Lena Dunham Apologises For Defending Friend Accused Of Rape

Actress Lena Dunham has apologised after defending a writer on her TV Show 'Girls' after he had been accused of sexual assault.

Last week, actress Aurora Perrineau said that she filed a police report where she accused Murray Miller of raping her when she was 17 years old. Lena Dunham and 'Girls' co-creator Jenni Konner released a statement the same day, saying Miller had been falsely accused.

“While our first instinct is to listen to every woman’s story, our insider knowledge of Murray’s situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3 per cent of assault cases that are misreported every year,” the statement reads. “It is a true shame to add to that number, as outside of Hollywood women still struggle to be believed. We stand by Murray and this is all we’ll be saying about this issue.”

Dunham got a lot of flak for her statement. She was called a hypocrite given the fact that she has positioned herself as a women’s rights activist.

“Believe women, unless they say something about a friend of mine, in which case they are liars,” one Twitter user wrote in response to the controversy.

So now Dunham has released a statement apologising for defending her friend.

“As feminists, we live and die by our politics, and believing women is the first choice we make every single day when we wake up. Therefore I never thought I would issue a statement publicly supporting someone accused of sexual assault but I naively believed it was important to share my perspective on my friend’s situation as it has transpired behind the scenes over the last few months."

“I now understand that it was absolutely the wrong time to come forward with such a statement and I am so sorry,” she said.

Dunham said she has been given the gift of a powerful voice and she regrets putting the thumb on her scale.

Every woman who comes forward deserves to be heard, she said.

However, one of her writers on Lenny Letter resigned in protest. She also lost many subscribers to the newsletter.

Also Read: Lena Dunham Declares She is a Feminist, and Shows us How to be one too