These Little Details

I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night - the shame, the fear - would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest.
-- Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

With all the other drama going on, and the growing evidence of criminal matters that donald trump is facing, this week we will witness one of the more personal and troubling allegations against him.

This week, E. Jean Carroll's defamation and rape civil matter against trump goes to trial.

Details from Jennifer Peltz at AP News: 

Former President Donald Trump’s behavior toward women, long a source of flashpoints in his political career, now faces a new level of scrutiny: a trial in a lawsuit accusing him of rape.

Jury selection is set to start Tuesday in the case filed by former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump raped her in a luxury New York department store dressing room in the 1990s...

The lawsuit is putting Trump’s history with women under a microscope as he runs to return to the White House. But if a trial over a rape accusation would be a crisis for most candidates, with Trump, it remains to be seen...

Trump’s political rise was riddled with criticism of his attitudes and conduct toward women. There were his insulting remarks about onetime Republican rival Carly Fiorina’s appearance, his misogynistic comments about former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, his double-down on denigrating a former Miss Universe whom he had pilloried about her weight and more — including, most notoriously, the crass “Access Hollywood” hot-mic recording that nearly derailed his 2016 campaign and elicited rare contrition for what he called “locker room banter.”

Then there were the dozen-plus women, including Carroll, who came forward during his campaign and presidency to accuse him of sexual assault and harassment. He denied all the claims. Other lawsuits over them were dropped or dismissed, but Carroll’s has endured...

Carroll's case endured because she held onto key evidence, and told enough people around her at the time it happened to maintain credible witnesses. She is relying on New York state laws - some recently passed - that allow her to pursue this as a civil matter, unfortunately not as a criminal one.

That it has taken her THIS long - roughly 30 years - to bring this matter to any semblance of justice reveals the failures of our legal system to handle rape and sexual assault cases in a timely manner (or at all).

Carroll didn't go public with the assault when it happened because our society, our media, our law enforcement all view rape/assault victims with disdain and disbelief. A "blame the victim" world-view adds onto the horrors that the rape victim already endured. It's worse when it's men of power and influence - even at the small-town level - alleged to commit the crimes: Given their wealth (they can afford the lawyers) and status (they maintain "good" public relations), it takes decades for anybody to hold them accountable. She only went public in 2019 to bolter the other emerging allegations that kept appearing after trump's infamous Access Hollywood interview, and given her public stature she quickly received that vitriol from trump's defenders and then trump himself. It was trump's insistence on complete innocence - defaming Carroll as a liar and "a nut" in the process - that led to this trial.

Thing about the civil nature of this trial, it won't lead to trump being found guilty and going to jail. This is more about liability and damages owed: Even if trump is found liable for both the defamation and the rape, he can walk out of the courtroom a free man. However, in the eyes of the legal system trump would be considered a rapist (would he have to register as a sex offender?), a label that his political and media defenders cannot ignore. trump can campaign and ignore the decision all he wants, but his allies can't. The Republican Party will get asked repeatedly - first by the left-leaning media and even later the 'centrist' media that can no longer look away at trump's personal sins - why they are letting their party be led by a jury-confirmed rapist.

This all depends, of course, if the jury sides with Carroll or with trump. Given how trump's history of defamatory public statements and history with other women will be presented at trial, it's hard to envision in a just world that the jury will believe trump. But this isn't a just world (SEE AGAIN "Blame the Victim" mindsets), and the jury can go either way.

There's also the possibility of a settlement. Civil trials like this tend to get settled instead of risking the jury (even for the plaintiffs). This is where trump's history of surviving numerous civil cases picks up: he's always pushed and bullied the legal system to get his many fraud victims - from the building contractors he refused to pay, to people who bought into and lost money on failed ventures, to the victims of his faux Trump University - to accept settlements that would allow trump to avoid guilt. His victims eventually settle because his lawyers had delayed and obstructed the matter for so long they can no longer afford to keep going, and they'll take a portion of what's due just to be done with the matter. 

We've just seen this, with the Dominion defamation case against Fox News. Where the voting machine company had Fox dead to rights with all the evidence of them lying to save their ratings and revenues, Dominion still settled the matter the day of jury selection because they didn't want to risk the chance the jury wouldn't side with them. As much as Fox wanted to settle knowing the odds were against them, Dominion didn't want the risk either. For the company, it was a pure business decision: Get the money, get a back-room deal from Fox to avoid any further direct attacks, and get back to making profits.

But this case is different. Carroll can't really walk away from this with a settlement: Because the rape was personal to her, it's cost her privacy and her reputation, and settling even for a ton of money would be accepting the blame. After all that trump's said in public about her, the only way she could settle would be getting a public apology for trump's attacks. And trump can't apologize, not for that, because recanting his statements means Carroll isn't the liar he accused her being. Even working a settling to get trump admitting he attacked her is next to impossible because his narcissism cannot admit guilt or accountability. Carroll's only resolution is taking this to the jury, and hoping the jury sides with her, and holding trump accountable to the law regardless of his self-serving gaslighting.

For too long, as the #MeToo movement demonstrated, men of power got away with rape, with harassment, with lying about their behavior, and with humiliating women at every turn.

For much of his public history, trump has been a man of power who abused even his own wives, treated women as property, and got away with it because the media and the legal system looked away when it mattered most. Now, nobody can look away. Everybody's going to be watching. 

And Carroll - along with hundreds of other women - will have her justice.