Lena Dunham isn’t the only victim of her sexual assault, and yet despite the fact that her unconscionable behavior resulted in an innocent family man being accused of her rape, the “Girls” creator is still being celebrated and honored as a sexual assault role model at events like this weekend’s Variety’s Power of Women New York Luncheon, and throughout the mainstream media.
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Here are the facts:
The tip of the spear of Dunham’s massive public relations campaign around the release of her auto-biography, was the news that she had been raped by a campus Republican.
In the autobiography, which was labeled as non-fiction, Dunham described her rapist using seven completely unnecessary details that immediately identified him — to anyone with five spare minutes and access to Google — as a high-profile and outspoken Republican she attended Oberlin College with during the mid-2000s — a real human being who now has a family, a career, and a Facebook page.
Those matching details included the facts that her rapist…
- Is named Barry.
- Was an Oberlin College graduate.
- Attended Oberlin at the same time she did.
- Was a Republican.
- Was a prominent campus Republican.
- Worked at a school library.
- Was a super senior (a 5 year-student).
After the man falsely tagged as her rapist told National Review he was innocent, and that he was under fire by the media and living in constant fear of his name being forever smeared, Lena Dunham did absolutely nothing to clear his name.
We know for a fact that Dunham and her publisher Random House stood silent for four long months as this innocent family man twisted in the wind under a false rape accusation. These greedy cowards stood silent (and made gobs of money off book sales) even though both knew what they had done to this man
It wasn’t until Breitbart News published a lengthy investigative report that cleared this innocent man (we called him “Barry One”) that Dunham and Random House finally admitted that the non-fiction autobiography’s details about her rapist were in fact fiction.
Gawker later learned that the man she originally accused of sexually assaulting her is a Democrat, not a Republican.
Finally, despite the fact that the statue of limitations for rape in Ohio is 20 years; despite the fact that Dunham herself claims this man hurt two other women; despite the fact the recidivism rate among sexual offenders is disturbingly high, Dunham still refuses to press charges against her rapist. According to Dunham herself, her attacker has already victimized three women. Why in God’s name isn’t she moving mountains to get this monster locked up?
As a rape victim you have a terrible, awful, traumatic responsibility to do everything in your power to get your attacker off the streets — if only to protect other women. It’s not fair, but it is the only right thing to do.
Whatever her original intent, Dunham falsely accused an innocent man of rape. She then stood by knowing her words had placed an innocent man in her crosshairs. She currently refuses to press charges against her rapist, leaving him free to rape others. Worst of all, by falsely identifying her rapist as a Republican, Dunham used the horror of sexual assault as a political gotcha game.
A terrible thing happened to Lena Dunham. But then she turned around and did terrible, greedy, and selfish things that victimized another.
Surely America and Variety can find a better face for this righteous cause than Ms. Dunham.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC