In her just-released memoir “Not That Kind of Girl,” Lena Dunham describes her rape at the hands of a “mustachioed campus Republican” named Barry. In the same chapter she alleges that the following semester she learned that after Barry had sex with another girl named Julia, the “wall was spattered with blood … like a crime scene.”
The next semester, after Barry is gone, my 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 he took her for the morning after pill and named the baby they weren’t having.
She also says, “There was a story about him punching a girl in the boobs at a party.”
That is two other women hurt by this Barry along with Dunham.
Dunham alleges that Barry’s rape left her in enough pain and over a long enough period of time that she had to visit a doctor. The doctor confirmed that Dunham had been injured. “[The sex] must have been pretty rough,” was the doctor’s conclusion. At the time, Dunham says she didn’t tell the doctor or anyone but her best friend Audrey about the rape.
According to the timeline, Dunham was a 19 year-old student at Ohio’s Oberlin College when the alleged rape occurred. That would place the year of the incident sometime around 2005.
Dunham also claims that the alleged rape occurred on campus property — a “college-owned apartment” is how she describes the setting.
The statute of limitations for rape in the state of Ohio is 20 years.
Although she has accused Barry of rape and seems to believe he was rough enough on another woman to leave a wall spattered with blood, and although she has only recently come to terms with the fact she was raped, Dunham has given no indication that she plans to go to the authorities.
The chances a rapist will repeat his crime until caught are disturbingly high.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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