Writer says she was raped by Trump in 1990s
In a first-person account published Friday in New York magazine, writer E. Jean Carroll said she was raped by Donald Trump in the 1990s.
Carroll, a long-time columnist for Elle magazine and the author of five books, details an encounter with Trump in the mid-1990s in the upscale Bergdorf Goodman department store in midtown Manhattan. Trump and Carroll recognized each other in the store, and Trump told her he needed to buy a gift “for a girl,” according to Carroll’s account.
The alleged assault occurred in the dressing room after Trump suggested Carroll try on a lace bodysuit. Carroll says Trump pushed her against the wall, and “forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.” After three minutes, she was able to break free and run from the dressing room.
Carroll joins at least 16 other women who have made sexual assault allegations against the president. In December 2017, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said all those women were lying.
In a statement to New York, a White House official said, “This is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the President look bad.”
Trump’s behavior in Carroll’s account recalls how the president said he behaves around “beautiful women” in the now infamous “Access Hollywood” tape released in 2016.
“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them,” Trump told Billy Bush. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
The date of the assault is unclear. Carroll says it occurred in either late 1995 or early 1996. In the excerpt, Carroll, now 75, does not explain why she decided to come forward. She says she fears receiving death threats or being “dragged through the mud.”
She writes, “joining the 15 women who’ve come forward with credible stories about how the man grabbed, badgered, belittled, mauled, molested, and assaulted them, only to see the man turn it around, deny, threaten, and attack them, never sounded like much fun.”
Carroll writes that she told two friends of the assault shortly after it happened. One of them encouraged her to go to the police, and the other advised against it. “‘Tell no one. Forget it! He has 200 lawyers. He’ll bury you.’”
Both friends remember the conversations decades later, and confirmed Carroll’s account to New York.
Carroll’s account published Friday is an excerpt from her book “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal” that will be released July 2. The excerpt alleges assaults by five other men, including Les Moonves, the former CEO of CBS.
Moonves resigned in disgrace after being accused of sexual assault in September 2018. Carroll claims he kissed and groped her in a hotel elevator after she finished interviewing him for an article.
Here is a rundown of the individual accusations.
1. Jessica Leeds
Monica Schipper/Getty Images
Jessica Leeds alleged last year that Trump groped her on an airplane in the late-1970s, which the president has repeatedly denied.
Leeds went public in a New York Times article Oct. 12, 2016 – discussing an alleged decades-old interaction with Trump -- four days after the release of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which he described women in vulgar terms. The Times article appeared three days after the second presidential debate, during which Trump denied ever kissing or groping women without consent.
Leeds has since reiterated her accusations to ABC News and has repeated it publicly, including at a news conference in December 2017 alongside two other accusers, calling on Congress to investigate the allegations against Trump.
Trump denied the allegations made by Leeds and by Rachel Crooks, another woman who spoke to The New York Times in the same 2016 article. He said "none of this ever took place" and threatened to sue the newspaper for reporting the story. No lawsuit has been filed.
The White House has also pointed to an October 2016 New York Post article in which a British man with a questionable past, including making unsubstantiated claims about British politicians’ behavior in the 1980s, challenged Leeds’ allegations, as an example of how the claims against the president have been refuted by eyewitnesses. The man, Anthony Gilberthorpe, told the paper he had been on the same flight and saw Leeds’ being “flirtatious.” Her account, he told the Post, was “wrong, wrong, wrong.”
The interview with Gilberthorpe had been arranged by the Trump campaign, the New York Post reported.
2. Kristin Anderson
Washington Post
Kristin Anderson told The Washington Post that Trump put his hand up her skirt to her underwear in the early 1990s.
After the story’s publication, ABC News spoke to a friend of Anderson, Brad Trent, who said he heard the account from Anderson the same year of the alleged incident. Trent told ABC News that Anderson had told him she was sitting next to Trump at the old China Club bar in New York where he slid his hand up her thigh and “grabbed her p----.”
In a statement included in the Post story, then-Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks – now his communications director -- disputed Anderson's accusations. “Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity,” she said at the time. “It is totally ridiculous.”
3. Jill Harth
Larry Busacca/Getty Images for New York Weddings
Jill Harth said she had dinner with Trump and her then-boyfriend, George Houraney, in 1992 when Trump allegedly tried to put his hands between her legs. She alleged he also tried to kiss her during a tour of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida a month later when she and Houraney were there to celebrate solidifying a business contract.
Harth filed a lawsuit in 1997 alleging that Trump groped her and sexually harassed her, but she withdrew the suit, she says, as a condition of settling a separate financial dispute with him.
Harth’s lawsuit was reported in New York’s Daily News in 1997, and LawNewz published a post on its website in February 2016 revisiting the suit. After its publication, LawNewz reported that Trump subsequently called to deny the allegations. “It’s ridiculous, I never touched this woman,” LawNewz quoted Trump as saying.
In a New York Times article published a month before the 2016 election, Harth acknowledged that, even after she had accused Trump of sexual misconduct, she briefly dated him in 1998.
The Trump campaign also released emails from 2015 in which Harth, who now owns a cosmetics company, solicited the candidate for opportunities to do his hair and makeup.The Hill reported in December 2017 that Harth acknowledged sending the messages. That report came on the heels of another story in The Hill, which reported that after Harth publicly aired her allegations during the campaign, an unidentified donor came forward to pay the balance of a mortgage on Harth’s New York apartment.
Harth, in a statement published on the website of The Hill, said the stories were an attempt to malign her and her attorney, Lisa Bloom, characterizing the political journalism site as “an apologist for Trump and a rag for right-wing hit jobs."
Harth told ABC News in November she stands by her allegations but doesn’t want to speak any more about Trump.
4. Cathy Heller
Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Cathy Heller first spoke to The Guardian newspaper about an alleged incident she said happened at a Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago. She repeated her claims to ABC News and said she believes it happened in 1997.
She put her hand out to say hello to Trump and he grabbed her unexpectedly and started to kiss her on the lips, Heller told ABC News. She said she pulled away and he said, “Oh, come on.” She said no but he grabbed her again and got near her lips, Heller told ABC News. She said this happened in front of her family.
The Guardian reported that Heller's family is in a dispute with Mar-a-Lago regarding their efforts to get refunds of dues, and that Cathy Heller was a Clinton supporter who donated the personal maximum of $2,700 to the Clinton campaign.
After her story appeared in The Guardian, the Trump campaign released a statement Oct. 15, 2016, saying that it was a “false accusation.”
“There is no way that something like this would have happened in a public place on Mother’s Day at Mr. Trump’s resort. It would have been the talk of Palm Beach for the past two decades,” the campaign’s then-senior communications adviser Jason Miller said.
In late-November 2017, after Trump began questioning the veracity of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape and commented on male public figures who had lost their jobs over sexual harassment allegations, Heller told People magazine that Trump “is a hypocrite.”
“I don’t think he should be calling out anyone for sexual harassment or sexual assault, but I don’t think he can control himself,” Heller told the magazine.
5. Temple Taggart McDowell
Chad Hurst/Getty Images
Temple Taggart was the 21-year-old Miss Utah when she participated in the Miss USA contest in 1997. She said Trump, who owned the pageant at the time, kissed her "directly on the lips.”
She first shared her story with The New York Times in May 2016, and Taggart, who now uses her married name of McDowell, reiterated her claims to ABC News through her lawyer, Gloria Allred. Trump denied the allegations to the Times, saying he is reluctant to kiss strangers on the lips.
"I don't even know who she is," Trump told NBC News in October 2016 in response to her allegations.
"She claims this took place in a public area. I never kissed her. I emphatically deny this ridiculous claim."
McDowell, through her attorney, reaffirmed her allegations to ABC News in November but declined to be interviewed.
6. Karena Virginia
Jemal Countess/Getty Images
Karena Virginia, a New York-area yoga instructor, said Trump approached her in 1998 outside the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York while she was awaiting a car service, made unseemly comments about her appearance, grabbed her arm and groped her breast.
"He then walked up to me and reached his right arm and grabbed my right arm," she said at a news conference in October 2016. “Then his hand touched the right inside of my breast."
Virginia, who was 27 at the time of the alleged incident, said she flinched, and Trump said, "Don't you know who I am?"
She has since reiterated her claims to ABC News through her lawyer, Gloria Allred. Trump has never released a specific statement about her claims.
7. Bridget Sullivan
Orlin Wagner/AP
Bridget Sullivan, who was crowned Miss New Hampshire 2000, spoke publicly during the presidential campaign about how Trump came into the Miss Universe changing room while the contestants were naked.
“The time that he walked through the dressing rooms was really shocking. We were all naked,” she told Buzzfeed in May 2016.
CNN released recordings of a 2005 interview that Trump gave to radio host Howard Stern in which he talked about going backstage at pageants when the contestants were naked.
"No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. ... ‘Is everyone OK’? You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody OK?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that," Trump said in the recording.
Reached in November, Sullivan declined to be interviewed. “I've said what I’ve needed to say,” she told ABC News.
Trump has never released a specific statement about her claims.
8. Tasha Dixon
Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon says Trump walked into a dress rehearsal for a pageant in 2001 while the contestants were “half-naked’ and the women were told to “fawn all over him,” according to an interview Dixon gave to CBS Los Angeles station KCAL-TV in October of 2016.
Dixon, who says she was 18 at the time, said Trump came "strolling right in" during a dress rehearsal for the Miss USA pageant in 2001. She said it was the contestants' introduction to Trump and that the women were naked or half-naked, in a "very physically vulnerable position."
Dixon said she decided to speak out after hearing an old audio recording of Trump’s talking to Howard Stern about going backstage at pageants while contestants were naked or getting dressed.
Trump’s campaign team denied Dixon’s allegation.
“These accusations have no merit and have already been disproven by many other individuals who were present,” then-campaign adviser Jason Miller said. “When you see questionable attacks like this magically put out there in the final month of a presidential campaign, you have to ask yourself what the political motivations are and why the media is pushing it.”
9. Mindy McGillivray
Thomas Cordy/The Palm Beach Post via ZUMA/Newscom
Mindy McGillivray told The Palm Beach Post in October 2016 that Trump grabbed her rear end while she was working as a photographer's assistant at a 2003 event at Mar-a-Lago.
The photographer, Ken Davidoff, told the paper he vividly remembers McGillivray immediately pulling him aside to say that, “Donald just grabbed my a--.”
Then-Trump campaign spokeswoman Hicks told the paper that McGillivray's allegation “lacks any merit or veracity.”
The photographer's brother, Daryl Davidoff, told ABC News and other news organizations he was also at Mar-a-Lago on the night in question and doesn’t believe McGillivray's story.
In October 2016, when reached by ABC News, Daryl Davidoff, the brother of the photographer, said he was there at Mar-a-Lago on the night in question. He confirmed that McGillivray was working for Davidoff photography, their family business, the night she says she was groped by Trump, but he also said he never heard anything about Trump’s groping anyone. He said he doesn’t believe McGillivray’s story and his brother, Ken, hasn’t worked for the family photography business for years.
Daryl Davidoff also told The Palm Beach Post he believed McGillivray had made up the story as a publicity stunt. “Nobody saw it happen and she just wanted to be in the limelight,” he told the Post.
Ken Davidoff, in response to his brother’s comments, told The Palm Beach Post that he thought his brother was trying to discredit the story in order to prevent harm to the family business.
In December 2017, McGillivray reiterated her allegations to NBC, calling for a congressional ethics investigation during an appearance on “Megyn Kelly Today.” “I think it’s important that we hold this man to the highest of standards, and if 16 women have come forward, then why hasn’t anything been done? Where is our investigation? I want justice.”
Trump has never issued a specific statement about her allegation.
10. Rachel Crooks
Monica Schipper/Getty Images
Rachel Crooks, a secretary who worked in Trump’s building, told The New York Times that when she first met Trump in 2005, he shook her hand, then kissed her on the cheeks and then on the lips, while outside an elevator at Trump Tower in New York City. Crooks says she immediately told her sister in Ohio about the encounter with Trump.
Shortly after The New York Times story was published in October 2016, ABC News reached Crooks’ sister Brianne Webb, who, as reported in the Times article, told ABC News that she was the first person her sister called after the alleged incident. Crooks was very upset, Webb said, and worked up about just meeting Trump and having him allegedly kiss her directly on the mouth. Webb also said Crooks never went to the authorities.
The Trump campaign issued a lengthy statement denying the allegation that both Crooks and Leeds made in The New York Times article.
“This entire article is fiction, and for the New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump on a topic like this is dangerous,” then-campaign senior communications advisor Jason Miller said in the statement at the time. “To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election.”
Crooks announced this month that she is running for a seat in the Ohio state legislature, and she has continued to repeat her accusations against Trump. She was recently featured in The Washington Post, prompting Trump to respond on Twitter this week.
"A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago. Never happened! Who would do this in a public space with live security cameras running. Another False Accusation. Why doesn’t @washingtonpost report the story of the women taking money to make up stories about me? One had her home mortgage paid off. Only @FoxNews so reported...doesn’t fit the Mainstream Media narrative," he wrote in two tweets Tuesday.
....cameras running. Another False Accusation. Why doesn’t @washingtonpost report the story of the women taking money to make up stories about me? One had her home mortgage paid off. Only @FoxNews so reported...doesn’t fit the Mainstream Media narrative.
ABC News reached out to the White House Wednesday for any further comment on both Crooks’ claims and the accusations levied by the rest of the women on this list. The White House did not respond.
11. Natasha Stoynoff
Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People magazine, said Trump inappropriately touched her in 2005 when she was at Mar-a-Lago for an interview timed to coincide with the first anniversary of his marriage to Melania Trump.
Stoynoff wrote a first-person account of the alleged incident that was published in People in October 2016, saying he forced her against a wall and tried to kiss her during a break in the interview. The alleged attempted assault, Stoynoff wrote, was interrupted when Trump’s then-butler burst into the room.
The Trump campaign said the alleged incident “never happened. There is no merit or veracity to this fabricated story.” Trump himself tweeted “why didn’t the writer of this twelve year old article in People Magazine mention the ‘incident’ in her story. Because it did not happen!”
In her account of the story, Stoynoff said she later ran into Melania Trump in New York and it was a friendly encounter, though Melania Trump denied ever seeing her or having that interaction, and an attorney representing Melania Trump released a letter to People magazine demanding a retraction and an apology. People magazine said it stood by the story and did not issue a retraction.
After the publication of Stoynoff’s account, Trump’s former butler Tony Senecal also publicly refuted her allegations. “Never happened,” Senecal told ABC South Florida affiliate WPBF-TV.
A week later, People published a follow-up story quoting five colleagues and friends of Stoynoff who said the writer had told them about the alleged attack shortly after she returned from the assignment, and one friend who says she was with Stoynoff when she later ran into Melania Trump in New York City.
ABC News left several messages seeking comment from Stoynoff but received no response.
12. Jennifer Murphy
Michael Bezjian/Getty Images for GoGirl Worldwide
Jennifer Murphy, a contestant on the fourth season of “The Apprentice,” the reality-TV show that Trump used to host, told British magazine Grazia that Trump kissed her on the lips after a job interview in 2005. After she was fired from the reality-TV show, Murphy said, Trump followed up with her and said he wanted to offer her a job but could only do so after the finale had ended. Murphy told Grazia the alleged kissing incident took place during one of those post-show interviews.
"He walked me to the elevator, and I said goodbye. I was thinking, 'Oh, he’s going to hug me,’ but when he pulled my face in and gave me a smooch. I was like, ‘Oh kay.’ I didn’t know how to act. I was just a little taken aback and probably turned red. And I then I get into the elevator and thought, "Huh, Donald Trump just kissed me on the lips,"' she told the magazine.
The Grazia article was published weeks before the election, and at the time, Murphy said, she still planned to vote for Trump.
"I don’t want him to ever feel I’m throwing him under the bus, because I’m not. ... I was surprised, but then it didn’t really bother me because I didn’t feel he was being degrading, or he was being dishonest to Melania," Murphy told Grazia.
Trump has not released any specific statement about her claims.
13. Jessica Drake
Kevork Djansezian/Reuters
Adult film star Jessica Drake said Trump kissed her and two other women without their consent 10 years ago.
During an Oct. 22, 2016, news conference alongside her attorney Gloria Allred, the accuser provided a picture of her with Trump.
The Trump campaign called her allegations “totally false and ridiculous” and directly addressed the picture in a statement, saying “The picture is one of thousands taken out of respect for people asking to have their picture taken with Mr. Trump.”
Drake said she met Trump at a 2006 golf tournament in Lake Tahoe and walked the course with him during the competition. She then was invited up to his hotel suite and brought two other women with her because "I didn't feel right going alone," Drake said during the news conference.
"When we entered the room, he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without asking permission," Drake said.
She went on to say that after she and the other women left, she received a call from Trump asking her to come back and have dinner with him.
"Donald then asked me 'What do you want? How much?'" Drake said.
Allred and Drake declined to provide names of people they said could back up the story. Allred told ABC News in November 2017 that Drake does not want to speak with any media.
14. Ninni Laaksonen
Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
In 2006, Ninni Laaksonen competed in Miss Universe as Miss Finland. She told Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat that Trump squeezed her rear end after posing for a photo before an appearance on “The David Letterman Show.”
"Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt. He really grabbed my butt," she told Ilta-Sanomat, according to a translation obtained by The Guardian.
ABC News contacted Laaksonen for comment in December 2017. She replied: “I have never commented on this, and I won’t. I wish that you respect my will to live a normal life without interference.”
Trump has never released a specific statement about her claims.
15. Summer Zervos
Kathy Willens/AP
During the presidential campaign, Zervos, who was a competitor on the fifth season of "The Apprentice," came forward to allege that Trump abused his role as a potential employer, kissing her twice during a meeting at Trump Tower in New York, and later groping and kissing her in a California hotel room. Zervos said she did not report the alleged incidents to the authorities at the time.
“He grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again aggressively and placed his hand on my breast,” Zervos said at an October 2016 news conference.
Zervos has since filed a lawsuit against Trump for alleged defamation after he called her and the other women accusing him liars. The suit was filed in state court in New York, three days before Trump’s inauguration.
In the lawsuit, Zervos' attorney wrote that while Trump said Zervos was lying, "it was Donald Trump who was lying when he falsely denied his predatory misconduct with Summer Zervos, and derided her for perpetrating a 'hoax' and making up a 'phony' story to get attention."
Trump’s lawyers are trying to have the suit dismissed or, at a minimum, delayed until after Trump’s presidency ends. A hearing on that motion was held December 2017 in N.Y. State Supreme Court and the case is awaiting a ruling from the judge.
16. Cassandra Searles
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
In June 2016, former Miss Washington Cassandra Searles shared a post on Facebook that is no longer available publicly.
The post had a picture of the group of Miss Universe contestants from 2013 with Trump in the center. In the caption of the photo, which was screen-grabbed by Yahoo, she wrote that "this one guy treated us like cattle" and "I forgot to mention that guy will be running to become the next President of United States."
Rolling Stone reported that Searle updated her original post, adding a comment to the thread.
"He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room," Searle wrote, according to Rolling Stone.
ABC News has not been able to reach Searles, and Trump has not released a specific statement about her claims.
ABC News’ James Hill and Cindy Smith contributed to this report.
MY OP ED: The women Trump rapes are tall, white and often blond. Clearly there is a pattern. Trump even used to rape his wife Ivana and he lusts after his daughter Ivanka.
