Actress Lena Dunham has revealed in her newly released memoir "Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's 'Learned'" that she was raped as a 19-year-old while attending Oberlin College in Ohio, Breitbart reported. Interestingly, she refers to her rapist as the "mustachioed campus Republican."
"I was at a party, drunk, waiting for attention. And somehow that felt like such a shameful starting off point that I didn't know how to reconcile what had come after," she recalled to Terry Gross in a recent episode of NPR's "Fresh Air."
The 27-year-old "Girls" star described herself as being drunk, high on Xanax and cocaine, and in no condition to consent to sex during her sexual encounter with the college Republican "Barry," Washington Times reported.
In the first chapter of the book, Dunham describes the encounter as an "ill-fated evening of lovemaking," further voicing a realization that "Barry" was not wearing a condom.
"Barry leads me to the parking lot," she writes. "I tell him to look away. I pull down my tights to pee, and he jams a few of his fingers inside me, like he's trying to plug me up. I'm not sure whether I can't stop it or I don't want to."
After the pair goes back to her apartment, Barry forces himself on Dunham as she talks dirty to him in an effort to convince herself that the sex was consensual, Time reported.
The following day, when Dunham tells her roommate, Audrey, about the encounter, Audrey is horrified by her admission and tells Dunham, "You were raped."
"I burst out laughing," Dunham writes of her initial reaction.
Refuting her earlier claims, the next chapter explores Dunham's understanding of being an "unreliable narrator." Later, she goes on to accuse "Barry" of having sexually assaulted her, according to Breitbart.
"[I]n another essay in this book I describe a sexual encounter with a mustachioed campus Republican as the upsetting but educational choice of a girl who was new to sex when, in fact, it didn't feel like a choice at all," she states.
Years later, HBO'S "Girls" co-writers also agreed that the sex wasn't consensual after Dunham pitched a "version of the Barry story."
Although the incident occurred 8 or 9 years ago, Dunham recently realized the reality of what actually happened that night, she told Howard Stern. However, it remains unclear whether she'll be filing rape charges against "Barry," according to Jezebel.
"It was a painful experience physically and emotionally and one I spent a long time trying to reconcile. ... I actually [have] been thinking about it a lot this week because I sent an email to somebody who I had known at that time who knew the guy who had perpetrated the act. ... I wanted to make it clear to this old friend what I felt had happened before he potentially bought the book at Hudson News and read about it," she told Gross.
Meanwhile, a study published by the University of Michigan indicates that the chances are as high as 80 percent that the man Dunham claims raped her will rape again, Breitbart reported.
