Lena Dunham to change name of attacker in book

Everybody listen up: Lena Dunham says a man who raped her in college is NOT named Barry.

Consequently, Dunham's blabby new memoir, in which she spills about everything including a sexual assault in college, is going to be altered to attach a different fake name to her assailant.

Her publisher, Random House, is changing future editions of the best-selling Not That Kind of Girl to assign a different pseudonym to the man she said raped her, a man she described as a campus Republican named "Barry" who attended liberal Oberlin College with her.

Except there really is a well-known Republican activist named Barry who went to Oberlin and he wasn't the assailant; in fact, didn't even know Dunham. He got a lawyer to complain.

Meanwhile, an investigation by the Republican-defending website Breitbart found that the rest of Dunham's description of her assailant (about his voice, his mustache, where he worked on campus, the radio talk show he hosted, etc.) didn't match up with anybody at the small college in Ohio.

The website last week accused Dunham of deliberately deciding to "hurl suspicion" at the real and innocent Republican named Barry.

"Under scrutiny, Dunham's rape story didn't just fall apart; it evaporated into pixie dust and blew away," the website charged.

On Tuesday, Dunham wrote an essay for BuzzFeed explaining that "Barry" was just a made-up name.

"To be very clear, 'Barry' is a pseudonym, not the name of the man who assaulted me, and any resemblance to a person with this name is an unfortunate and surreal coincidence," she wrote. "I am sorry about all he has experienced."

Then she went on to describe how her book's rape story led to attacks on her character and credibility, often with "violent and misogynistic language" online, and that reporters tried to identify her attacker despite her attempts to keep his name secret.

"I have been made to feel, on multiple occasions, as though I am to blame for what happened," she wrote. "But I simply cannot allow my story to be used to cast doubt on other women who have been sexually assaulted."

A spokeswoman for Random House said the publisher and Dunham "regret the confusion," the online edition of the book will be changed immediately and future printings of the book will also be changed.

Why does any of this matter? For one, publishers don't like to get sued. Also, anything the Girls star Dunham says or does is news these days.

But apart from that, America is caught up in yet another campus-rape story, at the University of Virginia, that contains similar elements:

A woman says she was raped on campus but did not report it, her story is detailed in print (Rolling Stone) years later causing tremendous upheaval for all, questions are then raised about important facts and details in the story, leading to retractions, apologies, ruined reputations, and even suggestions that the alleged rape never happened.