The nanny who first testified that she saw Woody Allen behaving inappropriately with a young Dylan Farrow has spoken out about the incident for the first time in decades amid the airing of a new documentary series.

Allison Stickland, who worked as a nanny for Mia Farrow’s family friend Casey Pascal, was looking after their children the day Dylan was allegedly abused by Allen.

Describing the renewed attention of the events of the early nineties on Monday’s episode of the Allen v Farrow companion podcast, Ms Stickland said: “You don’t think something all those years ago is going to come back, so it was a shock.”

The producers of the documentary explained that they went to great lengths to track Ms Stickland down, and that she only responded to their letters after the filming and editing of the new HBO miniseries was already complete.

“I didn’t respond very quickly because I had to let it sink in,” she told the podcast. “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,” she said.

Ms Stickland was at Farrow and Allen’s Connecticut country home when she says she saw Allen being inappropriate with 7-year-old Dylan.

In her testimony in court during the custody battle in 1992, Ms Stickland said she saw Allen burying his face in Dylan’s naked lap while she wasn’t wearing underwear.

“Dylan was sitting upright on the couch and Woody was kneeling directly in front of her with his face in Dylan’s lap,” she said at the time, according to The Daily Beast. “His face was very close to her private area.”

Recalling the incident again on Monday’s podcast episode, she said: “I just walked, turned, and went. 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.”

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She said she saw Dylan “staring vacantly in the direction of a television set” as her adoptive father crouched and put his face between her legs.  

Ms Stickman’s testimony was considered highly important in 1992 because she was the only adult in the house other than Allen at the time she says he was behaving inappropriately with Dylan, and also the only witness not employed by either Allen or Farrow.

The four-part HBO series maps out the controversial custody battle between Allen and Farrow and the serious allegations of child sexual abuse from the time, as well as a new account from Dylan of what she allegedly went through as a child. Allen has always denied the allegations and said Dylan was “coached” by his mother to make the claims.