Footage of Dylan Farrow aged 7 accusing Woody Allen of sexual abuse to air for first time

Mia Farrow and daughter Dylan Farrow (file photo)

Credit: Bruce Glikas/Getty Images

Never-before-seen footage of Dylan Farrow aged seven accusing her father Woody Allen of sexual abuse is to air for the first time in a new documentary. 

The four-part HBO series centres on allegations that Allen molested Dylan, his adopted daughter. The director has repeatedly strongly denied doing so.

The series will include home movies, police evidence, previously unheard audiotapes and court documents relating to the case which rocked Hollywood in the early 1990s.

The documentary, made by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, includes a videotaped account of the alleged abuse from Dylan Farrow, who was aged seven at the time, and which was filmed by Mia Farrow, Allen’s then wife. 

Mia and Dylan are interviewed in the documentary as is the couple’s son Ronan, family friend Carly Simon and other witnesses.

Dylan Farrow accused Allen of sexually assaulting her in 2014, amplifying the charges in a 2017 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times — “Why has the #MeToo revolution spared Woody Allen?”

The Dylan Farrow tape has been the subject of claim and counter-claim with one side arguing that it substantiated the allegations, while the other maintained that the child had been coached by her mother. 

Mia Farrow with Woody Allen, their son Satchel and daughter Dylan (file photo)

Credit: David Mcgough/DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

For decades the allegations have divided the sprawling Allen-Farrow family. Ronan Farrow, the couple’s only biological child, has supported the allegations while two of the couple’s adopted children have denied them.

In May 2018 one of the couple’s adopted children, Moses, broke his silence by leaping to the director’s defence, insisting that Allen had never molested his sister.

Moses, who became a family therapist, painted a very different picture of his childhood at the family’s home in Connecticut.

“The fatal dysfunction within my childhood home had nothing to do with Woody,” he wrote in a 4.650-word blog. “It began long before he entered the picture and came straight from a deep and persistent darkness within the Farrow family.”

They were also denied by Soon-Yi Previn, Farrow’s adopted daughter, whose relationship with Allen triggered the allegations.

When news of their relationship broke in 1992, triggering the allegations surrounding Dylan, she released an angry statement to Newsweek.

She said she was not a “little underage flower who was raped, molested, and spoiled by some evil stepfather — not by a long shot.” She also defended the director in an interview with New York magazine.

Allen and Ms Previn married in 1997. The scandal cost Allen, who is now 85, dear. Once the toast of Hollywood, his popularity waned in the aftermath.

There was further controversy when his memoir, Apropos of Nothing, in which he addressed the allegations, was dropped by the publisher Hachette a month before its planned release date last year after a walkout by staff.

It was picked up and released without warning by another publisher.

The Telegraph has approached Allen’s representatives for comment.