Lena Dunham defends 'Girls' writer accused of raping 17-year-old
Actress Lena Dunham has come out in support of Murray Miller, a writer and producer for HBO’s “Girls” who is accused of raping an actress when she was 17.
Aurora Perrineau told The Wrap she has spoken to police about her alleged assault by Miller in 2012, when he was 35 and she was a teen. She said the two met at a hotel in Los Angeles with two of her friends before they all went back to Miller’s home.
“He was flirting with me,” Perrineau said in a statement given to The Wrap. “I told him repeatedly that I was 17 years old.”
Later that night, Perrineau said, Miller assaulted her.
“At some point, I woke up in Murray’s bed naked,” Perrineau said in the statement. “He was on top of me having sexual intercourse with me. At no time did I consent to any sexual contact with Murray.”
Perrineau provided the publication with a document saying she had passed a police polygraph test. But it hasn’t been enough to convince Dunham and “Girls” showrunner Jenni Konner, who said in a statement that they stand with Miller.
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“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 percent of assault cases that are misreported every year,” Dunham and Konner said Friday.
I believe in a lot of things but the first tenet of my politics is to hold up the people who have held me up, who have filled my world with love.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) November 17, 2017
Dunham has called on men in Hollywood to speak out against accused rapist Harvey Weinstein. She invoked feminism in her statement defending Miller.
“It’s a hugely important time of change and, like every feminist in Hollywood and beyond, we celebrate,” the statement read. “But during every time of change there are also incidences of the culture, in its enthusiasm and zeal, taking down the wrong targets. We believe, having worked closely with him for more than half a decade, that this is the case with Murray Miller.”
Miller’s attorney, Don Walerstein, called the accusations false and said Perrineau only went public with the accusations after trying to seek “substantial monetary damages.”
In a tweet earlier this year, Dunham had said women don’t lie about rape.
Things women do lie about: what they ate for lunch. Things women don't lie about: rape.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) August 4, 2017
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
