Woody Allen put on a brave face at the Knicks Saturday night after his daughter Dylan Farrow described in a painful open letter how he sexually abused her.
The director was at Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks take on the Miami Heat with his wife Soon Yi and daughters Bechet and Manzie just hours after Dylan’s letter was posted online detailing how she was just 7 years old when he sexually molested her in their attic.
“For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like,” reads Dylan Farrow’s letter, which was published on The New York Times website on Saturday afternoon.
“He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies,” his adopted daughter with Mia Farrow wrote.
Allen, 78, has been dogged for two decades by claims he sexually abused his daughter, which he has previously denied.
According to TMZ, the director ducked away from questions from a photographer about Dylan Farrow’s letter as he left the Knicks game, mumbling into his phone.
The letter was posted on the blog of Nicholas Kristof, who admits in the piece that he’s a friend of Dylan’s mother Mia Farrow, who recently launched a series of attacks on the director including claims that Ronan Farrow is actually Frank Sinatra’s son.
Two weeks ago when Allen was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes, Ronan Farrow ripped Allen on Twitter, “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?”
Dylan added in her letter that her torment was “made worse by Hollywood” celebrating Allen, whose movie “Blue Jasmine” is an Oscar favorite with Cate Blanchett expected to win the award for ‘best actress.’
She continued, “All but a precious few (my heroes) turned a blind eye … What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? Alec Baldwin?” she wrote.
“What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson? You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?
“Woody Allen is a living testament to the way our society fails the survivors of sexual assault and abuse. So imagine your 7-year-old daughter being led into an attic by Woody Allen. Imagine she spends a lifetime stricken with nausea at the mention of his name. Imagine a world that celebrates her tormentor. Are you imagining that? Now, what’s your favorite Woody Allen movie?”