The sexual abuse allegation of Dylan Farrow in an attic by Woody Allen happened on August 4, 1992. That’s three days after Mia Farrow have learned that Woody Allen has lied to her and that the affair with Soon-Yi Previn was continuing.
On February 1, 2014, thanks to columnist Nicholas Kristof, Mia Farrow’s very close friend, Dylan Farrow published an open letter in The New York Times:
“…when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. 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. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.”
With My Daddy In The Attic is a Dory Previn’s song
In February 7, 2014, Woody Allen wrote an answer to Dylan Farrow’s letter and said about the attic:
Even the venue where the fabricated molestation was supposed to have taken place was poorly chosen but interesting. Mia chose the attic of her country house, a place she should have realized I’d never go to because it is a tiny, cramped, enclosed spot where one can hardly stand up and I’m a major claustrophobe. The one or two times she asked me to come in there to look at something, I did, but quickly had to run out. Undoubtedly the attic idea came to her from the Dory Previn song, “With My Daddy in the Attic.”
Dory Previn’s husband, composer and director Andre Previn, left her for Mia Farrow. Previn and Farrow married in 1970, the same year Dory Previn released “Daddy in the Attic,” which appears to be about incest.
Ba ba ba ba
Ba ba ba ba…
With my Daddy in the attic
With my Daddy in the attic
That is where my being wants to bed
…………………………………………………
Where we’ll live on peanut butter
Spread across assorted crackers
And he’ll plays his clarinet
When I despair
And Woody Allen specifies:
It was on the same record as the song Dory Previn had written about Mia’s betraying their friendship by insidiously stealing her husband, André, “Beware of Young Girls”.
She was my friend, my friend, my friend
She was invited to my house
Oh yes, she was
And though she knew my love was true
And no ordinary thing
She admired my wedding ring
She admired my wedding ring
Moses testimony contradicts Dylan Farrow allegation
Before 2014, neither the court document, nor the prosecutor’s statement, nor the Yale-New Haven report (listing nine interviews with Dylan Farrow), nor any document or article in the press refers to Dylan Farrow or Mia Farrow reporting the presence of a train in the attic.
In May 2018, Moses Farrow, the adopted son of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow and Dylan Farrow’s brother published A SON SPEAK OUT. About the train in the attic cited by Dylan Farrow, he wrote:
It’s a precise and compelling narrative, but there’s a major problem: there was no electric train set in that attic. There was, in fact, no way for kids to play up there, even if we had wanted to. (…) The idea that the space could possibly have accommodated a functioning electric train set, circling around the attic, is ridiculous. One of my brothers did have an elaborate model train set, but it was set up in the boys’ room, a converted garage on the first floor. (Maybe that was the train set my sister thinks she remembers?) Now, whenever I hear Dylan making a public statement about what allegedly happened to her that day when she was barely seven, I can only think of that imaginary train set, which she never brought up during the original investigation or custody hearing. Did somebody suggest to the adult Dylan that such a specific detail would make her story more credible? Or does she really believe she remembers this train “circling around the attic” the same way she says she remembers Woody’s whispered promises of trips to Paris and movie stardom (kind of odd enticements to offer a 7-year-old, rather than a new toy or a doll)?
Mama Mama comfort me – You’re the loving one – Daddy bought me electric trains
Not on the same record, but also from Dory Previn, is the song Mama, Mama, Comfort Me. It’s about “electric trains” and a little girl shooting her father to ease her mother’s pain:
Mama mama comfort me
You’re the loving one
Daddy bought me electric trains
‘Cause what he wanted was a son
He wanted a son
…………………………………………………
If I should shoot his gun for you
Would that tend to please you
Tend to ease your pain?
Oh mama, I ain’t guilty
You’re not to blame
What we did is done…
More about With My Daddy In The Attic
Learn more by reading the very detailed article Did Dory Previn’s Song Lyrics Influence Mia Farrow In Accusing Woody Allen of Molestation? (Examining The Evidence) by Justin Levine.