He pushed her away from him.
She hit his leg.
She hit him with her handbag.
He made her kneel down.
They fought so hard that E. Jean Carroll, the woman who accused former President Donald Trump for nearly 30 years rape her In the mid-1990s, it preferred to call it a “fight” rather than a “rape”—because she fought back.
what did ms carroll do No That day in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman’s lingerie department, where she says Trump pinned her against a wall, pulled down her tights and shoved his fingers and then inserted his penis into her vagina, she screamed.
“I’m not a screamer,” she testified in civil court last week, when a lawyer for Mr Trump asked why she wasn’t crying. “I was too terrified to scream. I was fighting.
Ms. Carroll was on the stand in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, where a jury will determine Is Mr. Trump Responsible for causing bodily harm to Ms. Carroll (under the New York State Definition of “battery”) – and slandered him as a liar when he talked about it. Mr Trump, who has denied Ms Carroll’s allegations and said he has never met her, has so far declined to attend the trial, although he has chosen to weigh in (for the judge’s admonition). on social mediaIncluding the absence of screams.
Ms Carroll told Mr Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, when pressured into her silence, “You can’t kill me because I wasn’t screaming.” One of the reasons women don’t come forward, she added, is “because they’re always asked, ‘Why didn’t you scream?'”
Ms. Carroll, who had not been sober up to this point, became emotional. “I’m telling you,” she raised her voice, “he raped me whether I screamed or not!”
It’s 2023, more than five years after #MeToo, and nearly five decades after “acquaintance rape” was coined to describe how rape occurs not only with strangers in dark alleys, but with people close to them. Happens with people you know. These days, our understanding of the concept has evolved enough — at least in some circles — that it’s only moments between the timing of Ms. Carroll’s cross-examination details online and the appearance of a hashtag in her defense. Engaged: #Ididentscream, with assault victims sharing their stories of silence,
And yet in the court of law, where Mr. Tacopina spread his calves and clenched his knuckles, began his cross-examination of Ms. Carroll, as if preparing for a boxing match, none of that mattered. We are still cross-examining rape victims like it is 1993.
Not that we should have particularly high hopes. This is a lawyer representing a man who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, and whose legal partner once compared a rape victim’s vagina to for venus flytrap,
and still.
Among other things Mr. Tacopina asked Ms. Carroll during his questioning, which is expected to continue in court on Monday:
Did he call the police? (No.)
who did he tell? (her friend Lisa,
Why not his family? (She never told her family, she said.)
Why not be more close friends than Lisa? (Lisa was Absolutely The person she had to talk to at the moment, Ms. Carroll said.)
And then: did he shower when he got home? Had he allegedly taken medicine for a head injury? Did she go to the doctor? a psychiatrist? How about a psychologist? Did he photograph his alleged injuries?
And, wait – why didn’t he call the police again? And wasn’t that kind of… Mr. Tacopina paused for emphasis: Strange?
(A few minutes later, the judge presiding over the case, Lewis A. Kaplan, will warn Mr. Tacopina to keep it going. “We’ve gone up and down the mountain on the question of whether she went to the police,” he said.)
Case brought against Mr. Trump under a new New York law which allows victims of sexual assault to sue those they say assaulted them even after the statute of limitations has expired, to be clear, is not criminal. Mr Trump does not face jail. Ms Carroll is seeking monetary damages and for Trump to retract the statements she feels were defamatory. But, as she told the court: “It’s not about the money. It’s about getting my name back.”
And yet, the trial is a litmus test for how much we’ve learned in the years since Harvey Weinstein. previously accused of sexual abuse — which Ms. Carroll says is what inspired her to come forward after all that time. this is one more than a dozen Allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr Trump are all but the first to be considered in a courtroom. Will it matter? Hashtags (and, ahem, columns) are a dime a dozen, but does a jury of real people — six men and three women, to be exact — understand the context of why these questions are so nonsensical?
This is not to say that those making rape allegations should not answer questions. But we don’t ask victims of other violent crimes whether they screamed – on the contrary, No Yelling is considered a way of not provoking further. Then again, are these tropes so ripe when it comes to victims of sexual violence?
The question of whether to scream — or not — in the face of sexual assault is one that can be traced back at least as far as the first rape trial in U.S. history for which there is a published record: that of Harry Bedloe, a well- Working Man, who raped a 17-year-old seamstress in 1793. The crime took place at a brothel where Mr. Bedloe had taken the woman by force, and which happens to be a few blocks from the federal courthouse where Ms. Carroll is testifying.
And while it may sound like ancient history, that case actually helped set the groundwork for today’s courthouse inquiries.
In his book on the matter, “story of the sewing girlHistorian John Wood Sweet points out that Mr. Bedloe’s defense relied on a practical precedent set by the 17th-century lawyer Sir Matthew Hale. (If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Hale was quoted eight times In Justice Samuel Alito’s anti-abortion opinion in the Dobbs case.) Hale, in his concern about malicious women bringing false accusations against innocent men, had established a set of “circumstantial” tests to make the victim credible. Among them: Was she of “good repute” (in other words, did she have a good reputation)? Did she scream for help (ie, did she scream)? Were there signs of physical violence on her body or clothing that might be consistent with the perpetrator’s use of force? Did he report the crime in time?
Almost every defense attorney asked questions through the Hale framework, writes Mr. Sweet. And yet, culturally anyway, defense attorneys still do.
Deborah TuerkheimerProfessor of Law at Northwestern and author of the book “Reliable,” explained that although it is rare these days for state rape statutes – or jury instructions – to require victims to show physical resistance in the face of assault, those mandates were common until the 1980s, hence their cultural relic. Meanwhile, many states still require that victims prove Oral Resistance (eg, saying no, yelling, or saying no), even as opposed to the norm, saying “affirmative consent” or “yes”, has become common on college campuses.
“And so, you have a very blatant attempt to suggest that Carol may not be a ‘deserving’ victim if she didn’t scream, if she didn’t report it immediately, if she didn’t call the police — here. So far as all that contradicts everything we know about how victims behave after assault,” Ms. Turkheimer told me.
These tactics persist as they delve into deeper delusions – and somehow, the scream seems to be the most powerful.
Screaming Wasn’t the Cause of a Sexual Harassment Case in 2017 being dumped in italy, This was the backdrop of the widely publicized 2018 Two famous rugby players stand trial for criminal rape in Belfast, Northern Ireland, who were acquitted. While experts in trauma and sexual assault, such as psychologist james hopperShown time and time again not to scream or cry – cold, essentially — is the brain’s normal response to danger, the screaming myth endures,
During cross-examination last week, Mr. Tacopina asked Ms. Carroll whether it might have been the pressure of Mr. Trump’s body – which, she described, was pinning her against the wall – that prevented her from screaming.
“It could be,” Ms Carroll said bluntly, before adding: “I don’t need an excuse not to scream.”
Carroll V. Trump is expected to continue throughout the week.