In her testimony and lawsuit against the former president Donald Trump on Wednesday, writer E. Jean Carroll said, "I'm here because Trump raped me."
Trump "lied and shattered my reputation and I'm trying to get my life back," Carroll said as the civil trial in lower Manhattan's federal court began in 2019. Carroll first came forward with her allegations in 2019.
Carroll, 79, claimed she first met Trump in 1987 at a "Saturday Night Live" party. At the time, she was a writer for the show, but Trump has claimed he doesn't know who she is and has never met her.
She claimed that's where she thinks a photo of her with Trump, his ex-wife Ivana, and her husband, a well-known local news anchor, was taken.
The second time Carroll spoke to Trump, she ran into him at the Bergdorf Goodman department shop nearby Trump Tower in 1995 or 1996, according to Carroll, a former Elle magazine advice columnist.
She told the jurors, "He replied, 'You're that advise lady,' and I said, 'You're that real estate tycoon. He had a great personality.
She claimed that Trump, who at the time was wed to model Marla Maples, approached her and asked for assistance in buying a gift for a friend. She said that before Trump recommended they visit the lingerie section on the sixth level, they first went to handbags and then hats.
Carroll recalled that the man "was very chatty on the escalator and said he was thinking of buying Bergdorf." I was excited to accompany him to lingerie because I was thinking, "I have a great story," at the time. She claimed that after that, they both looked at intimate apparel and that "he was joking and pleasant and very funny."
Carroll remarked that she found it amusing that they had each suggested the other try on some intimate apparel. She claimed that because the door was already open when he beckoned for her to go to the dressing room, she "didn't think anything about what was about to happen."
Then, according to Carroll, Trump shut the door and shoved her against the wall and when she pushed him away, he slammed her back into the wall, causing her to hit her head on the wall.
She testified, "He put his shoulder against me and held me against the wall." Carroll sobbed as she recalled Trump penetrating her while she was testifying.
"I couldn’t see anything was happening but I could certainly feel that pain," she said.
The attack lasted "very few minutes," she said, and then she rushed out of the store before calling a friend to tell her what had happened.
Carroll claimed that her friend, the author Lisa Birnbach, who would testify at a later stage of the trial, persuaded her to call the police. She claimed that her answer was "No way."
"I thought it was my fault," she admitted.
Carroll said that the alleged rape occurred in a Manhattan department shop in the 1990s, and she filed a lawsuit against Trump for violence over the incident as well as defamation over his assertions that she made up the incident to boost book sales and her public reputation.
[zombify_post]
0 Comments