The journalist Elizabeth Jean Carroll has declared this Wednesday before the US Justice that she was raped by the former president of the United States Donald Trump in the fitting rooms of a lingerie store in New York City in the 1990s.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen… He lied and ruined my reputation, and I’m here to try to get my life back,” Carroll testified in a U.S. district court. Manhattan, according to the CNN news network.
The journalist herself has recognized that that spring day in 1996 she felt “delighted” to be able to go shopping with Trump and even she thought that it would be a great story that she could tell. “It was a funny scene from New York”, she has stated before the American Justice.
“I love giving advice, and there was Donald Trump asking me for advice on how to buy a gift,” said Carroll, who acknowledged that the former president, who at that time was known to be one of the great tycoons in the country, was kind. and fun.
However, Trump began to insist that Carroll enter the store’s fitting rooms to try on lingerie, to which the journalist finally agreed without imagining “anything that was about to happen.” “That open door has haunted me for years because I just walked in,” she has acknowledged.
Next, Carroll has recounted how Trump harassed her to the point of penetration without consent inside the fitting rooms. “But I’m proud to say that I went out, raised my knee and pushed him back,” detailed the editor, who has admitted that that episode prevented her “from having a romantic life again.”
This case started in 2019 as a defamation complaint after the former president of the United States denied Carroll’s story and called her a “crazy”, assuring that the journalist “was not her type” and that the accusations were just a publicity stunt. to sell more copies of the book in which he narrated what happened.
However, in November 2022 a new law came into force in the state of New York that enabled the possibility that Carroll could denounce Trump for sexual assault as she was considered a survivor of this type of crime, even if the case had prescribed. .
Trump denied the accusations at all times and even went so far as to denounce being the victim of “political persecution.” Carroll’s case adds to the recent indictment of the former president for hiding a series of bribes paid to Stephanie Clifford, adult film actress, better known as Stormy Daniels.
The former president pleaded not guilty last March to some thirty charges brought by the Justice for having paid Clifford with money from his campaign in order to prevent him from speaking of an alleged infidelity days before the presidential elections that led him to 2016 to the White House.
