Author, E. Jean Carroll on Thursday, April 27, spoke about her alleged rape experience with Donald Trump in her civil battery and defamation lawsuit against the former US President.
The columnist told the jury about her experience with him in a New York department store in 1996 in the face of cross-examination from Trump’s attorney.
Trump’s defense team put focus on why Carroll did not publicly report the alleged rape at the time or get the attention of others in the store where she claims the rape happened.
Trump’s Attorney Joe Tacopina repeatedly asked questions about why Carroll did not scream during the approximately 3-minute alleged attack in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, or even afterward.
“I’m not a screamer,” Carroll testified at the US District Court in Manhattan. “I was too much in panic to scream.”
“You can’t beat up on me for not screaming,” she told the defense lawyer. “Women who don’t come forward, one of the reasons they don’t come forward is they are asked why they didn’t scream. Some women scream, some women don’t. It keeps women silent.”
Carroll added: “I’m telling you, he raped me whether I screamed or not. I don’t need an excuse for not screaming.”
Carroll is suing Trump for battery and defamation, alleging that he raped her in the spring of 1996 and then defamed her years later when she went public with the allegations. Trump has repeatedly denied her allegations saying she ‘is not his type’.
Just as she said in the previous trial on Wednesday, Carroll described wrestling with Trump in the dressing room.
“I was very confused, the first push, I thought ‘he couldn’t have meant that.’ I thought he had made a mistake. I thought it was very strange,” Carroll said.
“I was trying to figure out what the hell was going … we had jut been laughing 12, 15 seconds before and here I am being pushed up against the wall. It just didn’t make any sense,” she added. “Then he put his mouth against mine and then I understood.”
Carroll said Trump was holding her against the wall with the weight of her shoulder and she eventually pushed him back with a knee.
“For me it was a colossal struggle,” she said, yet she never let go of her purse and was wearing 4-inch heels, she acknowledged to Tacopina. “I can dance backwards and forwards in 4-inch heels.”
After leaving the dressing room, Carroll testified that she didn’t say anything to Trump and was fearful he would follow her and grab her. She went down the six floors of escalators and left, and did not see a customer.
“I wasn’t looking for people. I was looking to get out,” she testified.
Earlier Thursday, Carroll’s attorney asked her why she was suing the former president, and what had happened to her since she filed the suit.
“I think rape is one of the most violent and horrible things that can happen to a woman or a man,” Carroll said.
“I don’t particularly like attention because – I’m suing. Getting attention for being raped is not – It’s hard. Getting attention for making a great three-bean salad, that would be good,” she said.
Asked by her attorney Mike Ferrara if she ever regrets bringing the suit, she replied: “About 5 times a day,” adding, “It doesn’t feel pleasant to be under threat.”
Trump called her first lawsuit a “con job” Carroll acknowledged as Ferrara put the words of Trump’s statement on a screen for the jury to see.
She was just getting back on her feet when the statement came out and “boom, he knocks me back down again,” she testified.
Trump’s lawyer Tacopina, challenged her about the believability of her account.
“Using your own words, the facts you have alleged in the story, you have alleged here, are odd,” he asked.
“Certain parts of this story are difficult to conceive of, yes,” Carroll said.
In one line of questioning, Tacopina reportedly asked Carroll about an email showing she and her friends came together to make a plan against Trump.
“As soon as we are both well enough to scheme, we must do our patriotic duty again,” Carroll’s friend Carol Martin emailed her on September 23, 2017, one piece of evidence showed.
“TOTALLY!!!” Carroll responded in an email. “I have something special for you when we meet.”
Carroll testified she didn’t know what she meant in the more than five-year-old email by the words “something special.”
“This is an email … that I have no recollection of. I suspect it’s something funny. I can’t imagine what it is. I have no idea,” she said. “I don’t recall anything about this email.”