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WOMEN’S RIGHTS
In Court, Legislature Women Joined to Fight the Patriarchy
Inspiration in anti-Trump verdict, battle against S.C. abortion ban
Two groups of women — one focused on sexual assault, the other on abortion rights — recently offered inspirational examples of empowerment and support.
One group was instrumental in the May 9 victory in writer E. Jean Carroll’s battery and defamation civil suit against former president Donald Trump. Carroll, 79, said Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in 1996 and defamed her after she wrote about it a 2019 memoir. The unanimous jury of six men and three women ruled she was sexually assaulted and defamed. It awarded her $5 million in damages.
Trump, who gave a taped deposition in the trial, called Carroll a “nut job” engaged in a “political scam.” But two other women risked their own reputations to testify — sometimes in tears — to having similar experiences with him. Some of Carroll’s friends, even those who warned her to keep quiet, testified she told them about the assault immediately after it happened.
Carroll held up against aggressive questioning based on stereotypes about sexual-assault victims. When the Trump attorney demanded to know why she did not scream, she responded: “I’m not a…
