E Jean Carroll says Trump ‘ground her face in mud’ as she explains why she didn’t report rape to police

E Jean Carroll accused Donald Trump of “grinding her face into the mud” as she explained why she didn’t file a police report after the former president allegedly raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.

Ms Carroll returned to the witness stand for a third day in her civil battery and defamation trial against Mr Trump on Monday to face continued cross-examination from his lawyers.

The former Elle magazine advice columnist is suing Mr Trump over her claim that he sexually assaulted her in a changing room of the Bergdorf Goodman store in New York City in 1995 or 1996. Ms Carroll filed her first suit, accusing Mr Trump of defamation, in 2019 after he aggressively rejected the allegations. She filed a second suit for battery last year, which is the one at the centre of the current trial.

Mr Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly grilled Ms Carroll on the fact that she did not report the alleged assault to police.

Testifying on Monday, she explained: “I was born in 1943, I am a woman of the silent generation. Women like me were taught and trained to keep our chins up and never complain. The fact that I never went to the police is not surprising. I would never call the police about something I was ashamed of. I thought it was my fault.”

Ms Carroll said that the only time she’s called police was when she was staying “staying in a farmhouse and kids hit Helen Hayes’ mailbox. I called the police because I thought they were marring it.”

Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina responded: “So you would call the police about a mailbox, but not about being raped?”

“I would not call about something I was ashamed of,” Ms Carroll said.

“But in your column, you advised readers to call the police?” Mr Tacopina said, to which Ms Carroll agreed.

Mr Tacopina asked Ms Carroll if she accused former CBS boss Les Moonves of “going after you like an octopus while having an erection?” in her book.

“I wrote octopus, not erection,” Ms Carroll said, according to Inner City Press.

“You wrote that he was ‘pricking’,” Mr Tacopina pressed, to which Ms Carroll said she did.

When asked if Mr Moonves denied the allegation, Ms Carroll said he did so to New York magazine.

“He said it never happened,” she said.

“He simply denied it, he didn’t call me names and didn’t say I was an operative of the Democratic Party. He didn’t call me names, he didn’t grind my face into the mud like Donald Trump did,” she added.

Ms Carroll told Mr Tacopina that if he had asked her this very morning how she was doing, she would have said, “fabulous”. She noted that that self-image was critical to her job as an advice columnist.

“I see myself as solving other people’s problems” and not having her own issues, Ms Carroll said.

Mr Tacopina also appeared to insinuate that Ms Carroll’s tears were fake during her previous testimony because she didn’t cry during her deposition or during media appearances.