Former US President Donald Trump did not rape columnist E. Jean Carroll but did sexually abuse her, jurors have found.
Trump was accused of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in a department store and then defaming her by stating she made up the story, the Mirror reports.
On Tuesday, May 9 the verdict was announced in a federal courtroom in New York City following a three-hour deliberation by a nine-person jury deciding the civil claims of battery and defamation in Carroll's case.
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As a result of the decision by the jurors, Carroll, 79, will be awarded a total of $5 million in damages, $2.7 million of which are compensatory and $280,000 of which are punitive after Trump was found to have defamed Carroll in October 2022 after he posted on Truth Social and called her allegations a "con job."
Furthermore, the jury awarded $20,000 in punitive damages against Trump over a claim of battery made by Carroll.
However, Trump, who did not attend the trial, has insisted he never sexually assaulted Carroll or even knew her, calling the verdict a "disgrace" on his Truth Social social media platform.
He wrote: “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace - a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!”
Carroll had sought unspecified damages and a retraction of what she said was Trump's defamatory denials of her claims, giving multiple days of frank, occasionally emotional evidence, along with two friends who told jurors she reported the alleged attack to them in the moments and day afterwards.
Judge Lewis Kaplan told jurors that the first question on the verdict form was to decide whether they think there is more than a 50 per cent chance that Trump raped Carroll inside a store dressing room.
If they answered yes, they would then decide whether compensatory and punitive damages should be awarded.
If they answered no on the rape question, they could then decide if Trump subjected her to lesser forms of assault involving sexual contact without her consent or forcible touching to degrade her or gratify his sexual desire.
If they answered yes to either of those questions, they will decide if the damages are appropriate.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, cited excerpts from Trump’s October deposition and his notorious comments on a 2005 Access Hollywood video in which he said celebrities can grab women between the legs without asking.
She urged jurors to believe her client.
“He didn’t even bother to show up here in person,” Kaplan said, adding that much of what he said in his deposition and in public statements “actually supports our side of the case.”
“In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself,” she said, adding: “He knows what he did. He knows that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll.”
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