Donald Trump rape accuser E. Jean Carroll described alleged incident in court

E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine advice columnist, took to the stand in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, her voice breaking as she told jurors she always wondered “why I walked in” to the department store changing room. It is there that she alleged Mr Trump “shoved” and pinned her against a wall, pulled her tights down and forced his fingers inside her before raping her.

“As I am sitting here today, I can still feel [the pain],” Carroll, 79, testified, the New York Post reports.

“I always think back to why I walked in there,” she told the court, as her voice broke, “to get myself in that situation.”

She took the stand on the second day of trial in her civil lawsuit accusing Mr Trump, 76, of raping her in 1996 and then defaming her when he denied her claims decades later.

The former president was not in court for her testimony and also did not attend the start of the proceedings on Tuesday.

Carroll described how she ran into the real estate mogul at the Fifth Ave store, which was across from Trump Tower.

The pair began “flirting” and bantering, she claimed.

Mr Trump asked Carroll, then 52, to help him find a gift for a woman, which “delighted” Carroll – who was then the advice columnist for Elle magazine’s “Ask E. Jean” and said she loved the prospect of giving the prominent New York City personality advice on a present.

She told the court Mr Trump took her up to the lingerie department, where he tossed a sheer grey lace bodysuit at her and told her to try it on, prompting her to joke back that he should try it on.

Carroll said she thought at the time that the encounter would make a “great story”.

“He said, ‘Let’s try this on,’ and motioned toward the dressing room,” Carroll told the court.

Once inside, Mr Trump closed the door and “shoved” her against the wall, bumping her head, she claimed.

Carroll told the court she pushed him back but he shoved her a second time, knocking her head again, and pinned her against the wall before pulling her tights down, she said.

Mr Trump then allegedly raped Carroll before she was finally able to break free after she managed to lift her knee and shove him off, she told the court.

She then fled the store, she claimed.

She told the jury it was “very stupid” of her to walk into a changing room, noting the door was open.

“And that open door has plagued me for years because I just walked into it,” she said.

Carroll said she felt shame and blame for the attack for walking into the room, and because she had been flirting with Mr Trump leading up to the moment of the alleged attack.

“I know people have been through a lot worse than this,” Carroll testified.

“But it left me unable to ever have a romantic life again.”

She told the court she hasn’t had sex since the alleged incident because she couldn’t bring herself to flirt, since she felt that’s what led to her alleged attack by Mr Trump.

“I think it’s because flirting ended up as the worst decision of my life,” she said.

“I am aware that I have lost out on one of the glorious experiences as a human being – being in love with somebody else,” Carroll said.

Carroll told the court while an ex-husband had physically abused her and a camp counsellor had molested her when she was 12, after both she was still able to carry on with her love life and neither contributed to why she hasn’t dated in the last 25 years.

Asked why she had no love life anymore, Carroll responded: “The short answer is because Donald Trump raped me.”

She explained that she has suffered visions of the alleged rape throughout the years which she has learned to move “aside”.

After pulling over to take a quick nap while driving one night, Carroll said she woke up with a vision of Trump on top of her.

“I thought for a minute I was going to die because I couldn’t breath,” Carroll told the court of the vision.

Carroll began crying as she told jurors about how her public persona is “vibrant” and strong while her private self is “the one that can’t admit out loud that there has been any suffering.”

Carroll’s lawyer Michael Ferrara paused his questioning to offer his client some tissues, which she used to wipe her eyes.

Carroll told friends about the alleged rape – one right after and one the next day.

She said the first friend told her to go to the police, while the other warned Carroll that Mr Trump would bury her legally.

Carroll didn’t go public with her accusations until 2019, when she wrote about the alleged assault in a book, an excerpt of which was published in New York Magazine.

In October 2019, Mr Trump claimed Carroll’s claims were a “hoax”, claimed to not know her, and said she wasn’t his “type”.

Carroll sued Trump in November for the alleged rape and for allegedly defaming her by denying the claims.

Earlier in Carroll’s testimony, she told the jury: “I am 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 get my life back.”

During her testimony, the jury was shown a photo of Mr Trump and Carroll with their respective spouses at the time, Ivana Trump and news anchor John Johnson.

Carroll said she had the photo from a party she attended when she first met Mr Trump around 1987.

Mr Trump has claimed he didn’t know Carroll and that nothing happened between them.

During opening remarks on Tuesday, Mr Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, claimed Carroll “is abusing the system by advancing a false claim of rape for money, for political reasons and for status”.

Before the trial on Wednesday, Mr Trump posted on his platform Truth Social that the case is “a made up SCAM,” prompting Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan to chide Mr Tacopina about his client’s “entirely inappropriate” post.

Mr Tacopina told the judge he’d ask Mr Trump to stop posting about the case.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission