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Lena Dunham Has Already Walked Back Her Defence Of A ‘Girls’ Writer Accused Of Sexual Assault

"I naively believed that it was important to share my perspective."

by Tom Clift  19 November 2017
Lena Dunham

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That was fast.

On Saturday, Girls creators Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner came under fire for publicly defending series writer Murray Miller after actress Aurora Perrineau accused him of rape. One day later, Dunham has taken to social media to apologise, conceding that “every woman who comes forward deserves to be heard.”

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After it emerged that Perrineau had filed a report with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department alleging that Miller raped her in 2012 when she was 17 years old, Dunham and Konner issued a statement insisting that “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% of assault cases that are misreported every year.”

The pair’s remarks led to a furious backlash online, with many accusing Dunham of hypocrisy after she tweeted in August that women don’t lie about rape.

On Sunday, Dunham posted a statement on Twitter in which she apologised for defending Miller, writing that “I now understand that it was absolutely the wrong time to come forward with such a statement and I am so sorry.”

“We have been given the gift of powerful voices and by speaking out we were putting our thumb on the scale and it was wrong,” Dunham wrote. “We regret this decision with every fiber of our being. Every woman who comes forward deserves to be heard, fully and completely, and our relationship to the accused should not be part of the calculation anyone makes when examining her case.”

Despite Dunham’s apology, many social media users remain unimpressed.