A writer who accused Donald Trump of raping her in a luxury department store in the 1990s testified for the second day in a civil trial on Thursday, saying a new onslaught of social media slurs did nothing to diminish her pride in standing for to face the court.

The testimony in Manhattan federal court came a day after columnist E. Jean Carroll bluntly told the jury she came to court because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it wasn’t happened.

Carroll, 79, said social media users launched new attacks on her because people labeled her as a liar, slut, ugly, old.

But I couldn’t be prouder to be here, she tested.

The day before, she recounted how a chance meeting with Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman store in late 1995 or early 1996 turned from flirtatious frivolity in the desolate lingerie department to a violent sexual assault in a locker room. Carroll said Trump slammed her into a wall, ripped down her pantyhose, and raped her before kneeling him and fleeing.

“Donald Trump raped me,” the writer tells the jury in a trial

Her lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump’s alleged defamatory remarks. She never filed criminal charges.

Trump, 76, is not expected to appear at the trial. He has repeatedly claimed that the meeting never happened, that he doesn’t know Carroll, and that she isn’t his type. He launched a counterattack against the process on social media on Wednesday, telling followers on his Truth Social platform that the case was a fabricated SCAM and that her lawyer is a political operative.

The outburst led to a reprimand and a warning from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who called it completely inappropriate.

What appears to be the case is that your client is essentially trying to address his audience,” but, what’s trickier, in this case, the jury’s on cases that shouldn’t be spoken about, the judge noted.

After Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, promised to talk to Trump and ask him to stop posting, Kaplan warned: We may be getting into an area where your client may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability. .

The trial begins in E. Jean Carroll’s rape case against Trump

Later in the day, Kaplan again warned Tacopina to talk to Trump after the ex-president’s son, Eric, tweeted criticism of the funding Carroll’s lawyer had received from a wealthy Democratic aide.

The lawsuit is the result of a lawsuit filed by Carroll in November after the state of New York enacted a law that allowed adult victims of sexual assault to sue their attackers, even if the assault happened decades earlier.

The lawsuit includes one claim directly related to the alleged rape and a second claim stemming from comments Trump made last October about Carroll’s claims.

Rape charges put Trump and women back in the spotlight

Carroll testified that writing about her meeting with Trump in a 2019 memoir led to her being fired from Elle magazine, where she had worked as an advice columnist for 27 years, and even threatening her with death, leading her to buy bullets for a gun that she owned. .

The Associated Press usually doesn’t name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.