A writer testified in a US civil trial on Wednesday that she had been left feeling “ashamed” and unable to have meaningful connections because of an alleged sexual assault by Donald Trump thirty years prior.
E. Jean Carroll stated in federal court in Manhattan, where a case involving defamation and violence against the former president is being heard, “I’m here because Donald Trump raped me.”
The 76-year-old Republican is up against a number of legal issues as he pursues a run for the White House. The case is only one of them.
Carroll, 79, has filed a lawsuit against Trump, claiming that in the middle of the 1990s, he sexually attacked her in a changing room at the upscale Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.
When she made the charges public years later, she also asserts that Trump subsequently defamed her. Trump has vehemently refuted the accusations and is not facing any legal action.
In her testimony before the jury, the former Elle magazine editor detailed how a fortuitous encounter with Trump in the Manhattan store soon descended into violence.