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Lena Dunham may be funny, but her lawyers aren't joking around. Her legal team has sent a letter to the conservative organization Truth Revolt threatening a lawsuit and demanding an apology for a story inferring the actress sexually molested her little sister when they were still adolescents. Last week, Truth Revolt published a story that went viral when linked to by the Drudge Report, and in the article the group quoted Dunham’s new memoir in which she says that when she was 7 she “leaned down between” the legs of her 1-year-old sister “and carefully spread open her vagina.” The article also stated, “Dunham describes experimenting sexually with her younger sister Grace, whom she says she attempted to persuade to kiss her using ‘anything a sexual predator might do.’” Dunham attorney Charles Harder wrote in his letter, “The story is false, fabricated, and has the obvious tendency to subject my client to ridicule, and to injure her in her occupation.” Ben Shapiro, who runs the website, issued a response, declaring, “We refuse to withdraw our story or apologize for running it, because quoting a woman’s book does not constitute ‘false’ story, even if she is a prominent actress and left-wing activist.”
Early Tuesday, Dunham responded to critics’ charges of sexual abuse toward her younger sister. “I am dismayed over the recent interpretation of events described in my book,” Dunham said in a statement to Time, defending herself against the way parts have been taken out of context to accuse her of being a 7-year-old child molester. Dunham did apologize, though, for offending any survivors of sexual abuse. “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,” she said. “I am also aware that the comic use of the term ‘sexual predator’ was insensitive, and I’m sorry for that as well.”