E. Jean Carroll and Roberta Kaplan leaving following Carroll’s trial against Donald Trump at Manhattan Federal Court.
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E. Jean Carroll told Insider she’s gotten hundreds of emails from people asking for advice to sue abusers.
She was able to sue Donald Trump — and win — because of New York’s Adult Survivor’s Act.
Carroll and her lawyer declined to comment on potential future litigation against Trump.
E. Jean Carroll says “hundreds” of people have contacted her seeking advice on how to sue their own alleged abusers after she won a civil lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, who a jury unanimously agreed sexually abused her in the mid-1990s.
“They think, ‘Well, if the former President of the United States can be held liable for sexual abuse, well then maybe my stepfather, maybe my old boss, maybe my ex-boyfriend, maybe that man who lived down the street — maybe I can hold them accountable for ruining my life,'” Carroll told Insider in an interview Thursday.
Carroll, a former Elle magazine journalist and writer of the “Ask E. Jean” advice column, won her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump earlier this month.
She testified in her trial that Trump sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996, and then devastated her reputation when he called her a liar after she went public with her story in 2019. A jury in Manhattan federal court found Trump liable for $5 million in damages.
Carroll was able to bring the sexual abuse claims against Trump because of New York’s Adult Survivor’s Act. The law was passed amid the #MeToo movement and opened a window where people could bring civil sexual misconduct lawsuits for abuse that had previously fallen outside of the state’s statute of limitations.
Carroll told Insider that people have sent her letters expressing excitement and hope that they could now bring their own lawsuits.
“Men and women have sent questions to ‘Ask E. Jean’ about that,” she said. “For instance, I received a letter yesterday from a woman who had been raped repeatedly by her stepfather when she was in sixth grade. She wants to know what she should do because she wants to bring a lawsuit.”
Carroll spoke to Insider at a luncheon hosted by the American Friends of the Hebrew University. The event honored her lead attorney in the trial, Roberta Kaplan, along with former US Attorney Audrey Strauss, who has overseen her own share of sexual misconduct cases.
On CNN the day following his court loss, Trump repeated the same misogynistic remarks that formed the basis of Carroll’s defamation claims in her successful lawsuit against him. He also continued to claim that he never met her, even though they’d been photographed together.
Kaplan previously said Trump’s comments may form the basis of yet another defamation lawsuit against him. Both Kaplan and Carroll declined to comment Thursday on the prospect of future litigation against Trump.
Carroll praised Kaplan as a “brilliant” person who didn’t fear Trump and “thinks three and four moves ahead.” In her speech accepting the George A. Katz Award for contributions to the legal community, Kaplan said their victory against Trump in court demonstrated that “even the most powerful person can be held accountable in court.”
“No one, not even a former president, is above the law. I agree with Mr. Tacopina that that’s a big part of what makes our country great,” Kaplan said, referring to Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina.