Jury reaches verdict in Donald Trump rape case

A jury in New York has reached a verdict in the Donald Trump rape case.

Just a few hours after the jury began deliberating the civil lawsuit, they reached a conclusion by rejecting E Jean Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her at a Manhattan department store in 1996.

He denied the longtime advice columnist’s accusation that he attacked her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.

However, the former US president has been found liable for sexual assault and defamation by the jury.

As a result, Ms Carroll was awarded a total of five million dollars.

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In terms of a breakdown, the jury awarded Carroll a total of three million dollars in damages for defamation, 2.7 million dollars which is compensatory and $280,000 of which is believed to be punitive.

They awarded $20,000 in punitive damages against Trump over a claim of battery made by Carroll.

Trump's liability for sexual assault also meant Ms Carroll was awarded two million dollars in damages.

In the closing arguments for Carroll’s case, attorney Roberta Kaplan showed jurors video clips of Trump from his October deposition and replayed the Access Hollywood video from 2005 in which Trump said into a hot mic that celebrities can grab women’s genitals without asking.

The videos were presented to jurors on the same day that onetime People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff testified that Mr Trump forcibly kissed her against her will while showing her around his Florida home for a 2005 article about the first anniversary of his marriage to Melania Trump.

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“He came toward me again, and I tried to shove him again. He was kissing me and, you know, was against me,” she recalled.

She said she was 'flustered and shocked' but unable to speak and did not scream: “No words came out of me.”

Ms Kaplan recalled Trump’s comment that 'stars like him can get away with sexually assaulting women'.

“That’s who Donald Trump is. That is how he thinks. And that’s what he does,” Ms Kaplan said.

“He thinks he can get away with it here.”

In a rebuttal argument, Ms Carroll’s attorney, Mike Ferrara, mocked Trump’s decision to skip the trial, saying jurors could use his absence to conclude that Trump committed the attack because Trump 'never looked you in the eye and denied it'.

“He didn’t even bother to show up here in person,” Ms Kaplan said

“In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself.

“He knows what he did. He knows that he sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll.”