New York: A US jury on Tuesday found former President Donald Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming a US journalist and ordered him to pay $5 million (about 41 crores in Indian rupees) in damages. During the hearing, nine jurors dismissed E. Jean Carroll’s rape charge but upheld her other complaints in a closely watched civil trial after less than three hours of deliberations.
This is the first time that a verdict has been given in the case against Trump. Trump has faced decades-old sexual misconduct allegations and legal cases involving a dozen women. Carol has filed a lawsuit against Trump seeking damages in the case. She is also demanding the former President withdraw the statement that the allegations made by Carol are defamatory.
US journalist, writer, and columnist E Jean Carroll (79) had alleged during a court hearing against Donald Trump in April last year that the country’s former president had raped her in a luxury department store. Carroll said she met Trump at Bergdorf Goodman on a Thursday evening in 1996, where Trump asked her for help buying women’s lingerie and raped her in the changing room.
He said that for decades he did not tell anyone except two of his friends, because he was afraid that Trump would take revenge on him and he ‘thought it was my fault’. Carroll said that he was also afraid that people would blame him for what happened to him. He said that after the ‘Me Too’ campaign, he decided to tell people about his ordeal.
Trump has rejected these allegations outright. On May 4, former US President Donald Trump termed the allegations of rape leveled against him by a writer as ‘the most ridiculous and disgusting story’. In testimony to a jury via video in New York on May 3, Trump claimed the allegations were “fabricated” and that he had never sexually assaulted author E. Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store.
