NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times [New York NY]
April 26, 2023
By Amanda Holpuch and Christine Hauser
On Wednesday, E. Jean Carroll, who told a Manhattan jury that former President Donald J. Trump raped her in a department store, said she was trying to get her “life back” and grew emotional as she spoke nearly 30 years after the events she described.
It is not unusual for people who are sexually assaulted to not come forward right away.
“The victim has to be prepared to be the sole carrier of the information, and they also carry the burden of all the questions,” said Veronique Valliere, a psychologist who counsels sexual assault perpetrators and victims.
“All the defense has to do really is to attack the decision-making of the victim,” she said. “All they have to do is to try to diminish the credibility of the victim to introduce doubt.”
Often, a victim of a sexual assault must struggle against public perception if they are accusing someone famous or powerful. “If the offender happens to have resources, like money or status, immediately people go to thinking there is an alternative motive for fabrication,” Dr. Valliere said.
For some survivors, seeing a high-profile case and the type of questioning Ms. Carroll will face could lead them to not report sexual assault. Only 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police, according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.
There is also the challenge, which can be intimidating to victims, of being believable while testifying. How is a person supposed to behave? What should they remember?
Leigh Goodmark, a law professor at the University of Maryland, said that a common misconception is that people recall every detail of a traumatic event.
“In fact, the brain is pretty great about shielding us from having to relive that trauma over and over again, and often blanks out periods of time for us that we don’t want to live over and over again because we couldn’t go on with our regular lives if we had to,” she said.