Longtime advice columnist E. Jean Carroll is featured in New York Magazine ahead of a new book release, which details six different times she was assaulted by men over her life. One of those accounts centers on the current occupant of the White House.
Warning: Her description of the event is graphic and details both sexual assault and violence.
When Carroll meets Donald Trump in Bergdorf Goodman, the encounter starts as a friendly one. Trump recognizes her as “that advice lady”; Carroll recognizes him as “that real-estate tycoon.” Trump tells Carroll that he’s there to buy a gift for “a girl,” and though we don’t learn the identity of this mystery woman, Carroll places the ensuing incident in late 1995 or early 1996, during which time Trump was married to Marla Maples. When Trump asks Carroll to advise him on what to buy, she agrees, and the two eventually make their way to the lingerie section. Trump suggests a lace bodysuit and encourages Carroll to try it on; she, deflecting, jokingly suggests that he try it on instead. After they reach the dressing rooms, events turn violent. In Carroll’s account, Trump shoves her against a wall inside a dressing room, pulls down her tights, and, “forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.”
You may recall that Donald Trump himself basically described treating women like this when he was recorded boasting to Billy Bush in the Access Hollywood. He literally describes an attack like this in that tape.
Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
Bush: Whatever you want.
Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.
Carroll said she told two fellow journalists about the attack at the time she says it happened.
Carroll says that she disclosed the Trump incident to two friends at the time. One, whom Carroll describes as “a journalist, magazine writer, correspondent on the TV morning shows, author of many books, etc.,” told her to go to the police: “‘He raped you,’ she kept repeating when I called her. ‘He raped you. Go to the police! I’ll go with you. We’ll go together.’” The other, who is also a journalist, was sympathetically cautious: “‘Tell no one. Forget it! He has 200 lawyers. He’ll bury you.’”
When someone shows you who they are, believe them. How many other women are out there with similar stories who are afraid to come forward because of the lawyers and the spotlight? This is how powerful men get away with criminal behavior. Indeed, Carroll says that is why she didn’t come forward before now.
“Receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed, being dragged through the mud,” she writes, “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.”
For what it’s worth, Carroll also describes a sexual assault at the hands of former CBS chief Les Moonves.