Books

Author details how 'Hideous Man' Donald Trump allegedly raped her

In her new book, E Jean Carroll reveals why she never laid charges against the US president after he alledgedly assaulted her, and how after that incident she never had sex again, writes Andrew Donaldson

21 July 2019 - 00:12 By Andrew Donaldson
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Author E Jean Carroll says she kept quiet about being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump because she feared death threats and being dissmissed.
Author E Jean Carroll says she kept quiet about being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump because she feared death threats and being dissmissed.
Image: Keith Tamkei

When Donald Trump was approached for comment on allegations that he had sexually assaulted the author and magazine agony aunt E Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s, the US president responded with his customary disregard for facts.

"I've never met this person in my life," he said. "She is trying to sell a new book - that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section."

That new book is Carroll's What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal (St Martin's Press), out next month.

Unfortunately for the president, New York magazine, which published an extract recently, did so with a photograph of Trump and then-wife Ivana in conversation with Carroll and her then-husband, TV news anchor John Johnson, at an NBC party in about 1987.

According to Carroll, the incident took place in 1995 or 1996 in a dressing room at fashionable Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman. It began, she writes, as a friendly encounter: Trump, who she'd met once before, recognised her from television (she had her own cable show, Ask E Jean) and asked her to try on some lingerie that he was considering buying as a gift.

Once they entered the dressing room, Trump pushed her up against a wall, pushed his mouth against her lips, then pulled down her tights, unzipped his trousers and forced his fingers "around my private area, thrust his penis halfway - or completely, I'm not certain - inside me".

Carroll, now 76, writes that she struggled and fought back before fleeing. The whole episode lasted less than three minutes. She did not report the incident to the police, but did tell two close friends, both journalists. One, a magazine writer, begged her to go to the police, and offered to accompany her; the other, a TV anchor, warned her against it, saying Trump's lawyers would "bury" her. Carroll says she kept quiet because she feared death threats and "being dragged through the mud, being dismissed".

E Jean Carroll.
E Jean Carroll.
Image: Getty Images

I must admit to being a fan of Carroll's writing. Over the years, I've admired her journalism, which has appeared in Esquire, Rolling Stone and GQ, among other titles, and her audacious 1993 biography, Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S Thompson, is one of the better behind-the-scenes accounts of the legendary Gonzo journalist.

Much of her meat-and-potatoes stuff, however, stems from her career as an advice columnist at Elle magazine. Her work there produced books such as 2005's Mr Right, Right Now! Man Catching Made Easy and 1996's A Dog in Heat is a Hot Dog, and Other Rules to Live By. One of the latter's "rules", or chapters, is intriguingly titled "Never Sleep With a Man Until You've Flogged His Trembling Carcass into a State of Frenzy", which illustrates the tone of irreverent humour in her work.

The point is that Carroll is both smart and hilarious, and the advance notices for What Do We Need Men For? have been very positive, with one reviewer calling it the "most bitterly funny, fantastically furious book to explode out of the #MeToo movement".

It basically details, graphically and caustically, Carroll's encounters with the 21 most revolting and hideous men in her life, a list she started working on in October 2017 when the New York Times first reported on the allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

"When I began," she writes, "I was not sure which among all the foul harassers, molesters, traducers, swindlers, stranglers, and no-goods I've known were going to make the final accounting. I considered Matt Lauer, Bill O'Reilly, and the giant dingleberry Charlie Rose, all guys whose TV shows I was on many times and who made headlines during the rise of #MeToo. But in the end, they do not make my Hideous List."

Hunter S Thompson was a candidate, she says. "Does Hunter, the greatest degenerate of his generation, who kept yelling, 'Off with your pants!' as he sliced the leggings from my body with a long knife in his hot tub, make the list? Naw. And if having my pants hacked off by a man lit to the eyebrows with acid, Chivas Regal, Champagne, grass, Chartreuse, Dunhills, cocaine and Dove Bars does not make the list - because to me there is a big difference between an 'adventure' and an 'attack' - who, in God's name, does make my Hideous List?"

As it is, there was a "Hideous Man" for practically every stage of Carroll's life - and Trump was No 20 on the list.

"Before I discuss him," she writes, "I must mention that there are two great handicaps to telling you what happened to me in Bergdorf's: (a) The man I will be talking about denies it, as he has denied accusations of sexual misconduct made by at least 15 credible women, namely, Jessica Leeds, Kristin Anderson, Jill Harth, Cathy Heller, Temple Taggart McDowell, Karena Virginia, Melinda McGillivray, Rachel Crooks, Natasha Stoynoff, Jessica Drake, Ninni Laaksonen, Summer Zervos, Juliet Huddy, Alva Johnson, and Cassandra Searles. (Here's what the White House said: 'This is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the President look bad.') And (b) I run the risk of making him more popular by revealing what he did.

"His admirers can't get enough of hearing that he's rich enough, lusty enough, and powerful enough to be sued by and to pay off every splashy porn star or Playboy Playmate who 'comes forward', so I can't imagine how ecstatic the poor saps will be to hear their favourite Walking Phallus got it on with an old lady in the world's most prestigious department store."

Trump was Carroll's last "Hideous Man". After him, she says, she never had sex with anybody ever again. She was 52.


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