Trump’s attacks on E. Jean Carroll perpetuate rape culture, advocates say

The former U.S. president and current candidate drew laughter and applause from the audience when he called Carroll "a whack job" and ridiculed her testimony.

Donald Trump’s mocking and vicious attacks on E. Jean Carroll on CNN Wednesday night — one day after a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her — will continue to perpetuate rape culture in the media and society, advocates say.

The former U.S. president and current candidate drew laughter and applause from some in the audience when he called Carroll “a wack job” and ridiculed her account of the assault that she testified to in court last week.

It was the latest denial of the decades-old incident by Trump, who filed an appeal Thursday of the jury’s decision and the $5 million in damages awarded to Carroll. But advocates for sexual assault survivors and victims say it was the response from the crowd — as well as CNN’s decision to allow the moment to air at all — that disgusted them the most.

“It is not only heartbreaking, but enraging to see how little we have moved the dial,” Farrah Khan, executive director of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, told Global News in an interview.

“What that says to survivors who are thinking about reporting, what that says to other survivors who have reported … is that what they’re experiencing is trivial.”

Carroll, 79, told jurors in Manhattan federal court that Trump, 76, raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996, and then ruined her reputation by denying it happened.

Her defamation case concerned an October 2022 post on Truth Social in which he called her allegations a “complete con job” and “a hoax and a lie.”

The nine-person jury concluded after less than three hours of deliberations that Carroll had failed to prove it was more likely than not that Trump had raped her. But jurors did find Trump liable for a lesser degree of sexual abuse, and that the social media post was defamatory.