Yet again, writer, actress, and professional sad girl Lena Dunham has found herself in hot water. This time, it’s for her response — also yet again — to a sexual assault allegation leveled against one of her former writers, Murray Miller. For anyone looking for how to respond to an allegation made against a friend in the post-#MeToo era, just do the exact opposite of what Dunham did.
Late last year, off of the heels of the Harvey Weinstein monstrosity unfolding, actress Aurora Perrineau filed a police report against Miller, who had worked on Dunham’s show “Girls,” for allegedly raping her when she was 17, below the age of consent in the state of California.
At the time, Dunham and fellow “Girls” showrunner Jenni Konner, whom Dunham has since fallen out with, penned a statement asserting that due to “insider knowledge,” they were “confident” that Perrineau’s accusation belonged to the minority of rape allegations “that are misreported every year.” In other words, Dunham and Konner accused Perrineau of lying outright to the police.
Perrineau’s case hasn’t been well reported on, and due to an expiration of the statute of limitations, the Los Angeles County district attorney declined to file charges against Miller. Without any real details of the case, including whether there are any other corroborating witnesses or not, it’s impossible for the public to say with certainty if Perrineau’s lying or not. Unless, of course, Dunham and Konner wish to exonerate their friend by disclosing the “insider knowledge” they claimed to have, right?
As it turns out, Dunham was lying through her teeth as she stuck her neck out for a man that she evidently had no reason to defend. In a wallowing public apology to Perrineau, Dunham wrote, “I didn’t have the ‘insider information’ I claimed but rather blind faith in a story that kept slipping and changing and revealed itself to mean nothing at all.”
You mean to say that Dunham went over her skis to defend one of the tribe at the expense of another woman? Color me shocked.
The bigger problem here may be Dunham’s penchant for unnecessarily inserting herself into controversy after controversy. But her walk back here serves as a decent tutorial in how not to respond to allegations against a friend.
For one obvious thing, don’t lie. But more importantly, consider what information you’re actually privy to. If Dunham had come out with a statement saying something along the lines of, “In the many years I’ve worked with and been friends with Murray Miller, I have never witnessed any level of disrespect toward women, and the allegations levied against him are inconsistent with everything I know about him,” no one would have faulted her. A friend can attest to the character of the accused without asserting that the accuser is lying and falsely claiming total knowledge of someone’s behavior. While many of the sexual predators scalped in the last year, such as Les Moonves and Matt Lauer, were open secrets and hard to ignore within the industry, many have surely held up public reputations, presumably to friends and family as well.
For all of her faults, Dunham does deserve credit for apologizing with a sincere admission of both stupidity and dishonesty. If her mistakes serve as a reminder that friends of the accused should attest to what they know, not what they want to be true, then her apology will have helped not only Perrineau, but the public as well.
