New Delhi: Writer E Jean Carroll on Wednesday testified before a New York jury that Donald Trump raped her, preventing her from being in a romantic relationship, and that he afterwards “shattered my reputation” by denying the assault ever took place.
Carroll testified in her civil complaint seeking damages for abuse and slander after Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her in a changing room at a New York department shop in 1996. When Carroll made her charges public in a book, he accused her of lying and manufacturing a hoax.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back,” The Guardian quoted Carroll as saying to jurors.
From afar, Trump repeated his insistence that Carroll’s allegation of the 1996 rape is utter fiction, writing on his social media site that the case “is a made-up scam,” and more.
“This is a fraudulent & false story — Witch Hunt!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
His comments prompted the judge to warn Trump’s lawyers that he could bring more legal problems upon himself.
Trump hasn’t attended the trial thus far, but his lawyers said Tuesday it’s still possible he could decide to testify.
The trial comes as Trump again seeks the Republican nomination for president, and weeks after he pleaded not guilty to unrelated criminal charges that involve payments made to silence a porn actor who said she had a sexual encounter with him.
When Trump met Carroll
Carroll, 79, testified that she crossed paths with Trump at the revolving door to Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified Thursday evening in spring 1996. At the time, she was writing a long-running advice column in Elle magazine, having also written for “SNL.” Trump was a real estate magnate and social figure in New York.
“He said, ‘I need to buy a gift, come help me,’” she said. “I was delighted.”
Carroll said she suggested a handbag and then a hat for the woman Trump said he was buying for but he wasn’t interested.
“He picked up a fur hat and he was petting it like a cat or a dog. Then he said, ‘I know, lingerie,’” she said. “He led the way to the escalator.”
Carroll described Trump as very talkative, and herself as “absolutely enchanted”.
“I was delighted to go to lingerie with him. He was very funny,” she said.
Carroll said Trump “snatched up” a grey-blue bodysuit in the lingerie department and demanded she try it on.
“I had no intention of putting it on. I said, ‘You put it on, it’s your colour,’” she told the court.
Carroll said Trump suggested they both try it on, and motioned toward the dressing room. She said she did not take it seriously.
“Donald Trump was being very light. It was very joshing and very funny,” she said.
“I was flirting the whole time, probably.”
But, she said, the mood changed rapidly after they stepped into the dressing room.
“He immediately shut the door and shoved me up against the wall. He shoved me so hard my head banged. I was extremely confused,” she said. “I pushed back and he thrust me back against the wall again, banging my head again.”
Carroll told the jury the situation “turned absolutely dark”.
“He leaned down and pulled down my tights,” she said. “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”
Carroll described the former president’s attempts to kiss her as “a shocking thing”.
“My whole reason for being alive at that moment was to get out of the room,” she said.
But Carroll said she could not escape Trump’s grip. Speaking quietly and slowly, she said he raped her.
Carroll said she escaped after she was able to lift her knee and push him off. She fled the store.
Carroll said she will always regret going into the dressing room with Trump, describing it as “very stupid”.
“It left me unable to ever have a romantic life again,” she said.
She said that for decades, she told no one except two friends because she was afraid Trump would retaliate, because she “thought it was my fault” and because she thought many people blame rape victims for what happened to them.
The alleged attack happened long before the #MeToo movement forced a reckoning with how sexual assault victims are treated by law enforcement and viewed by the public. Carroll has said #MeToo fueled her decision to come forward in 2019.
Trump, 76, has said he wasn’t at the store with Carroll and had no clue who she was when she first aired the story publicly in a 2019 memoir and accompanying magazine excerpt.
As court was about to begin Wednesday, Trump vented his feelings about it on Truth Social.
Among his other remarks, he called Carroll’s lawyer “a political operative” and alluded to a DNA issue that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has ruled can’t be part of the case.
Lawyers for Carroll — whose suit includes claims that Trump previously defamed her by publicly calling her case a “hoax,” “scam,” “lie” and “complete con job” — mentioned his new statement to Kaplan. He wasn’t pleased.
“What seems to be the case is that your client is basically endeavoring, certainly to speak to his quote-unquote public — but, more troubling, the jury in this case — about stuff that has no business being spoken about,” the judge told Trump’s lawyers. He called Trump’s post “a public statement that, on the face of it, seems entirely inappropriate.”
Trump attorney Joe Tacopina noted that jurors are told not to follow any news or online commentary about the case. But he said he would ask Trump “to refrain from any further posts about this case.”
“I hope you’re more successful,” Kaplan said, adding that Trump “may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability.”
Carroll’s federal lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and a retraction of his allegedly defamatory comments.
The suit was filed under a New York law that temporarily lets decades-old sexual abuse claims go to civil court. She never pursued criminal charges.
With inputs from agencies
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