"But if I'd been raped while an adult, I'd know the month, the day, and the year."
I was sexually assaulted by another boy as a child. It was extremely traumatising and upsetting at the time, but I didn't process it as an 'attempted rape,' until I was much older. I roughly know when it happened (sometime in 1991, most likely the Spring/early Summer, a few months before school broke up for the holidays), but I couldn't give you the *exact* date.
Some people repress their trauma for days, weeks, months and even years. Some people feel it's only 'worth' saying something when the individual who abused them is on the world stage and has amassed even more power (and what can be more powerful than being elected POTUS?)
"For most of my life, Trump has been considered a JOKE. He was considered a buffoon when this supposedly happened, and people want us to believe that Trump was so powerful she was afraid???"
Trump WAS powerful, and at the time he was respected and courted by the *Democratic* establishment (i.e. the Clintons). This was also a man who could take a full-page ad in several newspapers that helped convict the Central Park Five a few years earlier. If anything, Trump was *less* of a joke back in the day, because he was still liked by some self-identifying 'liberals'.
And Trump wasn't being complimentary when he said he 'wouldn't want to rape E. Jean Carroll.' I understand what you're saying. Of course no-one wants to hear that someone would want to rape us, but Trump was making that statement in order to body-shame Carroll, the implication that she 'wasn't attractive enough' for him to consider raping her. Firstly, the idea that rape has anything to do with sexual attraction is an offensive myth, and secondly, Trump's insult compounds the trauma that Carroll has already experienced; he's revictimising having not only physically assaulted her, but now deriding her appearance.
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Destinata (3564)
2 years ago
Why didn't she say something when he was President? She was part of a move to get the statute of limitations extended to 20 years + one MORE year so she could come out with her accusation now. It's kind of a stretch to think she couldn't have made an accusation before now. But now, it has maximum impact.
Well, at least that's what CNN thought. I doubt they went out of their way to stack that "town hall" audience with Trumpfans. Biden's made a lot of Trumpfans. We're not stupid, and many of us can remember how much thicker our wallets were under Trump.
On Twitter, they're melting down because DeSantis has sat on his thumb for the past few months, and now his time to strike may be past.
Back to E. Jean -- yes, I get that he was saying she wasn't worth raping. I still say it's a bigger defamation of her character for the jury to say she was lying about her rape, and that it was merely some kind of molestation. They're basically saying her accusation is a lie. But the whole thing seems like a crock. A crowded department store and he forces himself on her IN SOME WAY, and yet she doesn't -- feminist that she is -- at least cry out?
PS: I was molested when I was 12. That would be 1967. That's why I said "as an adult." Things get foggy as a child. But I can still nail down the year. She couldn't.
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HarveyManFredSin (4877)
2 years ago
She *did* say something whilst Trump was POTUS:
https://www.thecut.com/2019/06/donald-trump-assault-e-jean-carroll-other-hideous-men.html
And wasn't it a changing room where she was attacked, away from other shoppers? I think you're overestimating how crowded these elite department stores are. And the shock of being attacked is so traumatic that many times a victim of an attack is 'shell-shocked' and goes silent. I hate to bring things back to me, but going by my own experience, I was assaulted on a school playing-field, during recess/lunch-break. No one did anything, assuming they saw what was happening.
And Carroll said it was late 95 or early 96, so whilst she didn't give the precise calendar year, it's pretty clear she was referring to a window of a few months.
Finally, and fwiw, I'm very sorry for your childhood experience.
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Destinata (3564)
2 years ago
She didn't sue him. Now she wants to sue him again. I guess she wants to extend her 15 minutes.
Have you ever been in women's changing rooms? They're not that far removed from other shoppers, and there's usually a wait to get in to try something on -- things are that crowded. In all I've been in, there's both the top and bottom open, so any, "Help!" or "Hey! What do you think you're doing???" said with any volume would be heard.
Being molested on an open playground is appalling. When I was growing up, we had teachers who were monitors to make sure stuff like that didn't happen.
Remember that ol' E. Jean was supposedly a "famous feminist" at the time. I'd never heard of her before, but let's assume she thought women were can-do sorts of people who could take the situation into hand. I'm not even a feminist, but I took self-defense courses because there were rapists around the campus. I find it hard to believe that a "famous feminist" would have turned into a submissive little mouse. A scared 12-year-old little girl, yes. A "famous feminist," is more difficult to believe.
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