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 [ VOICES ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=375)

#  Did He or Didn’t He? THAT is not the question.

Written by Liz Amsden.

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ACCORDING TO LIZ - The question is how the woman felt?

The jury did not find Donald Trump guilty of the rape of E. Jean Carroll since the jurors clearly could not unanimously agree if there had been vaginal penetration.

Come again? How can anyone prove such an action without pornographically-placed cameras?

Conservative justices and the law have got to move on from categorizing degree of rape based on physical characteristics and start to acknowledge the trauma of abuse which has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power.

This only serves to underline what many girls and women (and a growing number of men and boys) face in reporting a sexual attack. The shaming of having to give a report and suffer an examination. The reliving of the event again and again and again through trials and appeals. The newspaper stories, the whispered innuendos.

The grief of not being believed.

The guilt that they did not fight long enough or hard enough, did not scream loud enough, couldn’t reach the pepper spray, weren’t able to wriggle into a position where they could knee their attacker’s balls.

The self-reproach of not standing up if they choose to avoid this carnage that any accusation would stir up.

Rape is a crime of violence perpetrated by people who feel entitled to enforce their power. With the power in many cases to avoid or ignore attempts to seek retribution. And to malign their accuser.

Trump is the epitome of the #Me-Only Movement, that ugly animal underbelly of society where greed reigns and violence is king. It’s all about the high of hurting others, that rush that power gives some men to take, take, take, and further exhibited by physical abuse and the dehumanizing of others.

It’s a male gorilla beating his chest, it’s a Putin threatening nuclear warfare, it’s a McCarthy pandering to Republican extremists threatening the world’s economy by refusing to lift the debt ceiling.

On the infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape which he put down to “locker-room banter” when running for President in 2016, Trump boasts to Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything” and “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Last October in his pre-trial deposition with Roberta Kaplan, his accuser’s attorney, when asked if his claim it was okay to grab someone’s genitals without their permission was true, Trump agreed, almost 100%. “Unfortunately or fortunately.”

At a time when this poor excuse of a human being stood accused not only of this rape but many more, in addition to a salacious variety of other sexual peccadillos. No empathy, no remorse.

Trump versus E. Jean Carroll is not just the story of a wealthy and entitled man casually crossing a line. This is about a woman who faced shame and criticism for telling the truth. Again and again.

And then facing what deters too many people – boys and girls, men and women – for reporting a rape: the vicious attack in a public court by their rapist and paid-for counsel.

As Carroll said after her, albeit partial, vindication: “This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”

*(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)*

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