In Trump rape trial, his accusers hope for vindication at last

When E. Jean Carroll took the stand in a New York courtroom this week, she gave a harrowing account of an alleged sexual assault by Donald Trump in the 1990s. Carroll testified that Trump forced her against the wall of a department store fitting room and raped her.

For Cathy Heller, there was a grim sense of recognition. The physical dominance, the predatory impulse – all of it rang true.

“The guy who shoved her in the dressing room is the guy who grabbed me,” said Heller, 69, who has accused Trump of forcibly kissing her at Mar-a-Lago more than two decades ago.

Heller is one of at least 17 women who has accused Trump of sexual assault or misconduct, allegations that did not prevent his ascent to the White House or his current campaign for re-election. Many of their stories are remarkably similar, involving chance encounters where Trump allegedly groped or kissed them against their will.

When accusers began coming forward in 2016, Trump called their allegations “100% fabricated.” He has denied any wrongdoing and called the women liars. Now they see the civil rape trial underway in New York as a rare chance for vindication.

“Nothing sticks” to Trump, said Amy Dorris, who went public three years ago with her allegation that he groped and forcibly kissed her at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1997. A win for Carroll in the trial would be “a win for all of us.”

If Carroll prevails, the former president could be forced to pay millions in damages, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. The jury could decide to compensate Carroll for her suffering and award additional penalties as punishment, he said.

Dorris said she wished the case were criminal, not civil, but “we’ll take what we can get.”

Carroll, 79, a former advice columnist, is suing Trump under a New York law passed last year. It opened a one-year window for victims of sexual assault to file civil lawsuits, regardless of when the alleged offenses took place. Previously, victims had 20 years to bring civil cases.

On the stand, Carroll gave a detailed account of the alleged sexual assault inside Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store. She testified that banter over a piece of lingerie suddenly turned terrifying when Trump assaulted her in the fitting room. She said he pushed his finger and then his penis into her vagina.

Joe Tacopina, a lawyer representing Trump, told jurors in an opening statement that the assault never happened. He accused Carroll of concocting the story out of hatred for Trump and to sell copies of her 2019 memoir, in which she went public with her accusation for the first time.

For Trump’s other accusers, the suggestion that Carroll had something to gain by coming forward is ludicrous.

“I have not seen it benefit one single woman,” said Dorris, 50. Instead, they have received threats, lost friends and become “radioactive” in certain professional and social settings, she said.

Karena Virginia, 52, began receiving death threats in her mailbox after she said Trump had groped her breast at the U.S. Open in 1998. “There were people who wanted me to die,” she said. “There were definitely times that I felt I was being followed.”

Even as other powerful men saw their careers derailed by claims of sexual assault during the rise of the #MeToo movement, Trump has remained impervious. Dorris described feeling discarded or forgotten: Trump’s followers appear untroubled by the women’s accusations, while his critics are focused on newer alleged wrongdoings.

“He’s got so many things he’s done wrong, the sexual assaults are at the bottom of the list,” Dorris said. “We’re not talked about much.”

Natasha Stoynoff, a journalist who is expected to testify at the Carroll trial about how Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her when she went to interview him at Mar-a-Lago, has written that the former president evaded accountability with a combination of “threats, lies and luck.”

Stoynoff likened the women to “spectators watching the #MeToo movement from behind glass, banging on the pane with our fists, yelling: Hey! Us, Too!”

That makes Carroll’s lawsuit even more crucial, the women say. They admire Carroll for her bravery and are cautiously hopeful that the jury will decide in her favor.

Carroll is a “very strong and very courageous woman” who is using her voice to disrupt a long pattern of “people with status abusing their power,” Virginia said. It’s the kind of courage that “can make you shake in your shoes” because of the possible repercussions. Carroll testified that she has received threats to her life and a “staggering” amount of hatred.

Two other lawsuits connected to the allegations against Trump were later dropped. Alva Johnson, a former Trump campaign staffer who accused the former president of forcibly kissing her, declined to pursue her case after an unfavorable ruling by a judge in 2019.

Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” said Trump groped and kissed her against her will. She sued him for defamation in 2017 after he called his accusers liars but dropped the case in 2021. Carroll is also suing Trump for defamation as part of the current trial in New York. A separate defamation case she filed in 2019 is still pending.

Trump has repeatedly attacked his accusers, in some cases calling them deceitful, mentally ill and unattractive. He has denied that any of the incidents took place.

The women have formed a sisterhood of sorts, leaning on one another for support. Some of them gathered in 2019 for the performance of a play based on their stories. When Joe Biden became president in 2021, they organized a Zoom call to celebrate Trump’s departure from office.

Now their alleged abuser has launched another campaign for president, a prospect that fills them with dread. If Trump returns to the Oval Office, “it’s saying to all the people in America that it’s okay to sexually assault someone, to violate someone, to rape someone,” Dorris said. “Because if the president can do it, so can you.”

Mindy McGillivray, 43, still lives a 10-minute drive from Mar-a-Lago. She began working there when she was 19 as an assistant to photographer Ken Davidoff. She remembers people repeatedly warning her that she was Trump’s “type”: buxom and blond.

In 2003, McGillivray was backstage at a concert with Trump, his wife Melania, Davidoff and several other people when Trump grabbed her buttocks, she said. “He grabs me, really, a good grab,” she said. “I jolted.” As the group moved toward another room, she immediately told Davidoff what had happened. Davidoff has confirmed McGillivray’s account but said he did not witness the incident.

McGillivray was born in 1979. That’s around the same time of the first alleged assault by Trump: Jessica Leeds, who is also planning to testify in the trial, said Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hands up her skirt during a flight to New York in the late 1970s.

“He’s been assaulting women since the time I came out of the womb,” said McGillivray. The fact that Trump is running for president again makes “me feel like we have a societal problem.”

The women are keeping tabs on the trial through news coverage and social media. Virginia said she conveyed her support to Carroll directly. Jill Harth, who said Trump groped her and attempted to rape her in 1993, has shared messages saluting Carroll on Twitter.

The women yearn for a favorable verdict in the trial but also know that a reckoning may elude them.

“Look, I hope they fine him $50 million or something, but I don’t know,” said Heller. “He’s gotten away with so much.”