Girls creator and star, Lena Dunham has written about a painful experience she encountered while in college.

In Lena’s new book, Not That Kind Of Girl, she relates an incident in which a friend told her she [Lena] had been raped, to which she says she: “burst out laughing.”

She describes the encounter as “aggressive” and also says she required medical attention afterwards, knowing that something very bad had happened to her: “I knew that it wasn’t right and I knew in some way that this experience had been forced upon me.”

Lena says that it took her a long time to overcome the horrific incident: “It was a painful experience physically and emotionally. And one I spent a long time trying to reconcile.”

The successful writer also said that it took her a long time to be honest with herself about what had happened that night: “It wasn’t something that I was able to be honest about [at the time]. I was able to share pieces, but I sort of used the lens of humour, which has always been my default mode, to try to talk about it.”

Lena also said that although the chapter about the date rape was difficult for her, she knew it was important to share: "The chapter about date rape in the book was a really, really terrifying thing for me to put into the world."

We’re glad that Lena found the strength to talk about what had happened to her.

If you are affected by any of the issues in this article, please visit the Rape Crisis Centre.