Trump rape accuser E. Jean Carroll testifies that she didn't report alleged rape to her boss Roger Ailes because she thought he would've fired her
950Rebecca Cohen,Ashley Collman
Wed, April 26, 2023 at 1:06 PM PDT·3 min read
- E. Jean Carroll didn't report the alleged Donald Trump rape because she was afraid her boss at the time would have fired her.
- She was the host of a show on America's Talking which was then led by Roger Ailes, who was friends with Trump.
- She added that at the time, she felt like the assault was her fault and was worried about looking like "soiled goods."
Carroll sued Trump last year in Manhattan civil court: the complaints include a count of battery and a count of defamation after he repeatedly and publicly denied her claims in a 2019 essay for New York Magazine that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. She first sued him in 2019 for defamation but that case is on hold.
In denying Carroll's story, Trump has said she wasn't his "type" and that she made up the story to sell more copies of her memoir. In an October 2022 post on Truth Social, he called it a "complete con job" and a "hoax and a lie."
"I would have never reported something like this," Carroll admitted in a downtown Manhattan courthouse Wednesday.
"Roger Ailes would have fired me, he was friends with Donald Trump. I would have lost my job at Elle. He would retaliate," she said.
At the time of the assault, Carroll was the host of a TV show called "Ask E. Jean," named after her famous column for Elle magazine, on America's Talking, a channel that would later become MSNBC and at the time was led by Ailes. Carroll said that Ailes came up with the idea for her show.
"I was ashamed, I thought it was my fault. I knew how others would react," Carroll said Tuesday of her decision not to report the alleged rape incident.
"Women who are raped are looked at as soiled goods," she said. She added that she was worried she was to blame for the incident.
Years later in 2016, Ailes would resign from his role as CEO of Fox News after at least 20 women who worked with him at the network accused him of sexual harassment.
Carroll first accused Trump of raping her in a 2019 essay for New York magazine. In court Wednesday, she said the encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman started out "lighthearted" and that Trump had asked her to help pick out a gift for a female friend. She admitted she "was flirting the whole time probably."
But the meeting quickly turned aggressive, Carroll alleged in the 2019 essay. Carroll said Trump assaulted her in a dressing room after asking her to try on a lacy bodysuit in the lingerie section.
"That open door [to the fitting room] has plagued me for years because I just walked into it," Carroll said Wednesday. "I didn't want to make a scene. I know that sounds strange. I didn't want him angry at me."
She continued: "I always think back to why I walked in there to get in that situation. I'm proud to say I did get out. I got a knee up and pushed him back."
"It was a horrible feeling because he curved his finger," Carroll recalled on the stand Wednesday. "As I'm sitting here today, I can still feel it."
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