How a chance department store encounter led to Donald Trump’s ultimate disgrace

Decades after she was allegedly raped by a New York real estate mogul who would go on to be the 45th President of the United States, E Jean Carroll has had her day in court.

Ms Carroll, a writer and former advice columnist for Elle magazine, was the plaintiff in a pair of civil lawsuits against former president Donald Trump.

One of those lawsuits was presented in a New York City federal courtroom under the supervision of US District Judge Lewis Kaplan. The proceedings began on 25 April, with closing arguments beginning on 8 May. On 9 May, the jury in the civil case returned a verdict that Mr Trump was liable for sexually abusing Ms Carroll, but not raping her, and awarded the writer a total of $5m in damages, which includes a defamation claim.

The jurors in the trial remained anonymous on Judge Kaplan’s orders due to the risk of threats, intimidation or outright violence against anyone seen as an enemy by Mr Trump and his supporters.

Ms Carroll claimed during her testimony that Mr Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.

The magazine columnist spoke out about the allegations for the first time in 2019 when Mr Trump was president.

After he denied the allegations and accused her of lying in a bid to bolster sales of her forthcoming book, she filed a defamation lawsuit against him in November 2019. That suit stalled in the courts for years and is yet to make it to trial.

Then, last year, New York lawmakers passed the state’s Adult Survivors Act, giving sexual abuse victims a one-year window to sue attackers for assaults that took place years ago.

That law paved the way for Ms Carroll to file a second lawsuit against the former president in November accusing him of both raping her and then defaming her years later by denying the assault took place.

That second lawsuit – seeking damages and a retraction of his denial – has now played out in a New York court.