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.
Trump did not testify and his legal team did not mount a defence.
The verdict drew additional scrutiny to Wednesday’s CNN town hall, which was announced nearly two weeks ago and marked Trump’s first appearance on the network since early 2016.
Asked by moderator Kaitlan Collins about the decision and whether it would hurt his chances with female voters in the 2024 campaign, Trump bragged about his poll numbers before attacking Carroll, the jury, the judge and her testimony, which he called “fake.”
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He then raised several questions about Carroll’s testimony — why no one witnessed the assault given it occurred in a public place, why it wasn’t immediately reported — that Khan and other advocates says perpetuates harmful stereotypes and misinformation about sexual assault.
“Survivors are always listening and watching how people will respond to disclosures of sexual violence, and how people will deal with their truths,” said Dalya Israel, executive director of Salal Sexual Violence Support Centre in Vancouver.
“We are always waiting for backlash.”
Sexual assault and rape are among the most underreported crimes. According to U.S. data from RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), more than two out of every three sexual assaults are not reported to police. Some of the most common reasons are fearing retaliation, fearing police won’t do anything and fearing there isn’t anything police could do.
The National Sexual Violence Resource Centre says 63 per cent go unreported while in Canada, data from Statistics Canada has found only six per cent of sexual assaults are reported to police.
Sexual assault for both men and women is more common than robbery, that data shows.
Carroll and her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told the New York Times on Thursday they are considering whether to launch a new defamation claim against Trump for his CNN comments. An earlier defamation case, concerning comments Trump made about Carroll when she first came forward in 2019 while he was president, is in legal limbo over whether Trump’s comments are protected as presidential speech.
Other organizations that advocate for sexual assault survivors have called on CNN to apologize and even for CEO Chris Licht to be fired for allowing Trump on its airwaves.
“CNN’s town hall was a disaster,” Shaunna Thomas, executive director of the U.S.-based group UltraViolet, said in a statement Thursday.
“He even mocked E. Jean Carroll the day after a federal court convicted him of defamation and sexual assault against her. CNN not only allowed Trump to do so — they enabled him.”
Khan says CNN should have at least cut to commercial or allowed Collins to interject when Trump made his comments about Carroll.
“They are participating in defamation,” she said. “They are participating in the amplification of lies.”
A request for comment from CNN was not immediately returned.
Israel says media organizations should do more to centre survivors’ experiences and trauma to counter hateful rhetoric, which she says will have widespread impacts.
“The ridiculing of people’s courage and truth and testimony is just going to have detrimental impacts to both people’s mental health and the way that they feel entitled to hold people accountable, but also their ability to have accountability,” she said.
“There are people inside the system (of justice) who are influenced by people like Donald Trump.”
Khan, meanwhile, says she sympathized with Carroll’s comments to the New York Times, where she said she was “upset on the behalf of young men in America” who are being exposed to “a cave-man view” of women.
Pointing out those outdated views and replacing them with empathy and understanding for survivors is crucial to overcome rape culture, she adds.
“People don’t understand rape culture affects all genders, and it includes all people,” Khan said. “It shapes our ideas of masculinity.
“When young men see one of the most powerful people in the world … dismiss, trivialize, mock sexual assault, that sends a very dark message.”
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