Woody Allen offered to pay for son Ronan Farrow's college to discredit ex Mia, daughter Dylan in abuse case
HBO's shocking four-part documentary, 'Allen v. Farrow', from award-winning investigative filmmakers Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering, and Amy Herdy, came to an end on Sunday night, March 14. The last installment also had some explosive statements against filmmaker Woody Allen, who was accused by Dylan Farrow of sexually abusing her when she was a child.
Dylan's brother, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, Ronan Farrow, who has long supported her abuse claims, was also part of the docuseries. In the final episode, he made a shocking claim against Allen, which showed how the disgraced director used his clout and wealth to silence the child sexual abuse allegations against him.
The scandal started many years ago when Dylan Farrow, who was seven at the time, accused Allen of sexually molesting her. Allen was quick to dismiss those accusations and claimed that Dylan's mother, Mia Farrow, had coached their daughter to take revenge for his relationship with Mia's adoptive daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.
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Allen and Mia Farrow had been in a 12-year relationship but were not living together or married. In August 1992, seven days after Dylan accused him of sexual abuse, Allen sued Farrow to obtain custody of Dylan, their five-year-old son Satchel (Ronan Farrow's birth name), and 15-year-old son, Moses.
Dylan Farrow, speaks in 'Allen v. Farrow' about Allen touching her "private parts." In the fourth episode, it is revealed that an investigation by the Connecticut State Police found Allen to be inconsistent about whether he had been up in the attic with Dylan. The episode also casts doubts on Moses' defense of Allen, who also claimed that Mia Farrow had been an abusive parent.
Ronan Farrow appears in the fourth episode to speak of these allegations, defending his mother, saying, "Our mother did such a good job shielding us from all this. She went above and beyond to never say anything that would be construed as critical of my father or push or think one thing or another. She really just tried to distance us and shield us."
He then proclaims, "for all of us growing up, there was always a lot of incentive to be drawn into Woody Allen’s efforts to discredit my sister," before revealing how he received a lucrative offer from Allen to speak out against his mother and sister. In the docuseries interview, Ronan says, "For example, he made funding my college education contingent on me speaking out in his support publicly. The offer always stood that if I were willing to publicly go against my mother and my sister that he would offer financial support, support for my education, and perhaps a comfortable life..."
Ronan also admits that he initially tried to distance himself from the allegations, saying, "There was a period of time in which my sister was saying, ‘Look I have consistently told this story for years and no one is listening. And I want to go public with it again.’ I said, ‘This is not worth it, you are going to make your entire life an identity about this one thing that happened to you as a kid. I hadn’t yet thoroughly interviewed her or looked at the facts. I just wanted to run away from this.”
However, Ronan changed his mind in the past few years and listen to Dylan's full account of what happened. He looked over the court documents, saying in the documentary, "My reaction was, ‘Well holy shit I’ve been turning away from a real miscarriage of justice here'." During the 2014 Golden Globes Awards ceremony, when Allen was being presented with the Cecil B DeMille Award, Ronan tweeted in support of his sister, writing, "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?” The tweet has since been deleted.