What does Trump say about the rape allegation against him?
Of that event occurred in 1996, Trump responded on his social media platform that Carroll’s claim was pure fiction. He wrote that the case “is a made-up scam” and nothing more.
At first, E. Jean Carroll helped Donald Trump buy a gift of women’s lingerie at a luxury department store would simply be “a fun thing happening in New York.”
Even when, according to her testimony, the then businessman invited her to a dressing room while they challenged each other to try on a transparent suit, as if it were a sketch of “Saturday Night Live”, the program in which he participated as a writer.
But, minutes later, “my whole reason for living became to get out of that place,” Carroll testified Wednesday in part of the rape lawsuit he filed against Trump.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, (he) said it didn’t happen. He lied and destroyed my reputation, and I’m here to try to get my life back,” Carroll told jurors.
The trial comes as he pleaded not guilty to unrelated criminal charges involving payments made to silence Stormy Daniels, a porn actress who says she had a sexual encounter with him.
How was the alleged rape, according to the woman accusing Trump?
Carroll, 79, testified that he crossed paths with Trump at the revolving door of Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury Manhattan department store, on an unspecified Thursday night in the spring of 1996.
At the time, Caroll was writing a column in Elle magazine, and had also been a writer for Saturday Night Live. Trump, who at the time was married to his second wife, Marla Maples, was then a real estate mogul and social figure in New York.
Carroll said Trump asked her for advice on how to select a gift for a woman, to which she gladly agreed.
The woman testified that, first, she suggested a hat, but he insisted the gift should be lingerie. Carroll said she willingly accompanied him and Trump closed the locker room door, closing his mouth against hers, pulled down her stockings and pushed his hand and then his penis into her as she fought him, kneeling him and fleeing.
For years, she explained, she blamed herself. I always think about why I went in there to put myself in that situation,” he said, his voice breaking.
Why did the woman remain silent about the alleged rape?
Carroll said that, for decades, she didn’t tell anyone what had happened except two friends, because she feared Trump would retaliate, she was convinced it was her “fault” and because she feared other people would also blame her for being a rape victim.
