Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers

 

The Importance of E. Jean Carroll’s Lawsuit Against Donald Trump

Amid several investigations into purported misconduct connected to his presidency and to his business, Donald Trump faces a different sort of accusation in a civil trial set to begin on Tuesday in Manhattan: that he raped a woman in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, the elegant Fifth Avenue department store, in the mid-1990s.

Mr. Trump has denied the claim. But power and wealth like his have often protected abusers from accountability.

Countless people are victims of sexual assault and harassment. Rarely do they see justice done. That narrative has begun to change, though much too slowly. And that is why the lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll against Mr. Trump is among the most significant developments of the post-#MeToo era.

Ms. Carroll filed her lawsuit under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in May 2022. It allowed those who claimed they were victims of sexual assault a period of one year beginning last November to sue for damages regardless of when the abuse was said to have occurred. In the same suit, Ms. Carroll accuses him of defamation for what the complaint says are a “slew of false, insulting claims.” (Mr. Trump called Ms. Carroll’s rape allegation a “hoax and a lie,” referred to her as a “nut job” and suggested that he could not have raped her because “This woman is not my type!”)

To many women, Mr. Trump has come to represent male sexual entitlement. I heard this repeatedly as I researched my book about why accusers are often doubted. One woman I spoke with, Marissa Ross, who has written about sexual assault and harassment in the wine industry, explained her quite typical reaction to the notorious “Access Hollywood” videotape that surfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign, in which Mr. Trump brags: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” including “grab” women’s genitals. When she heard the tape, Ms. Ross told me, “I didn’t just hear Donald Trump. I heard every man that’s ever hurt me. It was those boys in high school, it was my ex-boyfriend, it was all those men. For me, and I imagine for many other survivors, it was not just hearing Trump. It was everyone that violated me.”

Mr. Trump’s election, which followed a campaign in which several women accused him of sexual misconduct, helped catalyze #MeToo. Ms. Carroll credits that movement with empowering her own decision to step forward. In the civil complaint, she recounts watching the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s accusers, and then many others, tell their stories of harassment and rape. As her complaint put it, she “saw how women had at last changed the public conversation by saying ‘Me Too’ and by demanding accountability.”

Now a jury must resolve what the judge in the case, Lewis A. Kaplan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, described in an earlier ruling as “a ‘he said, she said’ case.” Ms. Carroll’s version of events is likely to be corroborated by two friends to whom she says she promptly turned after the assault. Her depiction of Mr. Trump may also be bolstered by the “Access Hollywood” tape, which the judge has allowed as evidence along with the testimony of two women who have accused Mr. Trump of nonconsensual sex acts, allegations that Mr. Trump has denied.

The testimony of a rape accuser alone seldom persuades a jury, so this bolstering can be helpful, if not essential, in surmounting what I call the credibility discount. Like most accusers, Ms. Carroll will need to overcome formidable barriers to belief. Even in a civil case like this, where the evidentiary standard of proof is much lower than in a criminal prosecution, accusers confront an uphill battle.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers will deploy strategies that are at this point familiar — because they are often effective despite capitalizing on myths about abuse. Since Mr. Trump is anticipated not to testify at trial, his case is likely to hinge on attacking Ms. Carroll’s own account. The defense may insist that she welcomed the bantering exchange that led the two to the dressing room, and Ms. Carroll’s recollection in her complaint that she “kept laughing” after the incident may be used to support this consensual version of events.

As an alternative, the defense might argue that the entire encounter was invented, noting that Ms. Carroll opted not to report the alleged rape to the police at the time or to seek medical attention. All this can be used against her as evidence she’s lying.

As to why she would supposedly lie, Mr. Trump’s legal team may harness his own explanations. In his 2022 deposition, he suggested that Ms. Carroll is a political pawn, an attention-seeker, a woman out to profit from her allegation. These are standard portrayals of rape accusers. The trial will test their ongoing power.

The outcome takes on heightened significance because Mr. Trump has embraced the role of avenger on behalf of men accused of sexual misconduct. In 2016, responding to the allegations of sexual misconduct against him, Mr. Trump asserted that “every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign” and added, “If they can fight somebody like me, who has unlimited resources to fight back, just look at what they can do to you.”

In her complaint, Ms. Carroll says she kept quiet about what happened for decades in no small part because she feared that Mr. Trump would “bury her in threats and lawsuits.” She also says that she was convinced no one would believe her, that she blamed herself for what happened, and that she thought strong women minimize their suffering and move forward. What Ms. Carroll relates are normal ways that victims cope with the aftermath of abuse. After many years of conversations with survivors, I view her account as unexceptional.

What is unusual is that Ms. Carroll became willing to level a public accusation and to pursue legal accountability. Most women lack the platform, the privilege and the resources to do what she has done. While it might be tempting to dismiss the importance of one lawsuit, this would ignore the long, continuing arc of #MeToo.

 

Ms. Tuerkheimer is a professor of law at Northwestern University and the author of “Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/opinion/trump-metoo-sexual-assault-lawsuit.html