For a moment, E Jean Carroll appeared stricken.
Not a single member of the jury looked at her as they filed back into court, verdict on her rape case against Donald Trump in hand.
The foreperson handed the decision to the court clerk, who read the answer to the first question: “Did Ms Carroll prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Mr Trump raped Ms Carroll?”
The six men and three women on the jury answered: No.
Carroll’s face fell. Had her three days on the witness stand describing in graphic detail how Trump “rummaged around in her vagina” after pinning her down in a department store changing room failed to convince the jurors after all?
Had the 10 other witnesses, including the friends who testified that she told them about the attack when it occurred in 1996, been dismissed as conspiracists against Trump, as his defence claimed?
The clerk moved on to the second question: had Trump sexually abused the advice columnist?
The jurors unanimously said: Yes.
Carroll’s face lit up. She was believed after all. One of her lawyers, Shaun Crowley, beamed next to her. Some of the jurors caught her eye.
There were more questions to be answered but Carroll had already won.
A group of New Yorkers sat through all the evidence and believed the 79-year-old advice columnist when she described how the former and possibly future president, now 76, lured her into danger with his charm and then, in an instant, became a “monster”.
Trump called her a liar and a “nut job” and described her accusations as a hoax. But the jury decided that he was the liar, and much worse. It made the former president pay to the tune of $5m for the sexual assault and for defaming Carroll while denying it happened.
The jury’s job done, Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, who subjected Carroll to nearly two days of at times gruelling cross-examination, walked over and shook her hand.
Then the former Elle advice columnist turned and headed towards the back of the courtroom.
She stopped, on the edge of tears, to hug friends and supporters at the front of the public gallery. Then she walked into a small conference room with her legal team where, finally, they could let out cries of delight.
The judge, Lewis Kaplan, gave the jurors several options in reaching a verdict. He said that in order to establish that Trump raped her, Carroll must prove he engaged in sexual intercourse involving any penetration, however slight, of the penis into the vaginal opening. It must also have been the result of “forcible compulsion”.
The jurors could not unanimously agree that Trump had indeed forced his penis into Carroll’s vagina, given that she described it as relatively fleeting. But, given that the verdict came back in less than three hours, it appears they had little trouble agreeing the second option on the form, of sexual abuse.
The judge said that finding required that Carroll prove Trump subjected her to sexual contact without consent by use of force, and that it was for the purpose of sexual gratification.
Tacopina repeatedly tried to shake Carroll’s account in which she described Trump pinning her against a wall with his shoulder, forcibly kissing her, ripping off her tights then pressing his fingers into her vagina. But the former president’s lawyer achieved little more than giving Carroll the opportunity to repeatedly recount the details of the attack.
Neither did Tacopina’s attempts to challenge her veracity by questioning why she didn’t scream or call the police play well for his client.
At the beginning of the trial, Carroll testified that Trump’s attack destroyed her romantic life. She told the jury she had not had sex in more than quarter of a century because she could barely look at a man she was interested in. And then the former president destroyed her reputation when he called her a liar, leading Elle magazine to fire her after 27 years.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” she said. “He lied and shattered my reputation. I’m here to try and get my life back.”
On Tuesday, the jury granted her wish.
