Following the recent update of rape allegation against Donald Trump, a civil trial has started as a Jury selection is scheduled for today,Tuesday.
E. Jean Carroll, 79, says Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store and then defamed her after she went public with the allegations years later.
Trump, who is facing a slew of legal woes that threaten to derail his 2024 run for a second term in the White House, denies the allegations.
The start of the trial comes just weeks after his historic arraignment on criminal charges related to a hush-money payment made to a porn star just before the 2016 election.
Carroll, a former columnist for Elle magazine, says she was raped by Trump in the changing room at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.
She said the attack came after Trump asked her for shopping advice.
Carroll first made the allegation in an excerpt from her book published by New York Magazine in 2019.
Trump responded then by saying he never met Carroll, that she was “not my type” and that she was “totally lying.”
Carroll first sued Trump for defamation in 2019 but was unable to include the rape claim because the statute of limitations for the alleged offense had expired.
But a new law took effect in November last year in New York that gives redress to victims of sexual assault decades after attacks may have occurred.
What to expect from Trump’s court appearance
It gave sexual assault victims in the state a one-year window to sue their alleged abusers even when the abuse occurred long ago.
Source: NairaLand Forum
