E. Jean Carroll is a writer and advice columnist. She is 75 years old. She appears on the latest cover of New York Magazine because she’s ready to talk about all of the rotten, disgusting men who hurt her throughout her life. She’s written a book called What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, and NY Mag got an exclusive first excerpt, all about the “hideous men” who have hurt her, assaulted her and molested her. She names Les Moonves and describes how he assaulted her on an elevator in 1997. But this excerpt is mainly about how Donald Trump raped her in a Bergdorf’s dressing room in either late 1995 or early 1996. E. Jean understands that Trump would deny that anything took place (as he already has) and she understands that with the sorry state of America today, “I run the risk of making him more popular by revealing what he did.” You can read the full excerpt here. Here’s the Trump section, with some edits for space:

This is during the years I am doing a daily Ask E. Jean TV show for the cable station America’s Talking, a precursor to MSNBC launched by Roger Ailes (who, by the way, is No. 16 on my list). Early one evening, as I am about to go out Bergdorf’s revolving door on 58th Street, and one of New York’s most famous men comes in the revolving door, or it could have been a regular door at that time, I can’t recall, and he says: “Hey, you’re that advice lady!” And I say to No. 20 on the Most Hideous Men of My Life List: “Hey, you’re that real-estate tycoon!” I am surprised at how good-looking he is. We’ve met once before, and perhaps it is the dusky light but he looks prettier than ever. This has to be in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996 because he’s garbed in a faultless topcoat and I’m wearing my black wool Donna Karan coatdress and high heels but not a coat.

[Trump suggests that E. Jean help him pick out a gift, and they spend some a brief amount of time looking at hats and purses, before he lures her into the lingerie department.]

I have no recollection where lingerie is in that era of Bergdorf’s, but it seems to me it is on a floor with the evening gowns and bathing suits, and when the man and I arrive — and my memory now is vivid — no one is present. There are two or three dainty boxes and a lacy see-through bodysuit of lilac gray on the counter. The man snatches the bodysuit up and says: “Go try this on!”

“You try it on,” I say, laughing. “It’s your color.”

“Try it on, come on,” he says, throwing it at me. “It goes with your eyes,” I say, laughing and throwing it back. “You’re in good shape,” he says, holding the filmy thing up against me. “I wanna see how this looks.”

“But it’s your size,” I say, laughing and trying to slap him back with one of the boxes on the counter. “Come on,” he says, taking my arm. “Let’s put this on.” This is gonna be hilarious, I’m saying to myself — and as I write this, I am staggered by my stupidity. As we head to the dressing rooms, I’m laughing aloud and saying in my mind: I’m gonna make him put this thing on over his pants!

The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.

I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I keep laughing. The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me. It turns into a colossal struggle. I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot. I try to push him off with my one free hand — for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other — and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.

The whole episode lasts no more than three minutes. I do not believe he ejaculates. I don’t remember if any person or attendant is now in the lingerie department. I don’t remember if I run for the elevator or if I take the slow ride down on the escalator. As soon as I land on the main floor, I run through the store and out the door — I don’t recall which door — and find myself outside on Fifth Avenue.

And that was my last hideous man. The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening. And whether it’s my age, the fact that I haven’t met anyone fascinating enough over the past couple of decades to feel “the sap rising,” as Tom Wolfe put it, or if it’s the blot of the real-estate tycoon, I can’t say. But I have never had sex with anybody ever again.

[From The Cut]

E. Jean interrupts the story mid-way to note that she never reported this to the police, and that she told two close friends about it just after it happened. One friend begged her to go to the police, and the second friend begged her to stay quiet because “He has 200 lawyers. He’ll bury you.” She says that at some point, Bergdorf’s probably had security footage of them entering the lingerie department, but obviously, Bergdorf’s wouldn’t still have 25-year-old security footage still to this day. She also says that the reason she never came forward before is because she knew what she would get the second she told her story: “Receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed, being dragged through the mud, and 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. Also, I am a coward.” I believe her.

As I said, Trump has denied everything. I believe her. Donald Trump is a rapist and a serial sexual predator. I believe all the women.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of New York Magazine.