Last week, writer and ELLE USA’s advice columnist E. Jean Carroll accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in New York 23 years ago.
In Carroll’s in-depth piece for New York Magazine – an excerpt from her book What Do We Need Men For? – she says she told two of her close friends what had happened, both of whom anonymously confirmed her story to the publication.
Now, the two women have come forward, revealing their exact conversations with Carroll in the days following the alleged sexual assault. Speaking to the New York Times, via its podcast The Daily,writer Lisa Birnbach says that Carroll called her immediately after running out of the department store and that at first, she was laughing about the encounter she had just had.
“I remember her being very overwrought,” Birnbach told the NY Times. “I remember her repeatedly saying, ‘He pulled down my tights, he pulled down my tights.’” When Carroll finished her account, Birnbach said, “‘I think he raped you.’”
Despite Birnbach wanting Carroll to go to the police, she refused and a few days later retold her story to Carol Martin, a TV host at the network she was working for. Martin advised her to stay silent. “These traumas stay with you,” Martin said. “I didn’t know what to do except listen.”
The two women said they were coming forwards to bolster Carroll, after seeing the backlash – including death threats – she had recieved online from Trump supporters. “I saw some horrible things that people were posting on social media,” Birnbach said. “I believe E. Jean in this episode that she recounted to me in 1996. Yes. Without hesitation. She’s not a fabulist.” She added, “She doesn’t make things up.”
In the initial NY Magazine piece, Carroll alleges Trump lunged at her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room and proceeded to push her against the wall.
“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,” she writes.
“I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.”
She continues, “The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.”
Carroll says she hasn’t had sex since the incident, 23 years ago.
Trump, who has denied the allegations, saying, among other things that Carroll is “not his type has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 women.
Read Carroll’s full account here.
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