NEW YORK (AP) - A medical psychologist testified Wednesday that the author accusing former President Donald Trump of rape reveals widespread indicators of trauma and has been in a position to transfer on along with her life partly by blaming herself and leaning into her exuberant public persona.

E. Jean Carroll has prevented intimate relationships, typically shutting down throughout dates, and sometimes finds herself warding off “intrusive memories” of what she says Trump did to her in a dressing room at a luxurious Manhattan division retailer, psychologist Leslie Lebowitz stated.

Hired by Carroll’s attorneys, Lebowitz testified for a second day in Manhattan federal courtroom at a civil trial arising from the lawsuit Carroll filed in November. She relayed a long time of medical experience and her observations of Carroll throughout interviews in preparation for trial.

Carroll testified final week that Lebowitz is the one psychological well being skilled she’s spoken with for the reason that alleged sexual assault.

“For many years, she just simply blamed herself for the assault, thought she just did something stupid and that’s why it happened,” Lebowitz stated.

Carroll is searching for unspecified damages. Trump has not attended the trial and won't testify, his lawyer stated. The Republican has denied each declare Carroll has made, together with that they ever met on the division retailer, Bergdorf Goodman, throughout from Trump Tower.

For 17 years, Carroll didn't communicate publicly in regards to the occasion. But in a 2019 memoir, she described how a typically flirtatious probability encounter with Trump on the retailer in spring 1996 ended with violence when Trump cornered her in a dressing room after they challenged one another to attempt on a bit of lingerie.

Carroll is an “extremely resilient person” Lebowitz stated, explaining that her persona as a preferred Elle journal recommendation columnist and her Midwest upbringing mixed to steer her to attempt to maintain her expertise with Trump secret.

“It made her feel she was worthless. She felt degraded, diminished,” Lebowitz stated. “Ms. Carroll, like most of us in many ways, doesn’t want to be a victim, doesn’t want to be pitied. But more than most people, she is fiercely identified as … the person who can march on … and put it behind you.”

Still, the psychologist stated, there have been instances when she was almost overcome along with her recollections, like when she first noticed a trailer for Trump’s TV present, “The Apprentice.”

“She became so flooded with memories, feelings, a sense of panic, that she actually lost her capacity to speak,” Lebowitz stated.

Lebowitz stated Carroll typically “experiences intrusive physical remembrances” during which recollections of the assault come “spooling like a video before her.”

At one level, Lebowitz stated, she was talking with Carroll and observed that “she began to squirm in her seat because she was experiencing Mr. Trump’s fingers inside of her or what she alleges to be Mr. Trump’s fingers inside of her.”

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