Former US President Donald Trump is found responsible by a Manhattan federal court jury for sexually assaulting magazine writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and then defaming her.
The jury also mandated that he pay USD5 million in compensatory and punitive penalties. The jury also dismissed the writer’s assertion that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her. According to CNN, Carroll alleged Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store, and later denied her claim which defamed her. She hailed the decision as a win for her and other abuse victims.
The jury determined that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll, which was enough to convict him in the civil case, but they did not think that she had established that he had raped her.
The civil judgement spares him from serving any jail time, CNN reported. Trump said he would appeal the verdict that found he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996.
“We’ll be appealing this decision. It’s a disgrace,” Trump said in one of the several videos he posted to his social media platform Truth Social, according to CNN.
Trump continued to deny knowing Carroll and described the trial as “very unfair.”
“Somehow we’re going to have to fight this stuff,” Trump said. “We cannot let our country go into this abyss. This is disgraceful.”
Under the “New York State Adult Survivors Act,” a state law that established a look-back window for sexual assault claims like Carroll’s with long-expired statutes of limitations, Carroll filed the complaint last November, CNN reported.
