As a sexual assault survivor myself, I followed the Carroll vs Trump trial with great interest. Would a jury finally believe a sexual assault victim who didn’t scream or go to the police? When I was raped in London during my junior year abroad almost 50 years ago, I didn’t scream or go to the police. I actually told my rapist that I wouldn’t mind seeing him again, anything to get out of his apartment alive. And I didn’t go to the London police because even at the age of 20, I knew instinctually that they would blame me and that it would probably mean the end of my year abroad. And indeed, as I relate in my memoir, Brassy Broad: How one journalist helped pave the way to #MeToo, I was accused of being a “loose American woman who is just trying to get yourself out of trouble” when, on the advice of the matron where I was staying, I went to a local hospital to get a morning after pill. The ER staff didn’t believe I had been raped; I was too calm and collected, they said. It wasn’t until I became hysterical and broke down crying that I got the pill, which may have protected me from an unwanted pregnancy.
I didn’t scream when my rapist hit me and sodomized me, but it took me years of therapy to overcome the trauma of what I experienced. I was angry at men for a long time and even entertained fantasies of punching a few. Even today, I can’t watch movies that involve rape or sexual violence and can only read books about sexual assault in small doses. So I believed E. Jean Carroll when she testified on the stand about not being able to trust men for years after her ordeal. And I’m glad the jury believed her too. It’s a vindication for all of us who have endured abuse from men who think they are entitled to take what they want from us with little or no consequences. Trump won’t go to prison because of what he did to Carroll but I can only pray that it hurts his chances of getting re-elected, as more and more Americans realize what a true scumbag he is. He may not be indicted for assaulting Carroll and all those other women, but the fact that a jury believed her over him is sweet justice indeed.
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