If Donald Trump wins in November his economic policies will have negative global ramifications.
Proceedings in a federal lawsuit filed against Donald Trump have been delayed.
Trump stands accused of the alleged repeated rape of a 13-year-old girl in the early 1990s at several parties hosted by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
According to the court docket, the date of an initial pretrial conference has been pushed back a month because the plaintiff has not yet filed affidavits of service.
An initial pretrial conference is presently scheduled for September 9, 2016 in this action. Plaintiff, however, has not yet filed affidavits of service confirming that Defendants have been served with copies of the summons and complaint. In order to allow Plaintiff the full amount of time authorized by Rule 4(m) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to serve Defendants and to allow Defendants the full amount of time authorized by Rule 12(a) to respond to the complaint in advance of the initial pretrial conference, the conference shall be adjourned until October 14, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. Initial Conference set for 10/14/2016 at 10:00 AM before Judge Ronnie Abrams.
This is not the first time the Republican presidential candidate has had rape allegations levelled against him. Although Trump’s defiantly overt misogyny and womanising reputation is well known and in some pockets celebrated, it’s not often one hears about the rape allegations.
Trump has in the past been accused of raping his ex-wife and attempting to rape a former business associate. Trump fervently denies these accusations.
The first accusation came from his now ex-wife Ivana Trump. The accusation became widely known after the harrowing details of the incident were made public in the 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J Trump, written by Harry Hurt III. During a deposition she gave in the 1990s (in which she used the word rape), Ivana describes a disturbing scene in which Trump raped her in a fit of rage. According to the book by Hurt, Trump’s anger stemmed from a painful scalp reduction surgery. Trump denies the incident ever took place, making sure before the book was sold in stores that it would include a statement in the front, written by Ivana, in which she withdraws her use of the word “rape.”
“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” the statement reads. “I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.” In her statement she added instead that she felt “violated”.
A second accusation, one of sexual assault, comes from a lawsuit filed in 1997. Jill Harth says she and her intimate partner George Houraney were working with Trump on a beauty pageant deal when Trump began making unwelcome sexual advances. In the lawsuit, Harth says he leered at her, pursued and cornered her, groped her without her consent on several occasions, and even “attempted rape”. Harth explains in her lawsuit how Trump took her into one of his children’s bedrooms at his Florida estate, threw her against a wall, fondled her, and lifted up her dress.
Trump denies the incident, even going as far as to call the allegations “meritless”. Harth withdrew her lawsuit shortly after Trump settled a separate lawsuit with Houraney over a business matter. But she holds firm to her accusation. Harth and Trump had a cordial relationship until recently when the allegations resurfaced. Trump publicly said in May 2016 that her claims were meritless and his daughter Ivanka gave an interview in which she stated her father was “not a groper”.
According to The Guardian, it was at this point Harth spoke out, seeking an apology, saying, “Don’t call me a liar”. Harth says Trump’s people have contacted her on several occasions in an attempt to make her alter her story and deny it ever happened. “I said I’m not doing that,” she told The Guardian. Harth believes she has been branded a liar and that her business has suffered as a consequence of that label.
The third case against Trump is a recent federal lawsuit filed in June 2016 in the State of New York by “Jane Doe”. In the suit, Doe alleges that Trump raped her in 1994, when she was 13 years old. According to legal documents, Doe says she attended parties with Trump and his friend Jeffrey Epstein – a registered sex offender known in the US media as the “billionaire paedophile”. Doe, who was trying to break into modelling, says it was during these parties that Trump initiated sex with her on several occasions and on one occasion she alleges he raped her.
According to the suit, Trump exposed himself to her and then raped her in a “savage sexual attack”, saying “that he would do whatever he wanted”. In a statement filed with the lawsuit, Doe says Trump threatened to ruin her life and that of her family if she ever told anyone about the incident.
A witness in the case, “Tifanny Doe” said in a statement she had advised both Epstein and Trump that the plaintiff was 13 years old but she had witnessed both men engaging in various sexual acts with Jane Doe.
Trump has vehemently denied the allegations, saying: “These allegations are not only categorically false, but disgusting at the highest level and clearly framed to solicit media attention or, perhaps, are simply politically motivated. There is absolutely no merit to these allegations. Period.”
It’s not likely that any other women with similar experiences will come forward, given how people who speak about their sexual assault at the hands of powerful and influential men are treated. It’s almost certain the characters of Trump’s accusers or the timing of the court proceedings will be called into question. Their financial situations may even be called a motivation for stepping forward. The need for anonymity is not by chance if any of the details of the Stanford Rapist case are anything to go by. We live in a society that would rather protect and exonerate men than take a moment to interrogate its complicity in how and why victims or survivors are silenced. We are a society that encourages and upholds rape culture.
Trump’s misogynist bluster has a long and storied past but the fact that this allegation, like many others involving prominent men, would be bogged down by Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, for example, says a lot about us and the patriarchal world we live in.