Renowned writer and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll claims in a new excerpt from her upcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal — shared in a cover story for New York magazine — that she was sexually assaulted by disgraced former CBS exec Leslie Moonves and President Donald Trump.
In the excerpt, Carroll, 75, recounts the time she wrote an article on Moonves for Esquire. She claims that after her interview with Moonves, he followed her into an elevator and cornered her.
“He steps into the elevator behind me,” Carroll writes, “and his pants bursting with demands, goes at me like an octopus. I don’t know how many apertures and openings you possess, Reader, but Moonves, with his arms squirming and poking and goosing and scooping and pricking and prodding and jabbing, is looking for fissures I don’t even know I own, and — by God! — I am not certain that even if I pull off one of his arms it won’t crawl after me and attack me in my hotel bed. Hell, I am thrilled I escape before he expels his ink.”
Carroll then explains why she did not include the encounter in her Esquire piece. “I am a member of the Silent Generation. We do not flap our gums. We laugh it off and get on with life.”
In a statement to New York magazine, Moonves, 69 — who left his post as CEO and chairman of CBS last year after numerous sexual misconduct allegations were leveled against him — “emphatically denies” Carroll’s account.
Carroll also alleges that she was sexually assaulted by Trump, 73, in late 1995 or early 1996. The author claims that the real estate tycoon-turned-politician attacked her inside of a dressing room at New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store.
“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,” Carroll writes. “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.”
The White House vehemently denied any misconduct in a statement to New York magazine: “This is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the president look bad.”
In his own statement, President Trump wrote, “I’ve never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section.” He added, “Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves, or to sell a book, or carry out a political agenda… It’s just as bad for people to believe it, particularly when there is zero evidence. Worse still for a dying publication to try to prop itself up by peddling fake news — it’s an epidemic.”
Read Carroll’s entire excerpt from What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal here.
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