http://www.breitbart.com/
***UPDATE: What media critics of this investigation are not telling you.
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In her just-released memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham describes her alma mater, Oberlin College, as “a liberal arts haven in the cornfields of Ohio.” After a month-long investigation that included more than a dozen interviews, a trip to the Oberlin campus, and hours spent poring through the Oberlin College archives, her description of the campus remains the only detail Breitbart News was able to verify in Dunham’s story of being raped by a campus Republican named Barry.
On top of the name Barry, which Dunham does not identify as a pseudonym (more on the importance of this below), Dunham drops close to a dozen specific clues about the identity of the man she alleges raped her as a 19-year-old student. Some of the details are personality traits like his being a “poor loser” at poker. Other details are quite specific. For instance, Dunham informs us her rapist sported a flamboyant mustache, worked at the campus library, and even names the radio talk show he hosted.
To be sure we get the point, on three occasions Dunham tells her readers that her attacker is a Republican or a conservative, and a prominent one at that — no less than the “campus’s resident conservative.”
For weeks, and to no avail, using phone and email and online searches, Breitbart News was able to verify just one of these details. Like everyone else interested, we immediately found that there indeed was a prominent Republican named Barry who attended Oberlin at the time in question.
Whatever her motives, Dunham is pointing her powerful finger at this man. But as you will read in the details below, the facts do not point back at him. Not even close. This man is by all accounts (including his own) innocent.
Nonetheless, even though she is aware of the suspicion under which she placed this man, to our knowledge, Dunham has yet to clear his name.
To be sure we weren’t overlooking anything, Breitbart News then took the added step of visiting the Oberlin campus in Ohio during the very cold week just before Thanksgiving. Here we interviewed a number of Oberlin staffers and students. Most were pleasant and helpful. Some less so. One adamantly refused access to documents and told us outright that it didn’t matter if Dunham was telling the truth.
In the end, Breitbart News could not find a Republican named Barry who attended Oberlin during Dunham’s time there who came anywhere close to matching her description of him. In fact, we could not find anyone who remembered any Oberlin Republican who matched Dunham’s colorful description.
Under scrutiny, Dunham’s rape story didn’t just fall apart; it evaporated into pixie dust and blew away.
One of the Most Powerful Women in America Cries ‘Rape’
After receiving a reported $3.7 million advance, Dunham’s memoir hit bookshelves in September with a publicity blitz usually reserved for conquering generals returning to ancient Rome. On top of the usual network television appearances and glossy magazine profiles, Dunham’s book tour not only sold out in places, but scalped tickets reportedly sold for as high as $900.
Just four years ago, Dunham was casting family-members in micro-budgeted independent movies she hoped would help her break through. Today, she is the toast of elite salons along both coasts. Every word uttered, every Tweet tweeted, every promotional or political appearance made, and every episode of Girls (the HBO show Dunham created, writes, and directs) is obsessed and gushed over — not only in the entertainment media, but also the mainstream media.
A name search at the New York Times yields more than 5000 results for the 28-year-old, almost exactly the same number recorded for Oscar-winner Kate Winslet, who’s been a star since Dunham was 10.
Although she doesn’t appear to have a very big or mainstream audience, Dunham is still adored by All The Right People and, as a result, she currently stands as one of the most powerful and influential women in America.
When no less than the President of the United States needed young people to turn out for his 2012 re-election effort, BarackObama.com turned to Lena Dunham.
What Dunham says reverberates through our culture. This obviously includes her rape allegation. The story of being a rape survivor led the charge and captured most of the headlines surrounding Dunham’s book launch.
The Rape
The facts of the rape as Dunham lays them out are found in two chapters. In the chapter titled “Girls and Jerks” Dunham describes an “ill-fated evening of lovemaking with our campus’s resident conservative.” No name is given, no allegation of rape is made. The man in question is merely described as a jerk who tries to get away with not using a condom during sex and who “didn’t say hi to me on campus the next day.”
The following chapter – titled “Barry” – opens with the admission, “I’m an unreliable narrator.” It is here that Dunham refers back to that night of “ill-fated lovemaking” and admits that previously she had not been honest with the reader: “[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.”
Dunham’s narrative choice to tell the reader that she didn’t tell the full truth before adds a powerful sense of gravitas to her rape allegation. The reader is left believing that the time for any rhetorical games, half-truths, or artistic license will now be put aside.
Before getting into the disturbing details of what Dunham says really happened that night, she sets the stage with anecdotes from her childhood about her misunderstanding and misuse of the word rape.
Dunham writes that she was 19-years-old at the time and met Barry through mutual friends. She met up with him one winter evening at a party. Dunham admits to drinking alcohol and taking drugs that night, including cocaine. She also admits that she took Barry back to her on-campus apartment even though, without her consent, Barry had just jammed his fingers into her vagina: “Barry leads me to the parking lot. 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 ignoring a warning from a friend, Dunham tells us she still took Barry back to her place and then explicitly details a dark sexual encounter. Twice during intercourse she discovers that he has removed his condom without telling her. The second time she throws Barry out and, the next morning, she “diligently enter[s] the encounter into the Word document… titled “Intimacy Database.” Barry. Number four. We fucked. 69’d. It was terribly aggressive. Only once. No one came.”
Dunham writes in the following paragraph: “When I was young, I read an article about a ten-year-old girl who was raped by a stranger on a dark road… And I never forgot this story, but I didn’t remember until many days after Barry fucked me. Fucked me so hard that the next morning I had to sit in a hot bath to soothe myself. Then I remembered.”
Dunham then recounts that, after telling friends and co-workers about the night, she is told in no uncertain terms that Barry raped her. Dunham also claims Barry hurt her to a point where she later found it necessary to visit a doctor. We also learn about Barry’s very troubling history of violence against other women:
“But I also know that at no moment did I consent to being handled that way. I never gave him permission to be rough, to stick himself inside me without a barrier between us. I never gave him permission.”
During her book tour, in an interview with radio superstar Howard Stern, Dunham replied with a simple “yes” after Stern said, “You were raped by a guy.”
Dunham is obviously describing an evil man who not only raped her but physically hurt two other women. He also comes off as a raging hypocrite: a big-shot campus conservative who runs out to purchase a morning-after abortion pill. Again, on three different occasions Dunham reminds readers that her rapist is either a Republican or a prominent campus conservative.
Dunham also goes into great detail to describe Barry. Here’s what she tells us — everything in quotation marks is directly from the memoir:
1. The name of Lena Dunham’s rapist is Barry. Early in the memoir, when Dunham uses a pseudonym, she informs the reader of that fact. She did not do so in this instance, leaving the reader to assume that Barry is her alleged rapist’s real name.
2. Dunham was a 19-year-old Oberlin College student when the incident occurred.
3. Barry was the “campus’s resident conservative.”
4. Barry “hosted a radio show called Real Talk with Jimbo.”
5. Barry “wore purple cowboy boots.”
6. The incident occurred in winter.
7. The incident occurred just before Barry graduated in December of that same year.
8. Barry was a “mustachioed campus Republican” with a “mustache that rode the line between ironic Williamsburg fashion and big buck hunter.”
9. Barry “worked part-time at the library… shelving books.”
10. Barry had a voice “that went Barry White low.”
Also, as National Review’s Kevin Williamson points out, Barry is not a common name. It doesn’t even rank in the top 100 as a popular male name.
In a relatively small school with fewer than 3,000 students, it shouldn’t be difficult to get a line on someone that flamboyant named Barry. Moreover, Oberlin isn’t just a liberal school; it is a famously liberal school where Republicans stand out like nuns on a football field.
Nevertheless, no amount of digging could verify even a single detail of Dunham’s rape claim.
Exonerating the Man We Call “Barry One”
Anyone with half a brain and access to Google has already discovered that, during Dunham’s time at Oberlin College, there was a prominent Republican named Barry who was politically active and quite well-known.
Breitbart News is not going to name this man. Instead, we will refer to him throughout as “Barry One.”
Last month, Barry One told National Review’s Kevin Williamson that “he has never met Dunham and had no relationship with her.”
Our independent investigation backs that up:
1. Dunham claims Barry raped her when she was nineteen in the late fall or winter before her winter break. Because Dunham was born in May of 1986, this means the incident occurred in 2005.
Dunham describes Barry as a “super senior” with “one more semester to finish” who went on to “graduate in December.” That leads the reader to believe her rapist graduated in December of 2005.
Barry One graduated in May of 2006. Among other sources, we verified that Barry One was still an Oberlin student through the archives of the campus newspaper and video of Barry One speaking at a school event in 2006.
2. Dunham describes Barry as sporting a mustache like a “big buck hunter.” Two sources who knew Barry One during the time in question confirmed that he never had a mustache of any kind. We also found two photographs and one video of Barry One during his time at school in which he’s clean-shaven.
3. Dunham describes Barry as having a voice that “went Barry White low.” Video of Barry One speaking for more than a few minutes confirms he had a normal pitched voice.
4. Dunham says her attacker worked part-time at the library. Barry One did work at a specialized library but not the school library (known as the Mudd Center). Breitbart News interviewed a staffer who worked with Barry One at this particular library. This person remembered Barry One quite well and chuckled at the idea that he ever sported a big mustache.
Breitbart News also spoke with another longtime staffer at the college and asked if anyone would describe the library Barry One worked at in the way Dunham did: as simply “the library.”
“Absolutely not,” we were told. “That library is specialized and off-campus and focuses only on [that particular field of study]. Unless a student is majoring in that area, it’s unlikely they would even know about that library.”
Nothing in Dunham’s memoir or college history indicates an interest in this field of study.
The Search for a Different “Republican Rapist”
Once it was clear Barry One was not the person Dunham refers to, Breitbart News expanded the scope of the investigation to the larger Oberlin Republican community during the time in question. Once again, not a single detail could be verified.
Though it appears to have since disbanded, during Dunham’s time at Oberlin (2005-2008), there was a small but organized group of college Republicans. Breitbart News spoke to an individual who was a part of this small group during Dunham’s time at Oberlin.
“There was only one Republican guy named Barry [Barry One] I knew of all those years,” our source said. “I’ve read Lena Dunham’s description of this guy and it’s definitely not that Barry.”
When asked if the details of Dunham’s Barry pointed to any other campus Republican, our source was emphatic, “No. Purple cowboy boots and a big mustache is not something you forget.” (Another source active in Oberlin Republican circles at the time said the same.)
He added, “I’m not saying Lena Dunham is lying. It is possible there was a Republican on campus who wasn’t part of this circle.”
A close reading of Dunham’s memoir reveals that our source is being generous. Dunham doesn’t simply describe Barry as a guy who votes or leans Republican. She describes Barry as “our campus’s resident conservative,” which clearly identifies him as a student with some stature on campus as a Republican.
Other than Barry One, who is clearly not the person in question, Breitbart News could find no record or evidence of any Republican named Barry at Oberlin College. Nor could we find any Republican who matched Dunham’s vivid description of her rapist.
If Dunham’s rapist had the stature as the “campus’s resident Republican” she claims he had, he apparently had nothing to do with the small group of organized Republicans on campus at the time.
Searching for Any Guy Named Barry at Oberlin
At this point, Breitbart News decided to widen the scope of the investigation — into the entire student body.
As mentioned above, in an early chapter of her memoir, Dunham informs her readers she’s using a pseudonym for an old boyfriend. “Name changed to protect the truly innocent,” she writes on the third page of the first chapter.
When Dunham writes of her rapist, though, she neither indicates she’s using a pseudonym nor puts quotation marks around Barry’s name. The reader is therefore left with the impression that Dunham is telling her readers the true name of her rapist.
In the unlikely event the Barry in question was unknown to the small group of campus Republicans, we searched for anyone named Barry who attended or graduated from Oberlin College at the time in question.
After a good-faith search through the campus newspaper archives and Oberlin College graduation announcements (available in the school archives), at least in those records, Breitbart News could find no record of anyone named Barry graduating or attending Oberlin College in 2005, 2006, or 2007 — other than Barry One.
What If His Name Isn’t Barry and He Isn’t a Republican?
If Dunham made a mistake about her rapist’s name and political affiliation, we turned over every available rock in an effort to find this individual based on the multitude of other details she provides.
A longtime employee at the Oberlin library could not recall working with any student with a flamboyant mustache.
For hours, over two days, using Oberlin’s physical and online archives, Breitbart News searched every detail of Dunham’s story looking for a thread that would lead to her rapist.
We found nothing.
This left only one stone left to turn…
Barry the Republican Rapist Radio Star?
In her memoir, Dunham informs readers that her rapist “hosted a radio show called Real Talk with Jimbo.” Even if Barry is a pseudonym and all the other details are, for whatever reason, incorrect, the name of a radio show is the kind of hard fact that should lead to whoever her alleged rapist really is.
According to our search, there are nearly 25 radio stations available in the Oberlin area. Only three of those are talk/news stations. We were able to confirm with the program directors at two of these stations that their particular station never broadcasted a show titled Real Talk with Jimbo. The third, WOBC, is the campus radio station and the most likely broadcaster.
On October 14 of this year, an email inquiry resulted in the following response from a WOBC student staffer:
For obvious reasons, WOBC was a priority during our physical visit to the campus. We were referred to Sophie Hess, who identifies herself as WOBC’s station manager. After a short round of phone tag, Ms. Hess and I caught up one evening.
At first, Ms. Hess was pleasant and eager to help. She informed me that there are physical archives of the station’s program guides. It would take some time to go through them, she explained, but if WOBC did in fact broadcast “Real Talk with Jimbo,” the information should be there.
With the understanding that I would be supervised, I volunteered to do the work of going through the records myself and offered to shift my schedule in any way that was convenient. She replied that she would be happy to do this work and then inquired into the specific details of the story we were working on.
This transcript is based on memory and extensive notes taken during the call:
The next morning, my first stop was an early morning visit to Oberlin’s media relations department. No one was available. I left my card and on it a few details about the story. Later that afternoon, I received a voice mail from Scott Wargo, Oberlin’s Director of Media Relations. In my return message I related what had happened with Ms. Hess and said I would still love to have access to those archives.
That call was not returned.
A general online search and search of the archives of the school newspaper came up with nothing about a radio show called “Real Talk with Jimbo.”
Summary
Lena Dunham might have been raped at Oberlin College, but the “Barry” she describes in her memoir is a ghost.
The man we call Barry One, however, the man legions have found online using details published in Not That Kind of Girl, is very real. And what’s unforgivable is that, through an incomprehensible malice or a combination of breathtaking carelessness and a number of unthinkable coincidences, in the courtroom of public opinion, Lena Dunham is pointing her powerful finger at this man and screaming “rapist.”
After Kevin Williamson’s National Review story published, in which Barry One is portrayed as a stressed and worried family man being hounded by the press and terrified his full name will be published, Dunham responded directly to Williamson’s piece but said nothing about the innocence of the man she placed under this national microscope.
Rather than use this opportunity to clear his name (if Barry is a pseudonym this would have been an opportune time to say something), she instead condemned him through silence and made the “most unfortunate coincidence” of a man’s life all about Lena Dunham:
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It’s not unheard of for a 28-year-old woman like Lena Dunham to be this selfish and reckless. The real question is, how did this get through her publisher, Random House?
Meanwhile, Barry One has had to hide his Facebook page and retain an attorney.
Post Script:
Through various sources, Breitbart News learned that another news organization is pursuing other leads and individuals. One particular name came up twice. His name is not Barry, but for obvious reasons we won’t reveal his name. A thorough, good faith search did reveal that this individual attended Oberlin at the same time Dunham did. If this is him, two individuals directly involved in Oberlin’s Republican organization did not know the man Dunham describes as Oberlin’s “resident conservative.”
We could find nothing about his political affiliation, and the only radio history we could find belonged to a family member.
We were able to verify that this individual did not hold any kind of job at any Oberlin school library.
The harrowing rape and murder scandals currently unfolding at the University of Virginia are a potent reminder to women and the men who love them that campus sexual assault is a serious issue that demands to be treated seriously.
Based in part on her story of being raped at Oberlin, Lena Dunham has positioned herself as a campus sexual assault activist. This is a noble cause but one that should come with setting a good example.
Maybe Lena Dunham’s rapist is out there, and maybe this man voted for George W. Bush, and maybe this man did indeed hurt two other women.
What we do know is that whatever her motives, rather than cooperate with campus and local authorities (who are taking her charges seriously) to get a brutal man off the street before he hurts another woman, Dunham has apparently decided to instead hurl suspicion at Barry One.
Yesterday afternoon, seeking comment, Breitbart News left detailed voice mail messages for Dunham’s publicist at Random House and the person the publicist asks callers to contact if the matter is urgent. Those calls were not returned.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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In her just-released memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham describes her alma mater, Oberlin College, as “a liberal arts haven in the cornfields of Ohio.” After a month-long investigation that included more than a dozen interviews, a trip to the Oberlin campus, and hours spent poring through the Oberlin College archives, her description of the campus remains the only detail Breitbart News was able to verify in Dunham’s story of being raped by a campus Republican named Barry.
On top of the name Barry, which Dunham does not identify as a pseudonym (more on the importance of this below), Dunham drops close to a dozen specific clues about the identity of the man she alleges raped her as a 19-year-old student. Some of the details are personality traits like his being a “poor loser” at poker. Other details are quite specific. For instance, Dunham informs us her rapist sported a flamboyant mustache, worked at the campus library, and even names the radio talk show he hosted.
To be sure we get the point, on three occasions Dunham tells her readers that her attacker is a Republican or a conservative, and a prominent one at that — no less than the “campus’s resident conservative.”
For weeks, and to no avail, using phone and email and online searches, Breitbart News was able to verify just one of these details. Like everyone else interested, we immediately found that there indeed was a prominent Republican named Barry who attended Oberlin at the time in question.
Whatever her motives, Dunham is pointing her powerful finger at this man. But as you will read in the details below, the facts do not point back at him. Not even close. This man is by all accounts (including his own) innocent.
Nonetheless, even though she is aware of the suspicion under which she placed this man, to our knowledge, Dunham has yet to clear his name.
To be sure we weren’t overlooking anything, Breitbart News then took the added step of visiting the Oberlin campus in Ohio during the very cold week just before Thanksgiving. Here we interviewed a number of Oberlin staffers and students. Most were pleasant and helpful. Some less so. One adamantly refused access to documents and told us outright that it didn’t matter if Dunham was telling the truth.
In the end, Breitbart News could not find a Republican named Barry who attended Oberlin during Dunham’s time there who came anywhere close to matching her description of him. In fact, we could not find anyone who remembered any Oberlin Republican who matched Dunham’s colorful description.
Under scrutiny, Dunham’s rape story didn’t just fall apart; it evaporated into pixie dust and blew away.
One of the Most Powerful Women in America Cries ‘Rape’
After receiving a reported $3.7 million advance, Dunham’s memoir hit bookshelves in September with a publicity blitz usually reserved for conquering generals returning to ancient Rome. On top of the usual network television appearances and glossy magazine profiles, Dunham’s book tour not only sold out in places, but scalped tickets reportedly sold for as high as $900.
Just four years ago, Dunham was casting family-members in micro-budgeted independent movies she hoped would help her break through. Today, she is the toast of elite salons along both coasts. Every word uttered, every Tweet tweeted, every promotional or political appearance made, and every episode of Girls (the HBO show Dunham created, writes, and directs) is obsessed and gushed over — not only in the entertainment media, but also the mainstream media.
A name search at the New York Times yields more than 5000 results for the 28-year-old, almost exactly the same number recorded for Oscar-winner Kate Winslet, who’s been a star since Dunham was 10.
Although she doesn’t appear to have a very big or mainstream audience, Dunham is still adored by All The Right People and, as a result, she currently stands as one of the most powerful and influential women in America.
When no less than the President of the United States needed young people to turn out for his 2012 re-election effort, BarackObama.com turned to Lena Dunham.
What Dunham says reverberates through our culture. This obviously includes her rape allegation. The story of being a rape survivor led the charge and captured most of the headlines surrounding Dunham’s book launch.
The Rape
The facts of the rape as Dunham lays them out are found in two chapters. In the chapter titled “Girls and Jerks” Dunham describes an “ill-fated evening of lovemaking with our campus’s resident conservative.” No name is given, no allegation of rape is made. The man in question is merely described as a jerk who tries to get away with not using a condom during sex and who “didn’t say hi to me on campus the next day.”
The following chapter – titled “Barry” – opens with the admission, “I’m an unreliable narrator.” It is here that Dunham refers back to that night of “ill-fated lovemaking” and admits that previously she had not been honest with the reader: “[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.”
Dunham’s narrative choice to tell the reader that she didn’t tell the full truth before adds a powerful sense of gravitas to her rape allegation. The reader is left believing that the time for any rhetorical games, half-truths, or artistic license will now be put aside.
Before getting into the disturbing details of what Dunham says really happened that night, she sets the stage with anecdotes from her childhood about her misunderstanding and misuse of the word rape.
Dunham writes that she was 19-years-old at the time and met Barry through mutual friends. She met up with him one winter evening at a party. Dunham admits to drinking alcohol and taking drugs that night, including cocaine. She also admits that she took Barry back to her on-campus apartment even though, without her consent, Barry had just jammed his fingers into her vagina: “Barry leads me to the parking lot. 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 ignoring a warning from a friend, Dunham tells us she still took Barry back to her place and then explicitly details a dark sexual encounter. Twice during intercourse she discovers that he has removed his condom without telling her. The second time she throws Barry out and, the next morning, she “diligently enter[s] the encounter into the Word document… titled “Intimacy Database.” Barry. Number four. We fucked. 69’d. It was terribly aggressive. Only once. No one came.”
Dunham writes in the following paragraph: “When I was young, I read an article about a ten-year-old girl who was raped by a stranger on a dark road… And I never forgot this story, but I didn’t remember until many days after Barry fucked me. Fucked me so hard that the next morning I had to sit in a hot bath to soothe myself. Then I remembered.”
Dunham then recounts that, after telling friends and co-workers about the night, she is told in no uncertain terms that Barry raped her. Dunham also claims Barry hurt her to a point where she later found it necessary to visit a doctor. We also learn about Barry’s very troubling history of violence against other women:
There was a story of him punching a girl in the boobs at a party…Dunham sums up the rape story:
[and]
[M]y friend Melody tells me that once her friend Julia woke up the morning after sex with Barry, and the wall was spattered with blood. Spattered, she said, “like a crime scene.” But he was nice and took her for the morning-after pill and named the baby they weren’t having.
“But I also know that at no moment did I consent to being handled that way. I never gave him permission to be rough, to stick himself inside me without a barrier between us. I never gave him permission.”
During her book tour, in an interview with radio superstar Howard Stern, Dunham replied with a simple “yes” after Stern said, “You were raped by a guy.”
Dunham is obviously describing an evil man who not only raped her but physically hurt two other women. He also comes off as a raging hypocrite: a big-shot campus conservative who runs out to purchase a morning-after abortion pill. Again, on three different occasions Dunham reminds readers that her rapist is either a Republican or a prominent campus conservative.
Dunham also goes into great detail to describe Barry. Here’s what she tells us — everything in quotation marks is directly from the memoir:
1. The name of Lena Dunham’s rapist is Barry. Early in the memoir, when Dunham uses a pseudonym, she informs the reader of that fact. She did not do so in this instance, leaving the reader to assume that Barry is her alleged rapist’s real name.
2. Dunham was a 19-year-old Oberlin College student when the incident occurred.
3. Barry was the “campus’s resident conservative.”
4. Barry “hosted a radio show called Real Talk with Jimbo.”
5. Barry “wore purple cowboy boots.”
6. The incident occurred in winter.
7. The incident occurred just before Barry graduated in December of that same year.
8. Barry was a “mustachioed campus Republican” with a “mustache that rode the line between ironic Williamsburg fashion and big buck hunter.”
9. Barry “worked part-time at the library… shelving books.”
10. Barry had a voice “that went Barry White low.”
Also, as National Review’s Kevin Williamson points out, Barry is not a common name. It doesn’t even rank in the top 100 as a popular male name.
In a relatively small school with fewer than 3,000 students, it shouldn’t be difficult to get a line on someone that flamboyant named Barry. Moreover, Oberlin isn’t just a liberal school; it is a famously liberal school where Republicans stand out like nuns on a football field.
Nevertheless, no amount of digging could verify even a single detail of Dunham’s rape claim.
Exonerating the Man We Call “Barry One”
Anyone with half a brain and access to Google has already discovered that, during Dunham’s time at Oberlin College, there was a prominent Republican named Barry who was politically active and quite well-known.
Breitbart News is not going to name this man. Instead, we will refer to him throughout as “Barry One.”
Last month, Barry One told National Review’s Kevin Williamson that “he has never met Dunham and had no relationship with her.”
Our independent investigation backs that up:
1. Dunham claims Barry raped her when she was nineteen in the late fall or winter before her winter break. Because Dunham was born in May of 1986, this means the incident occurred in 2005.
Dunham describes Barry as a “super senior” with “one more semester to finish” who went on to “graduate in December.” That leads the reader to believe her rapist graduated in December of 2005.
Barry One graduated in May of 2006. Among other sources, we verified that Barry One was still an Oberlin student through the archives of the campus newspaper and video of Barry One speaking at a school event in 2006.
2. Dunham describes Barry as sporting a mustache like a “big buck hunter.” Two sources who knew Barry One during the time in question confirmed that he never had a mustache of any kind. We also found two photographs and one video of Barry One during his time at school in which he’s clean-shaven.
3. Dunham describes Barry as having a voice that “went Barry White low.” Video of Barry One speaking for more than a few minutes confirms he had a normal pitched voice.
4. Dunham says her attacker worked part-time at the library. Barry One did work at a specialized library but not the school library (known as the Mudd Center). Breitbart News interviewed a staffer who worked with Barry One at this particular library. This person remembered Barry One quite well and chuckled at the idea that he ever sported a big mustache.
Breitbart News also spoke with another longtime staffer at the college and asked if anyone would describe the library Barry One worked at in the way Dunham did: as simply “the library.”
“Absolutely not,” we were told. “That library is specialized and off-campus and focuses only on [that particular field of study]. Unless a student is majoring in that area, it’s unlikely they would even know about that library.”
Nothing in Dunham’s memoir or college history indicates an interest in this field of study.
The Search for a Different “Republican Rapist”
Once it was clear Barry One was not the person Dunham refers to, Breitbart News expanded the scope of the investigation to the larger Oberlin Republican community during the time in question. Once again, not a single detail could be verified.
Though it appears to have since disbanded, during Dunham’s time at Oberlin (2005-2008), there was a small but organized group of college Republicans. Breitbart News spoke to an individual who was a part of this small group during Dunham’s time at Oberlin.
“There was only one Republican guy named Barry [Barry One] I knew of all those years,” our source said. “I’ve read Lena Dunham’s description of this guy and it’s definitely not that Barry.”
When asked if the details of Dunham’s Barry pointed to any other campus Republican, our source was emphatic, “No. Purple cowboy boots and a big mustache is not something you forget.” (Another source active in Oberlin Republican circles at the time said the same.)
He added, “I’m not saying Lena Dunham is lying. It is possible there was a Republican on campus who wasn’t part of this circle.”
A close reading of Dunham’s memoir reveals that our source is being generous. Dunham doesn’t simply describe Barry as a guy who votes or leans Republican. She describes Barry as “our campus’s resident conservative,” which clearly identifies him as a student with some stature on campus as a Republican.
Other than Barry One, who is clearly not the person in question, Breitbart News could find no record or evidence of any Republican named Barry at Oberlin College. Nor could we find any Republican who matched Dunham’s vivid description of her rapist.
If Dunham’s rapist had the stature as the “campus’s resident Republican” she claims he had, he apparently had nothing to do with the small group of organized Republicans on campus at the time.
Searching for Any Guy Named Barry at Oberlin
At this point, Breitbart News decided to widen the scope of the investigation — into the entire student body.
As mentioned above, in an early chapter of her memoir, Dunham informs her readers she’s using a pseudonym for an old boyfriend. “Name changed to protect the truly innocent,” she writes on the third page of the first chapter.
When Dunham writes of her rapist, though, she neither indicates she’s using a pseudonym nor puts quotation marks around Barry’s name. The reader is therefore left with the impression that Dunham is telling her readers the true name of her rapist.
In the unlikely event the Barry in question was unknown to the small group of campus Republicans, we searched for anyone named Barry who attended or graduated from Oberlin College at the time in question.
After a good-faith search through the campus newspaper archives and Oberlin College graduation announcements (available in the school archives), at least in those records, Breitbart News could find no record of anyone named Barry graduating or attending Oberlin College in 2005, 2006, or 2007 — other than Barry One.
What If His Name Isn’t Barry and He Isn’t a Republican?
If Dunham made a mistake about her rapist’s name and political affiliation, we turned over every available rock in an effort to find this individual based on the multitude of other details she provides.
A longtime employee at the Oberlin library could not recall working with any student with a flamboyant mustache.
For hours, over two days, using Oberlin’s physical and online archives, Breitbart News searched every detail of Dunham’s story looking for a thread that would lead to her rapist.
We found nothing.
This left only one stone left to turn…
Barry the Republican Rapist Radio Star?
In her memoir, Dunham informs readers that her rapist “hosted a radio show called Real Talk with Jimbo.” Even if Barry is a pseudonym and all the other details are, for whatever reason, incorrect, the name of a radio show is the kind of hard fact that should lead to whoever her alleged rapist really is.
According to our search, there are nearly 25 radio stations available in the Oberlin area. Only three of those are talk/news stations. We were able to confirm with the program directors at two of these stations that their particular station never broadcasted a show titled Real Talk with Jimbo. The third, WOBC, is the campus radio station and the most likely broadcaster.
On October 14 of this year, an email inquiry resulted in the following response from a WOBC student staffer:
Hi John,Via email, Breitbart News reached out to the station historian but never heard back.
Sorry I took a while to get back to you. I couldn’t find anything about the show, but you may have more luck asking the station historian, REDACTED. You can reach him at REDACTED@oberlin.edu or at REDACTED@wobc.org
Good luck!
For obvious reasons, WOBC was a priority during our physical visit to the campus. We were referred to Sophie Hess, who identifies herself as WOBC’s station manager. After a short round of phone tag, Ms. Hess and I caught up one evening.
At first, Ms. Hess was pleasant and eager to help. She informed me that there are physical archives of the station’s program guides. It would take some time to go through them, she explained, but if WOBC did in fact broadcast “Real Talk with Jimbo,” the information should be there.
With the understanding that I would be supervised, I volunteered to do the work of going through the records myself and offered to shift my schedule in any way that was convenient. She replied that she would be happy to do this work and then inquired into the specific details of the story we were working on.
This transcript is based on memory and extensive notes taken during the call:
“An Oberlin graduate, Lena Dunham, wrote a memoir where she claims she was raped as a student here. We’re checking into the details of the story,” I told her.And with that, Sophie hung up.
“I heard about that but didn’t know it involved the radio station,” she replied.
“Yes, according to Dunham her rapist hosted this radio show.”
“Are there other stories you have written about this that I can read?”
“Quite a few [I gave her the website address and my name again]. You’ll see we’re a right-of-center outlet, but you’ll also see that unlike some others we haven’t questioned the veracity of the claim. We looked into what could still be done to get the rapist off the street. It’s still possible to press charges, but as far as we know, Dunham isn’t going to do that. Now the story is at a point where we need to check the details. If this guy exists, we need to find him. If he doesn’t, we need to know that.”
“What you’re looking for,” Ms. Hess informed me, “could create a conflict of interest on campus regarding sexual assault.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“People here are less interested in justice for this kind of crime and more interested in helping the victim. I’m not psyched to help you do this.”
“You can look at everything I’ve thus far written about this. We just want to know the truth.”
“Asking whether or not a victim is telling the truth is irrelevant,” Ms. Hess proclaimed. “It’s just not important if they are telling the truth. If this person had wanted criminal justice they would have pursued it.”
“I’m not just talking about criminal justice,” I responded. “The details in the book point to a specific individual.”
“Who graduated years ago.”
“This man is easily found using Google and says he’s innocent. Right now everyone is looking at him and he’s just twisting out there.”
“Our archives are private. We have no obligation to share them with anyone. I don’t want our organization to be a part of this. I’m the general manager and the answer is no.”
The next morning, my first stop was an early morning visit to Oberlin’s media relations department. No one was available. I left my card and on it a few details about the story. Later that afternoon, I received a voice mail from Scott Wargo, Oberlin’s Director of Media Relations. In my return message I related what had happened with Ms. Hess and said I would still love to have access to those archives.
That call was not returned.
A general online search and search of the archives of the school newspaper came up with nothing about a radio show called “Real Talk with Jimbo.”
Summary
Lena Dunham might have been raped at Oberlin College, but the “Barry” she describes in her memoir is a ghost.
The man we call Barry One, however, the man legions have found online using details published in Not That Kind of Girl, is very real. And what’s unforgivable is that, through an incomprehensible malice or a combination of breathtaking carelessness and a number of unthinkable coincidences, in the courtroom of public opinion, Lena Dunham is pointing her powerful finger at this man and screaming “rapist.”
After Kevin Williamson’s National Review story published, in which Barry One is portrayed as a stressed and worried family man being hounded by the press and terrified his full name will be published, Dunham responded directly to Williamson’s piece but said nothing about the innocence of the man she placed under this national microscope.
Rather than use this opportunity to clear his name (if Barry is a pseudonym this would have been an opportune time to say something), she instead condemned him through silence and made the “most unfortunate coincidence” of a man’s life all about Lena Dunham:
—
Dear @kmcdonovgh thank you for giving voice to what I could not say: http://t.co/zW9tiMPm6P
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 18, 2014
—
Some men are enraged by stories of sexual assault that don’t have clear cut villains, pimps or men with guns…
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 18, 2014
—
That’s because these stories force them to ask hard questions about their history with consent…
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 18, 2014
—
Well, we all have to ask hard questions. Grow the fuck up.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 18, 2014
—
And I have some news for certain “news”
outlets. No matter how much you thump your keyboards with your meat
hands we will not stop talking.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 18, 2014
—It’s not unheard of for a 28-year-old woman like Lena Dunham to be this selfish and reckless. The real question is, how did this get through her publisher, Random House?
Meanwhile, Barry One has had to hide his Facebook page and retain an attorney.
Post Script:
Through various sources, Breitbart News learned that another news organization is pursuing other leads and individuals. One particular name came up twice. His name is not Barry, but for obvious reasons we won’t reveal his name. A thorough, good faith search did reveal that this individual attended Oberlin at the same time Dunham did. If this is him, two individuals directly involved in Oberlin’s Republican organization did not know the man Dunham describes as Oberlin’s “resident conservative.”
We could find nothing about his political affiliation, and the only radio history we could find belonged to a family member.
We were able to verify that this individual did not hold any kind of job at any Oberlin school library.
The harrowing rape and murder scandals currently unfolding at the University of Virginia are a potent reminder to women and the men who love them that campus sexual assault is a serious issue that demands to be treated seriously.
Based in part on her story of being raped at Oberlin, Lena Dunham has positioned herself as a campus sexual assault activist. This is a noble cause but one that should come with setting a good example.
Maybe Lena Dunham’s rapist is out there, and maybe this man voted for George W. Bush, and maybe this man did indeed hurt two other women.
What we do know is that whatever her motives, rather than cooperate with campus and local authorities (who are taking her charges seriously) to get a brutal man off the street before he hurts another woman, Dunham has apparently decided to instead hurl suspicion at Barry One.
Yesterday afternoon, seeking comment, Breitbart News left detailed voice mail messages for Dunham’s publicist at Random House and the person the publicist asks callers to contact if the matter is urgent. Those calls were not returned.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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Creepy Hell-Hound Trolls!: Media Blasts Breitbart Over Dunham Reporting
Let me open by saying that most of the mainstream and entertainment media have handled the Lena Dunham/Barry One story quite fairly. And throughout the week, we have published as many of those pieces as possible. The examples below are notable exceptions.
–For months Lena Dunham knew her memoir had plucked an innocent man out of obscurity and placed him under a cloud of suspicion that he was her rapist.
And she stayed silent.
For whatever reason, a very powerful woman and an even more powerful publisher (Random House) allowed an innocent family man to twist in the wind.
Those lashing out at Breitbart News for committing the crime of journalism never tell their readers that basic fact. It’s too damning, because her behavior in that instance is indefensible. The Daily Beast won’t tell you that. Jezebel won’t tell you that. Tamara Holder won’t tell you that. Even the Washington Post won’t tell you that.
Instead, they just lash out… we’re creepy and hounds of hell and trolls for committing an act of journalism… that resulted in some bad publicity for someone they admire… and the exoneration of an innocent man.
Although the Washington Post’s Eugene Volokh has published two superb pieces of analysis based in part on our reporting, on the same day the Washington Post published a methodical and righteous debunking of Rolling Stone’s University of Virginia rape hoax, elsewhere in that same publication Breitbart News was vilified for an act of journalism that resulted in Lena Dunham and Random House admitting a memoir labeled as non-fiction contains some fiction damaging to a very real person.
As Newsbusters points out, the Washington Post believes what we did was a bad thing:
The Washington Post explicitly
sided with Hollywood feminist it-girl Lena Dunham in Thursday’s Style
section with an article titled “Lena Dunham and the uncertain territory
of memoir.” This is how we handle a crumbling allegation of sexual
assault? Post writer Karen Heller lamented memoir writers are
“held to some standards of reliability and are often subject to attacks
if their stories defy verification.”
They played the
don’t-pick-on-the-rape-survivor card, and Breitbart’s John Nolte and
Breitbart were butt-kicking “hounds of hell” for trying to verify her
tale of how “Barry” the campus conservative at Oberlin assaulted her[.]
Breitbart News has never once questioned whether or not Lena Dunham was raped. Not once.
Ever.
Please, Google.
Or feel free to call us if you’re not sure.
Or maybe read the piece in question that closes by making it clear that our reporting was not about whether or not Ms. Dunham was indeed assaulted:
Maybe Lena Dunham’s rapist is out there, and maybe this man voted for George W. Bush, and maybe this man did indeed hurt two other women.So let me repeat:
Barry One said he was innocent.
Lena Dunham knew Barry One had proclaimed his innocence, and she said nothing.
Digging into the truth of that circumstance is not questioning Dunham’s story of being sexually assaulted.
We uncovered a completely separate story.
The story of Power abusing the Powerless.
That’s not about right vs. left, or red vs. blue, or liberal vs. conservative.
That’s about right and wrong.
John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
http://www.breitbart.com/
After hitting a series low last week, Lena Dunham’s “Girls” hit yet another series low again Sunday in the all-important 18-49 youth demo (total viewers hasn’t yet been released). Incredibly, only 385,000 tuned in. That’s a catastrophic 0.17 rating, down from last week’s already catastrophic 0.21 when just 406,000 demo viewers tuned in.
Last week, Dunham supporters appeared to want to blame the competition of the Grammy Awards. This week it’s the “Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that throughout the Sunday night, four season run of “Girls,” competing networks have and will continue to put programs on they hope will be popular.
Throughout all of season three, the lowest Sunday night demo rating was 0.34, which is double this Sunday’s 0.17.
How is this for a comparison: Against no less than the Academy Awards last year, “Girls” still managed 0.45 demo rating.
It does appears as though, despite the biggest publicity push “Girls” has ever enjoyed, Dunham is losing what was an already small but fiercely loyal fan-base.
Nothing is more fatal to a popular personality than doing something that negatively and forever alters the way your fans perceive you. Over the past year, Dunham self-destructed her own credibility repeatedly by stepping on the scandal third rail of Lies/Children/Hypocrisy. That kind of behavior goes beyond politics and culture.
How bad is a 0.17 demo rating? Ad nauseum in the New York Times and incessantly on every magazine cover in America, Lena Dunham has been sold, processed, packaged and pitched for years as the Voice of Her Generation. And yet, last week, The Voice of Her Generation likely pulled in fewer viewers from her generation than 53 year-old Sean Hannity and definitely fewer than 65 year-old Bill O’Reilly.
As of today, the science proves that Fox News is closer than Dunham to being the voice of Dunham’s generation.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
http://www.breitbart.com
Lena Dunham’s Mom: Women ‘Are Still Fighting to Hold onto Our Basic Rights’
In a feature for UK’s The Independent, Laurie Simmons, mother of Girls star Lena Dunham, opines about the pressures young girls face today and discusses her feminist influence on the young television actress.
Simmons is an artist herself, having worked for four decades as a photographer and painter. According to a feature on her work in the Telegraph, Simmons’ photography involves blow-up sex dolls dressed as geishas and Barbie figures placed in interesting poses.Simmons told the Independent that despite all the progress women have made since the seventies, the pressure these days has been “amped up to a hysterical level.”
“I’m always shocked at how many problems are the same now as when I was in my twenties,” Simmons told the outlet. “We are still fighting to hold onto our basic rights. We are still paid less than our male counterparts. And this is just in America. On a global level, the continuing violence towards and injustices for women are shocking and unacceptable.”
In a 2013 interview with the New York Observer, Dunham said of her mother: “She introduced me at an early age to concepts of equality and gender equality that I really carried with me and that have been a huge part of my identity.”
“Lena was raised by two feminists,” Simmons told the Independent. “I would say her father and I have equally influenced her worldview. We’re at a point in history where I question what it would mean for anyone to say they’re not a feminist.”
Still, when it comes to Dunham’s work on Girls, Simmons was hesitant to say that she was a principal influence behind the show.
“I feel like Lena makes work that is honest in some way, with an eye towards what she really knows and has experienced,” Simmons said. “That’s what I think she’s most likely (and most hopefully) gotten from me.”
http://www.breitbart.com
NBC’s Savannah Guthrie Covers Up Lena Dunham’s Victimization of ‘Barry One’
For 6 weeks to two months Lena Dunham and her publisher Random House knowingly allowed an innocent man (we identify as Barry One) to twist in the wind under a false accusation of rape. You wouldn’t know that, though, from an interview NBC’s Savannah Guthrie conducted Wednesday morning on the “Today Show.”
Rather than assume the role of a journalist, Guthrie instead went full-fan girl and propagandist. Guthrie completely ignores the fact that the details in Dunham’s memoir caused an innocent man to be accused of rape. Instead, Guthrie fabricates the notion that the media storm (that exonerated this innocent man) was meant to “discredit” and cast “doubt” on the rape accusation:
GUTHRIE: You recently
wrote a memoir of your life. One of the things you talked about was a
difficult episode in your life where you talk about being sexually
assaulted. And the reaction to that, in the media and in the public
world, was strange. In some places you were attempted to be discredited,
and so many so places doubted. How did that feel for you to go through
that on this public stage?
DUNHAM: It’s very
difficult to share an episode that personal and receive criticism. What I
received was only a small percentage of the doubt and victim blaming
that most women who are sexually assaulted in this country experience. I
am a celebrity with a platform and a lot of incredible support. Most
women who come forward with accusations of sexual assault don’t have
those benefits, don’t have my legal and emotional and financial
supports. So for me, I really feel like it enhanced my understanding of
the cause and hopefully will make me a better advocate and activist in
the future.
GUTHRIE: And giving voice to those who might have been voiceless.
Guthrie then asked Dunham for an acting role on Dunham’s HBO show “Girls.”
GUTHRIE: Let’s end on a
happy note. Lot of great guest stars on “Girls.” As for the yet
unwritten role of responsible big sister, or girl five, I want you to
know I am still available.
In what was advertised as a non-fiction memoir, Dunham gave her alleged rapist 7 completely unnecessary identifying characteristics
that pointed everyone with Google to an actual person — an outspoken
conservative Republican who attended Oberlin College at the same time
Dunham did.Dunham now says she made up those identifying characteristics out of thin air. She also claims that the fact that those 7 unnecessary details point to an outspoken campus Republican was just a “surreal coincidence.” Moreover, we now know that while Barry One was hounded by the media and lived under a cloud of suspicion as Dunham’s rapist, for at least 6 weeks both Random House and Dunham ignored pleas from Barry One and his legal counsel to clear his name (see the timeline here).
Dunham and her publisher finally came forward and did the right thing last month, but only after a lawsuit was threatened and Breitbart News released an in-depth investigative report clearing Barry One’s name.
While the outcome of the lawsuit remains unknown, Random House has agreed to ensure that future printings of Dunham’s memoir make clear that the details pointing to her alleged rapist are fabricated details.
Although no journalist has yet shown the courage to press Dunham on this scandal during her publicity blitz for the upcoming premiere of the latest season of “Girls,” it would be one thing for Guthrie to join her cowering colleagues and choose to ignore altogether the controversy surrounding Barry One.
What Gurthrie did, though, was to intentionally and dishonestly mischaracterize the scandal.
Guthrie didn’t just gush over Lena Dunham, she lied to her audience.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
http://www.breitbart.com/
De Pasquale: Judd Apatow’s Random Acts of Outrage
A few days ago, director and Hollywood darling Judd Apatow went on a Twitter rant against Bill Cosby. The Washington Post wrote, “Apatow’s outspokenness is rare among entertainment industry figures, who have remained largely silent on the allegations that have swirled around Cosby for years but have reached a fever pitch over the last several months.”
Yes, how very brave of Apatow to take to Twitter for his random act of outrage. I assume we’ll see a similar outcry against Roman Polanski, who actually has been convicted of crimes, any day now. As far-fetched as that is, it’s even more unlikely that you’ll hear anything but praise for his pal Lena Dunham.Like many in Hollywood, Apatow’s outrage is reserved only for those who are unconnected to his career or who have already been demonized by the media. It’s not particularly brave to speak out against someone when the media is running interference for you. While Apatow railed against Sony for (temporarily) pulling The Interview, he urged Canadian theaters to pull Cosby’s performances from their schedules. The driving principle shouldn’t be whom Apatow thinks deserves an audience, but whether a business is free to make market-based decisions on featuring that work rather than giving into the whims of people with their own agendas and biases. That’s not to say that business shouldn’t be free from being criticized for those decisions.
The problem with Apatow’s appetite for outrage is that it’s selective and unprincipled. He’s the executive producer of Lena Dunham’s HBO show, Girls, but doesn’t demand truth and accountability from her.In addition to Dunham’s admissions about her behavior with her sister, new evidence suggests that she changed the story of a sexual encounter at Oberlin College into a rape committed by a Republican – two details that Gawker includes in a defense of Dunham. Those details were different in her book proposal.
Where is Apatow? Is he not outraged by Dunham’s behavior against her sister or nonchalance when it comes to rape accusations in order to sell books?
While Dunham’s story of rape “collapses under scrutiny,” Apatow’s need for truth collapses when it affects his pockets. I doubt he would be as understanding of those who want Dunham’s book pulled from the shelves or show pulled from HBO.
Reason.com’s Robby Soave wrote, “Given all these reasonable assumptions, Barry [the name Dunham uses in her book for the alleged rapist] is very probably a composite character, or a specific character whose key traits—like his party affiliation—were altered to make a more convenient villain.”
Despite the elitist media’s glowing reviews and profiles of Apatow and Dunham’s works, they are not brave for their random acts of outrage. They live in a bubble that’s free from criticism thanks to parroting the narratives accepted by the media. Of all the people who read Dunham’s book before it was published, none were “brave” enough to question her behavior with her sister or the story of Barry.
While it’s not breaking news that Hollywood darlings like Apatow are hypocrites, it’s still worth exposing. As the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
http://www.breitbart.com/
This week, Lena Dunham threatened to sue TruthRevolt.org, a 501(c)3 website I run, for covering her new book, Not That Kind of Girl. More specifically, she threatened to sue us for “millions of dollars,” as well as punitive damages, unless we both retracted a story about her book and ran something like the following apology:
We recently published a story stating
that Ms. Dunham engaged in sexual conduct with her sister. The story
was false, and we deeply regret having printed it. We apologize to Ms.
Dunham, her sister, and their parents, for this false story.
In her book, Dunham describes sexually abusing her sister.
She tells the story of “lean[ing] down between her legs and carefully spreading open her vagina…My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina. This was within the spectrum of things I did.” Dunham says that she was seven years old and her sister one at the time, but the other elements of the story – her sister had “stuffed six or seven pebbles in there” as a “prank” – suggest that the two girls may have been older. (It is extraordinarily unlikely that a one-year-old would be playing pranks by shoving objects up her vagina, and it is even odder that a one-year-old would shove pebbles up her vagina for her sister to find unless there was prior history of such activity).
This passage has drawn the most scrutiny, because it is most arguable as to its sexual abuse – there are some who claim that children of seven years of age investigating the genitals of younger children is “relatively common,” like Debby Hebernick of Indiana University School of Public Health. “That doesn’t mean it’s OK,” Hebernick added, although USA Today ran a whole article attempting to slough off the incident.
Of course, the media largely neglected to quote the other problematic portions of Dunham’s book with regard to her sister. In a second section, Dunham writes:
As she grew, I took to bribing her for
her time and affection: one dollar in quarters if I could do her makeup
like a “motorcycle chick.” Three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on
the lips for five seconds. Whatever she wanted to watch on TV if she
would just “relax on me.” Basically, anything a sexual predator might do
to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.
And Dunham writes, too, of masturbating in bed as a teenager next to her prepubescent sister:
I shared a bed with my sister, Grace,
until I was seventeen years old. She was afraid to sleep alone and would
begin asking me around 5:00 P.M. every day whether she could sleep with
me. I put on a big show of saying no, taking pleasure in watching her
beg and sulk, but eventually I always relented. Her sticky, muscly
little body thrashed beside me every night as I read Anne Sexton,
watched reruns of SNL, sometimes even as I slipped my hand into my
underwear to figure some stuff out.
Originally, Dunham went on a self-described Twitter “rage spiral,” writing that accusations that she “molested my little sister isn’t just LOL – it’s really fucking upsetting and disgusting.” She then added “by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid’s vagina, well, congrats to you.” She did not congratulate those who did not dress their siblings up as sex properties, or pay them for prolonged mouth kisses, or masturbate in bed beside them.
After Dunham issued her legal threat regarding our original article, she went silent on Twitter. A few days later, she issued a statement via her friends at Time.com, in which she said that she did not “condone any kind of abuse under any circumstances.” She then added:
Childhood sexual abuse is a
life-shattering event for so many, and I have been vocal about the
rights of survivors. If the situations described in my book have been
painful or triggering for people to read, I am sorry, as that was never
my intention. I am also aware that the comic use of the term “sexual
predator” was insensitive, and I’m sorry for that as well.
That’s nonsense on stilts – we didn’t back off of Ray Rice’s assault against his then-fiancée just because she defended him. There are standards of sexual abuse, and Dunham’s behavior fits within them (huge portion of sexual abuse happens within families, and 31 percent of female sexual abuse victimizers were younger than 12, according to the US Department of Justice). That’s why even those on Dunham’s side of the political aisle are wildly uncomfortable with her revelations, including Samantha Allen of The Daily Beast, or Monica Weymouth of PhillyMag.com, or Sara Luckey at Feminspire, or Perez Hilton. John V. Caffaro, Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, writes at The Washington Post:
Drawing a conclusion about Dunham’s
interactions with her sister is impossible without much more contextual
information about her family. But, in general, the topic of sibling
sexual abuse is more common than many realize and deserves much more
discussion than it has received. Sibling sexual abuse is the most
closely kept secret in the field of family violence.
Dunham never even thought, apparently, that writing publicly about her behavior might be problematic. That’s what happens when you live within a leftist bubble in which your every sexual thought is labeled cute, charming, feminist, and delightfully subversive. But that doesn’t mean that suing those who disagree is permitted by the First Amendment, or that sickening behavior is justifiable.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the new book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
Washington Post’s Volokh: Did Lena Dunham Libel ‘Barry One’?
After Breitbart News’ comprehensive report debunking Lena Dunham’s reported rape at the hands of “campus Republican” Barry, the Washington Post’s Eugene Volokh reported that “Barry One” – the campus Republican tabbed by the media as the probable suspect in the rape – could theoretically sue Dunham. The Post tabbed Dunham’s accusations a “classic defamation case.”
Volokh explains that Barry would argue:- Dunham said things about him that injured his reputation with some people
- because some people reasonably identified him as the Barry she mentions and yet,
- those statements were false, in that no conservative Oberlin student named Barry actually did to her what she says was done to her, even if someone else with another name or other identifying characteristics did this, and
- Dunham knew that the statements were false, in that she knew that no conservative Oberlin Barry did this to her.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the new book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
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