Lena Dunham postpones European book tour with ill health following claims she 'sexually abused' sister

Lena Dunham, second right, in the hit TV series 'Girls'

Lena Dunham wore Giambattista Valli

Lena Dunham, second right, in the hit TV series 'Girls'

Lena Dunham wore Giambattista Valli

Matilda Battersby

November 06 2014 11:08 AM

Girls creator Lena Dunham has postponed two scheduled appearances on her European book tour until December citing ill health.

The writer, who toured America and Canada in October to promote her autobiographical essay collection, Not That Kind Of Girl, said that the planned publicity stops in Belgium and Germany originally scheduled for this week will instead take place in the first week of December.

“More details to come,” Dunham added in a statement issued through her publisher Random House.

The author first announced her postponements over the weekend on Twitter after she furiously denounced allegations that as a child she had sexually abused her younger sister.

Conservative blog Truth Revolt had cited passages from her book which it claims shows the Girls creator using her sister, Grace, to sexually experiment with. It alleges that she attempted to persuade her to kiss her using the sort of methods “a sexual predator might do”.

Dunham posted a series of angry tweets denouncing the allegations made in the article.

“The right wing news story that I molested my little sister isn’t just LOL – it’s really f*cking upsetting and disgusting”, she wrote.

Her lawyers have since threatened to sue the website for “millions of dollars”.

“The story is false, fabricated, and has the obvious tendency to subject my client to ridicule, and to injure her in her occupation,” attorney Charles Harder wrote in a letter seen by The Hollywood Reporter and published in part on the Truth Revolt’s website.

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Yesterday the author published an article in Time magazine: “I am dismayed over the recent interpretation of events described in my book,” she wrote.

“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 continued.

“I am also aware that the comic use of the term ‘sexual predator’ was insensitive, and I’m sorry for that as well.”

Independent.co.uk