Diane Keaton stands by 'friend' Woody Allen amid sexual abuse accusations: 'I continue to believe him' (original) (raw)

Diane Keaton is still supporting her frequent collaborator Woody Allen.

On Twitter Monday, the actress sent a message of support to the actor and director, who often used Keaton as his muse through their decades of working together, including most famously on Annie Hall.

“Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him,” Keaton wrote. “It might be of interest to take a look at the 60 Minute interview from 1992 and see what you think.”

The actress also linked to the interview in the tweet. Allen has been repeatedly accused of child molestation by his daughter Dylan Farrow. The allegation first surfaced in 1992 when Dylan was 7 during a bitter custody battle between Allen and his ex-partner Mia Farrow.

Keaton and Allen have remained close throughout the years. Most recently, the private Allen even ventured out to the West Coast to pay tribute to his longtime muse at the 45th Annual AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony in June, where she was being honored.

“The minute I met her, she was a great, great inspiration to me,” Allen said while introducing Keaton at the event. “Much of what I’ve accomplished in my life I owe, for sure, to her. Seeing life through her eyes. She really is astonishing. This is a woman who is great at everything she does.”

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Dylan opened up about the alleged abuse in her first interview about the allegations with CBS This Morning‘s Gayle King. She recounted what she claims happened while her adoptive mother Mia was out shopping for the day.

“I was taken to a small attic crawl space in my mother’s country house in Connecticut by my father. He instructed me to lay down on my stomach and play with my brother’s toy train that was set up,” Dylan said. “And he sat behind me in the doorway, and as I played with the toy train, I was sexually assaulted… As a 7-year-old I would say, I would have said he touched my private parts.”

She added, “As a 32-year-old, he touched my labia and my vulva with his finger.”

Dylan said she told her mother about what allegedly happened, noting that she felt she had “done something wrong” by the actress’ upset reaction.

Following Dylan’s TV interview, Allen again denied the alleged sexual abuse.

“When this claim was first made more than 25 years ago, it was thoroughly investigated by both the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and New York State Child Welfare. They both did so for many months and independently concluded that no molestation had ever taken place,” the director said in a statement. “Instead, they found it likely a vulnerable child had been coached to tell the story by her angry mother during a contentious breakup.”

“Dylan’s older brother Moses has said that he witnessed their mother doing exactly that – relentlessly coaching Dylan, trying to drum into her that her father was a dangerous sexual predator. It seems to have worked – and, sadly, I’m sure Dylan truly believes what she says,” he continued. “But even though the Farrow family is cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time’s Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation, that doesn’t make it any more true today than it was in the past. I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago.”

In the wake of the sexual harassment scandals that have rocked Hollywood, several celebrities who worked with Allen in the past have recently denounced the director. Recent Golden Globe winner Rachel Brosnahan expressed regret over working with Allen on his 2016 Amazon series Crisis in Six Scenes, while Colin Firth vowed to never work with the director again.