Woody Allen doesn’t attend award shows and rarely gives interviews. However, the normally shy, reserved 78-year-old film director cannot stay quiet any longer. Finally, after two decades, he is giving his side of the story.

On February 1, his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, 28, renewed her claim that Allen molested her as a 7-year-old child. She posted her accusation in an open letter in The New York Times for all the world to see. Now, Allen has posted a letter of his own, published on Friday on The New York Times website, in response to his daughter’s scathing claims and ultimately pinning the blame on Dylan’s mother and Allen’s ex-partner, Mia Farrow.

Allen contends in the letter that Mia Farrow is responsible for putting the horrid molestation story in Dylan’s head. That, in fact, 21 years ago when the allegations of abuse first surfaced Mia took Dylan to the doctor. The young child told the doctor that she was not abused. And it was only after a trip to an ice cream shop with her mother that young Dylan changed her story. Allen also writes in the letter that Mia Farrow was upset with the relationship that Allen started with Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi, and amid their bitter breakup, Farrow put the story in Dylan’s head as a form of retribution.

The director continues his letter chronicling the police investigation that ensued and the decision by the local authorities and experts that Allen did not molest his daughter. Even still, Allen lost custody of his children. He wrote, “I never saw her again nor was I able to speak with her no matter how hard I tried. I still loved her deeply, and felt guilty that by falling in love with Soon-Yi I had put her in the position of being used as a pawn for revenge. Soon-Yi and I made countless attempts to see Dylan but Mia blocked them all, spitefully knowing how much we both loved her but totally indifferent to the pain and damage she was causing the little girl merely to appease her own vindictiveness.”

Allen also insists in the letter that he doesn’t blame his daughter for the accusations. “Not that I doubt Dylan hasn’t come to believe she’s been molested, but if from the age of 7 a vulnerable child is taught by a strong mother to hate her father because he is a monster who abused her, is it so inconceivable that after many years of this indoctrination the image of me Mia wanted to establish had taken root?”

Finally, Allen closes his letter with a final denial and a plea to Dylan. “Of course, I did not molest Dylan. I loved her and hope one day she will grasp how she has been cheated out of having a loving father and exploited by a mother more interested in her own festering anger than her daughter’s well-being.”

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