan. I can only tell you what I have seen now…she’s doing it now because he’s up for an [Oscar]. And so the question is: Does your personal life interfere with the awards that you may get?” Walters said on “The View”.

But, as co-host Sherri Shepherd pointed out, Allen does have a preference for young women, as seen in his relationship with Farrow’s other adopted daughter, Soon-Yi.

“Barbara, when you say, ‘I’m speaking from what I’ve seen,’ there are so many things that go on behind closed doors. We also know that he was with Soon-Yi when she was very young. Mia had adopted this girl when she was young and Woody was around her. You’ve also got a man who’s got a track record. He liked younger women,” Shepherd said. “So it’s not that far off.”

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