ZCZC
BFF-28
US-POLITICS-CELEBRITY-ASSAULT-TRUMP
US writer says Trump sexually assaulted her in mid-1990s
WASHINGTON, June 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – An advice columnist for Elle fashion
magazine said Friday that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in the dressing
room of a New York department store more than two decades ago, an accusation
swiftly denied by the US president.
According to E. Jean Carroll, the rape occurred in either 1995 or 1996,
when Trump was a prominent real estate developer and she was a well-known
magazine writer and host of a television show.
The account, revealed in an excerpt of Carroll’s latest book and published
Friday by New York magazine, makes her at least the 16th woman to have
accused Trump of sexual misconduct before he became president.
Trump reacted with a statement saying he’d never met Carroll, and that the
incident “never happened.”
Carroll, 75, says she ran into Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department
store in Manhattan while they were both shopping.
She says that in an initially friendly encounter, Trump asked her for
advice on buying a piece of lingerie for an unnamed woman. Then jokingly,
they each suggested that the other should try it on.
“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,” Carroll wrote.
Pinning her against the wall, Carroll says, Trump proceeded to pull down
her tights, unzip his pants and penetrate her — all while himself fully
dressed — until she finally managed to push him out and run from the
dressing room.
Carroll never went to the police because, she said, she was afraid of
repercussions.
Carroll wrote that she did not come forward sooner because she was afraid
of “receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed,
being dragged through the mud.”
“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,” she wrote. Trump shot back that Carroll was an
attention seeker.
“I’ve never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book –
-that should indicate her motivation,” he said in a statement. “It should be
sold in the fiction section.”
He also said that New York magazine is a “dying publication” and had tried
to “prop itself up by peddling fake news.”
The magazine quoted a senior White House official saying that the
accusation “was created simply to make the president look bad,” while Trump
asked if Carroll had links to his opponents in the Democratic party.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1451 hrs