Donald Trump accused of rape as journalist E Jean Carroll alleges sexual assault by president

Donald Trump has been accused of raping a woman in a department store changing room 23 years ago - the 16th woman to accuse him of sexual assault.

E. Jean Carroll, an agony aunt, television show host and magazine columnist, made the accusation in an essay in NY Magazine, published on Friday.

Mr Trump on Friday said he had "never met this person in my life".

He added: "“Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves, or sell a book, or carry out a political agenda.

“False accusations diminish the severity of real assault. All should condemn false accusations and any actual assault in the strongest possible terms."

In the cover photo, Carroll is wearing the Donna Karan coat-dress that she had on that day, which she said “still hangs on the back of my closet door.” It is the first time she has worn the dress since the incident.

Now aged 75, she said the incident happened in a Bergdorf Goodman changing room, in New York, in the autumn of 1995 or spring of 1996.

Mr Trump, she said, greeted her with the words: “Hey, you’re that advice lady!”

She replied: “Hey, you’re that real-estate tycoon!”

He asks her help to buy a gift for a woman. She describes him in colourful terms, noting: "he yammers about himself like he’s Alexander the Great ready to loot Babylon."

The pair settled on a gift of lingerie, and when he asks her to model it she jokingly says he must try it on first.

Inside the changing room, she writes, he pinned her to the wall.

"He opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.

"It turns into a colossal struggle.

"I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room."

She said the encounter lasted less than three minutes. She confirmed with Bergdorf Goodman that there were no video cameras recording the incident.

One friend told her to go straight to the police. Another friend told her his lawyers would destroy her.

And she said she had stayed silent because she was "a coward".

"Receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed, being dragged through the mud, and joining the 15 women who’ve come forward with credible stories about how the man grabbed, badgered, belittled, mauled, molested, and assaulted them, only to see the man turn it around, deny, threaten, and attack them, never sounded like much fun. Also, I am a coward."

The White House has strongly denied Ms Carroll's accusations, describing them as "completely false".

“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 the article, entitled Hideous Men – drawn from her new book – Ms Carroll also accuses fix other men of attacking her.

Among them is disgraced former chairman and CEO of CBS Corporation, Les Moonves, who she accused of assaulting her in a Beverly Hills hotel during an interview in 1997.

Moonves “emphatically denies” the incident occurred.

Mr Trump at the time of the incident was married to Marla Maples.

His ex-wife, Ivana, had claimed in their divorce documents that Mr Trump violated her during their marriage – a claim she then recanted after Mr Trump launched his campaign for the presidency.

During his presidential campaign a series of women came forward to accuse Mr Trump of sexual assault in the years before and during the time period of Carroll’s account – among them Kristin Anderson, Jill Harth, Cathy Heller, and Temple Taggart McDowell.

A further 11 accused Mr Trump of sexual assault in the period after Ms Carroll’s alleged incident making her the 16th woman to accuse Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. She is also the 14th to accuse Moonves of similar offenses.

Mr Trump has always denied all accusations, and threatened to sue his accusers.

In March 2018 three of the women - Samantha Holvey, Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks - went on a US chat show to demand an inquiry into the president’s behaviour, headed by Congress.

The White House dismissed the calls, saying the American people had spoken on the matter by electing him president.

Their statement said "the timing and absurdity of these false claims speaks volumes and the publicity tour that has begun only further confirms the political motives behind them."

In March of this year a New York appeals court rejected Mr Trump’s argument that the Constitution makes him immune from state lawsuits, clearing the way for a defamation suit from a former contestant on “The Apprentice” who has said he groped her.

Summer Zervos said Mr Trump twice forced himself on her in 2007: in a job interview in Trump Tower in Manhattan, and during a meeting in Los Angeles.

Mr Trump responded to the claims by calling the women liars and re-tweeting a picture of Ms Zervos with the sentence, “This is all yet another hoax.” Ms Zervos sued for defamation in New York State Supreme Court, saying the allegations were true and his comments had damaged her reputation.

Mr Trump’s lawyers have vowed to fight the ruling and to take the argument to the state Court of Appeals.