Donald Trump ‘raped, groped’ ex-columnist E. Jean Carroll, court told
Donald Trump raped a former American columnist E. Jean Carroll and later mocked her with defamatory comments, a US court hearing a lawsuit against the ex-president was told.
Donald Trump’s lawyer said that E. Jean Carroll was motivated by money and fame in opening arguments of the much-anticipated proceedings.
E. Jean Carroll earlier claimed that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a changing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Donald Trump first asked for advice on buying women’s lingerie from the former columnist and then attacked her, she claimed.
“The moment they were inside (the dressing room) everything changed. Suddenly nothing was fun. Trump was almost twice her size,” E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer Shawn Crowley told the court.
The trial is not criminal in nature but comes at a time when Donald Trump faces a barrage of legal challenges that could jeopardise his 2024 run for a second presidential term. Just weeks earlier, Donald Trump faced criminal charges related to a hush-money payment made to a porn star Stormy Daniels, becoming the first sitting or former president to have ever been charged with a crime. The former president pleaded not guilty to 34 counts related to the payment made just before the 2016 presidential election.
Donald Trump also faces investigation over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia, his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his involvement in US Capitol attack.
E. Jean Carroll had first made the allegation in 2019 and sued Donald Trump for defamation but was unable to include the rape claim . Following a new law taking effect in November 2022 in New York that allowed victims of sexual assault a one-year window to sue their alleged abusers decades after attacks, she filed a new suit that accusing Donald Trump of “forcibly raping and groping” her.
“He went on the attack. He ridiculed her. He destroyed her,” her lawyer said seeking unspecified damages for “significant pain and suffering, lasting psychological and pecuniary harms, loss of dignity and self-esteem, and invasion of her privacy.”