E. Jean Carroll: “He denies. He turns it around. He threatens and he attacks.”

Accused of rape by prominent New York writer E. Jean Carroll, Donald Trump denies the assault because “she’s not my type”.

Carroll, a columnist for Elle magazine, has written in her forthcoming memoir that Trump raped her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1995 or 1996. An excerpt in New York magazine last Friday summarized:

The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.

I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I keep laughing. The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me. It turns into a colossal struggle. I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot. I try to push him off with my one free hand — for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other — and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.

Carroll told two friends — both of whom confirmed the account to New York magazine — at the time of the assault. One responded, “He raped you. Go to the police! I’ll go with you. We’ll go together,” but the other warned, “Tell no one. Forget it! He has 200 lawyers. He’ll bury you.”

Asked why she didn’t come forward before now, Carroll replied:

Receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed, being dragged through the mud, and joining the 15 women who’ve come forward with credible stories about how the man grabbed, badgered, belittled, mauled, molested, and assaulted them, only to see the man turn it around, deny, threaten, and attack them, never sounded like much fun. Also, I am a coward.

“He Just Went At It”

Trump initially lied that he did not know Carroll, saying her book “should be sold in the fiction section”.

The claim was disproved immediately by a photo of Trump and his then-wife Ivana with the writer and her then-husband John Johnson at a party in 1987.

On Monday, Trump told The Hill, “I’ll say it with great respect. No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, O.K.?”

He maintained his denial of any previous contact with Carroll:

I know nothing about this woman. I know nothing about her. She is — it’s just a terrible thing that people can make statements like that.

But Carroll repeated on CNN, “[He] just went at it….He pulled down my tights, and it was a fight.”

She noted Trump’s pattern of denial of sexual assault claims by 15 other women: “He denies, he turns it around, he threatens, and he attacks.”