Trump accuser says many in her technology didn’t report rape

NEW YORK — {A magazine} columnist who says Donald Trump raped her in a division retailer’s dressing room 20 years earlier than he grew to become president acknowledged Monday that she by no means adopted her personal recommendation to readers that they report sexual assaults to police.

E. Jean Carroll advised a federal civil court docket jury that the rationale was generational.

The 79-year-old mentioned that as “a member of the silent generation,” she was conditioned to maintain her chin up and to not complain.

“The fact that I never went to the police is not surprising for somebody my age,” she testified as Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina cross-examined Carroll about why she by no means went to authorities in regards to the alleged rape, which Trump denies. Carroll mentioned she had known as police solely as soon as in her life, when she feared the mailbox at a house the place she was staying was going to be broken on Halloween.

“You would call police if a mailbox was attacked,” Tacopina requested, “but not if you yourself were attacked?”

Carroll replied that on the time, she was ashamed of what she alleges occurred.

Research has repeatedly discovered that rapes and sexual assaults are among the many forms of violent crime least prone to be reported to police. An annual U.S. crime victimization survey discovered that lower than 23% of rapes and sexual assaults have been reported in 2021 and 2020, in response to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Carroll was testifying for a 3rd day within the trial stemming from her lawsuit in opposition to Trump. She has mentioned the then-real property magnate raped her within the spring of 1996 at a luxurious midtown Manhattan division retailer after they went right into a dressing room collectively in an encounter that she mentioned was enjoyable and flirtatious till Trump grew to become violent. She mentioned she finally kneed him and fled.

Trump, 76, says he was by no means on the retailer with Carroll or that he even knew her past a fleeting second when a 1987 image was taken of them in a gaggle setting. He has not attended the trial, which is predicted to final via the week. On Monday, Trump wasn’t even within the nation: He traveled to Scotland to open a brand new golf course at his resort close to Aberdeen.

In a separate, legal case, Trump pleaded not responsible final month in Manhattan to 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise data. No journey restrictions have been positioned on him as a situation of his launch, supplied that he exhibits up in court docket for required appearances in that case.

And shortly earlier than Carroll first took the stand final week, Trump known as the rape accusation “a fraudulent & false story” on his social media platform.

Carroll’s renewed testimony got here shortly after Tacopina requested Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who’s overseeing the civil proceedings, to declare a mistrial due to rulings he made that Tacopina mentioned favored Carroll. The choose rejected the request.

Carroll filed go well with in opposition to Trump in November, below a New York state regulation that briefly permits sexual assault victims to sue over alleged assaults that occurred even a long time in the past.

Amid a flurry of public denials and insults from Trump that prompted Carroll so as to add a defamation declare to the lawsuit, Trump has insisted that Carroll was motivated by political causes and a need to promote copies of the 2019 memoir through which she first publicly revealed her rape claims whereas Trump was nonetheless president.

Carroll has testified that she would have stored her accusation secret perpetually if not for the #MeToo motion, which gained prominence in 2017.

Carroll wrote an recommendation column for Elle journal for practically three a long time, and Tacopina confronted her Monday with situations through which she suggested contacting regulation enforcement authorities after individuals wrote in about sexual assaults and threats from companions and exes.

“I always — in most cases — advised my readers to go to the police,” Carroll acknowledged.

Tacopina additionally identified that though Carroll’s memoir described sexual assaults by a number of males over the course of her life, Trump was the one one she sued. And, though Trump has insisted he had no sexual encounter — certainly, “no anything” — with Carroll, his legal professional requested her whether or not what allegedly occurred may “somehow be viewed as consensual.”

“It was not consensual. Not consensual,” she mentioned emphatically.

In his mistrial request Monday, Tacopina complained that Kaplan shut down his questioning when he pushed Carroll final week to elucidate why she didn’t scream, inform police or try afterward to retrieve footage from video cameras on the retailer’s doorways to show that she and Trump have been there collectively.