‘It was not a situation you expect to see a father and daughter in’: Nanny recalls how she saw Woody Allen with his head in Dylan’s naked lap hours before the seven-year-old told Mia Farrow he molested her in 1992
- Allison Stickland was the nanny to Farrow family friend Casey Pascal
- She appeared on the podcast Allen v. Farrow on Monday to describe what she saw when she stayed at Woody Allen and Mia Farrow’s Connecticut home in 1992
- Stickland said she watched Allen bury his face into seven-year-old Dylan Farrow’s lap while she wasn’t wearing underwear
- Dylan allegedly went to her mother the following day and said Allen had molested her in the attic
- Nine days later Allen sued Mia for custody of their three kids – Dylan, Moses and Ronan
- Stickland testified about the alleged abuse she saw during the custody trial
A nanny who allegedly witnessed Woody Allen acting inappropriately with his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow has spoken out nearly three decades after her account helped spark an investigation into the embattled director.
Allison Stickland, the nanny to Farrow family friend Casey Pascal, appeared on the podcast Allen v. Farrow on Monday to describe what she saw when she stayed at Allen and Mia Farrow’s home in Connecticut in August of 1992.
Stickland, who was watching Pascal’s young children during their visit to the home, said she observed Allen burying his face into seven-year-old Dylan’s lap while she wasn’t wearing underwear.
‘I just walked, turned, and went,’ she said. ‘I was shocked. I thought it was very odd. I thought… I didn’t know what to think of it, really. It’s not something you expect to see… a situation you expect to see a father and daughter in.’
A nanny who allegedly witnessed Woody Allen acting inappropriately with his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow (above together in 1989) has spoken out nearly three decades after her account helped spark an investigation into the embattled director
Pictured: The Connecticut house where the alleged abuse unfolded
Pictured: Dylan and Mia Farrow at the Time 100 Gala in 2016
Stickland first brought forward the allegation during a child custody battle between Allen and Mia over their kids Dylan, Moses and Ronan in 1993.
‘Dylan was sitting upright on the couch and Woody was kneeling directly in front of her with his face in Dylan’s lap,’ Stickland said at the trial.
‘His face was very close to her private area.’
Stickland and three other witnesses at the trial claimed that Dylan was not wearing underwear at the time of the alleged abuse.
The nanny said Dylan was ‘staring vacantly in the direction of a television set’ as her adoptive father knelt between her legs.
Dylan later confessed to her mother that Allen had molested her in the attic that same day – August 4, 1992.
Stickland agreed to appear on the Allen v. Farrow podcast after being tracked down in the United Kingdom by Amy Herdy, an investigative journalist who led research for HBO’s bombshell docuseries by the same name.
She said she didn’t appear in the series itself because it took her a while to garner the courage to respond to Herdy.
‘You don’t think something all those years ago is going to come back, so it was a shock,’ Stickland said.
‘I didn’t respond very quickly because I had to let it sink in… I felt, you know, it’s something I kind of really need to do, because if I leave it and don’t, it will probably eat away at me.’
Allison Stickland was the nanny to Farrow family friend Casey Pascal (pictured back left with her son John and the actress)
Stickland first brought forward the allegation during a child custody battle between Allen and Mia over their kids Dylan, Moses and Ronan in 1993
Stickland fondly recalled most of her experience at Allen and Farrow’s Connecticut home, saying: ‘I thought it was a lovely household.
‘Lovely children, they all got along well together,’ she said of the Farrow children, who were around the same age as the Pascal children she was tasked with watching.
‘There never seemed to be any sibling rivalry. The older children I would say had fun with the younger ones. It was just very happy. I wouldn’t say it was troubled at all.
‘I thought [Mia] was lovely. She was a very soft-spoken, gentle lady. Very attentive. You could tell it was so obvious that she adored all her children.’
Describing the day that she watched Allen’s alleged disturbing interaction with Dylan, Stickland said she had gone into the house to look for one of the Pascal kids when she stumbled upon the father and daughter.
She said she is sure that Allen knew what she saw, because she walked directly into the room.
She confided in her boss Casey Pascal hours later, she said.
‘I was just eating and I just felt, no, I need to get this off my chest and share it with Mrs. Pascal,’ Stickland recalled.
‘It didn’t strike me as normal behavior. You don’t expect a father to have his head in his young daughter’s lap, so that’s why it bothered me so much.
‘[Allen] obviously looks at it differently, but it’s not the kind of appropriate behavior you expect from a father, really.’
Stickland fondly recalled most of her experience at Allen and Farrow’s Connecticut home, saying: ‘I thought it was a lovely household.’ Woody and Mia are seen at the home at what is believed to have been Dylan’s sixth or seventh birthday party
Allen has accused Mia of ‘coaching’ Dylan into the confession.
But Herdy contends that that explanation is far-fetched, given Stickland’s account.
‘People just need to look at the timeline,’ Herdy told the Daily Beast. ‘You have a nanny [Stickland] who walked in on Woody Allen with his face in Dylan’s naked lap. She disclosed that to her employer, who was Casey Pascal, that night. Then Casey told Mia, and Mia immediately brought it up with Dylan the next morning.
‘So that’s a lot of short-term intensive coaching, if you want to go the coaching route and explore that as a plausible allegation. That’s a short amount of time to do an enormous amount of coaching in a young child.’
The podcast aired hours after the third installment of the HBO series, which featured audio of a phone call in which Mia confronted Allen about Dylan’s allegations.
In the call, taped around the time of Dylan’s confession, Mia asks: ‘How could you do that to her?’
Allen’s response is inaudible. ‘I know what Dylan tells me. You’ve told me nothing but lies. Dylan tells the truth and consistently,’ Mia continued.
Allen is heard saying: ‘But you know that I didn’t….’
‘No, I don’t know that, Woody,’ Mia said, cutting him off. ‘I’ve always, always been worried about you and Dylan.’
The third installment of HBO’s explosive series Allen v. Farrow, which aired Sunday night, features Mia confronting Allen about Dylan’s sexual assault allegations in a taped phone call
At one point, Mia tells Allen that Dylan (pictured as a young girl) is ‘not all right’. ‘She walks around the house holding her vagina. She sleeps with me. She’s scared of you, and you hurt her,’ Mia told Allen
HBO debuted the first episode of the four-part documentary series Allen v. Farrow in February. The series includes extensive interviews with Allen’s former partner, Mia, and with Dylan, Mia’s adopted daughter that Woody also eventually adopted.
In the series, Mia and Dylan repeat their accusations that Allen sexually assaulted Dylan in 1992 when she was seven years old.
Allen, who has denied being inappropriate with Dylan, and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, have attacked the series that re-examines the decades-old allegation that the Oscar-winning filmmaker molested his adopted daughter, calling the television series a ‘hatchet job’.
Allen married Soon-Yi, who Mia had adopted when she was around 7 and whom he helped raise; he began an affair with her when she was 22.
‘What you’ve done to Soon-Yi, what you’ve done to Dylan,’ Mia says in the phone call aired on Sunday’s episode. ‘Dylan’s a baby. How could you do that to her?’
Meanwhile, Mia tells Allen that she was unaware a doctor she took Dylan to following the alleged assault reported suspected abuse to the authorities.
Nine days after the alleged abuse, Allen sued Mia for custody of their three children, Dylan (left, being held by Allen), Moses and Ronan Farrow (right as a baby)
She said she only took Dylan to the doctor for an examination to make sure she was okay.
‘And she’s not all right, Woody,’ Mia is heard saying. ‘She walks around the house holding her vagina. She sleeps with me. She’s scared of you, and you hurt her,’ Mia continued.
Mia then says she’s heartbroken for not being able to save her daughter.
‘She said, ‘Mommy, you didn’t help me.’ She said, ‘Daddy shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have hurt me like that.’
‘If you heard her, you would weep inside, and you would just want to be dead, because I don’t know how you can live with what you did,’ Mia said during the call.
Nine days after the alleged abuse, Allen sued Mia for custody of their three children, Dylan, Moses and Ronan.
In a second taped phone call, Mia is heard saying: ‘You brought charges against me as an unfit mother’
‘And I’m going to make them stick,’ Allen said as Mia begged him to drop the case
In other parts of the conversation, Mia begs Allen to drop the case, saying: ‘Don’t try this, don’t do this’
‘I don’t deserve it,’ Mia tells Woody during the taped phone call
Sunday night’s episode shows another taped phone call in which Mia confronts Allen again but this time about his accusations that she was an unfit mother.
‘And I’m going to make them stick,’ Allen said of the charges as Mia begged him to drop the case.
The lawsuit was filed after the filmmaker admitted a love affair with Previn, who was 22 years old at the time.
Mia learned of the affair between Allen and her daughter when she found revealing photographs of Previn that had been taken in Allen’s apartment. Allen and Previn, who have a 35-year age gap, have been married since 1997.
At the time of the custody battle, Mia had 11 children, four of whom were hers by birth. She and Allen adopted Moses, Dylan, and had Satchel (now Ronan) together.
After Allen lost his custody case, Mia adopted five more children between 1992 and 1995. One of them, Tam Farrow, died of heart failure in 2000. He was 21 years old.
Shortly after the first episode of the series aired, a spokesperson for Allen and Previn issued a statement saying the documentary makers ‘had no interest in the truth’.
‘Instead, they spent years surreptitiously collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers to put together a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods,’ the statement said.
‘As has been known for decades, these allegations are categorically false,’ it added.
Allen, who has denied being inappropriate with Dylan (pictured in the documentary), and his wife Soon-Yi Previn immediately attacked the series that re-examines Dylan’s decades-old allegation that Allen molested her when she was seven
Allen admitted to Mia that he was having an affair with her then-22-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. The two have been married since 1997. The couple blasted the HBO film as a ‘hatchet job’ that was ‘riddled with falsehoods’
Allen, the four-time Oscar-winning director of Annie Hall and other comedies, has repeatedly denied molesting Dylan. He did not take part in the documentary.
The filmmaker, 85, has long asserted that Mia fabricated the molestation claim against him and planted them in Dylan’s mind after learning that Allen was having an affair with Previn.
Allen has never been arrested or prosecuted over the allegation of sexual abuse, which was first made in 1993. It was investigated by state police in Connecticut, where Mia and her children lived.
Allen refused to take a polygraph with a police officer and offered up his own, privately done one instead.
Prosecutors found there was probable cause to issue an arrest warrant for 1st and 4th degree sexual assault of a minor.
But they decided not to move forward with the case because of Dylan’s mental fragility and her young age.
The statement from Allen and Previn’s spokesperson said ‘multiple agencies’ had investigated the allegation at the time ‘and found that, whatever Dylan Farrow may have been led to believe, absolutely no abuse had ever taken place’.
‘While this shoddy hit piece may gain attention, it does not change the facts,’ the statement said.
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