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The Dropped Trump Case Reminds Us That No Rape Is ‘Believable’

CoCaFran
The Establishment
Published in
6 min readNov 8, 2016
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Periodically throughout this election season, people pause to remember that a variety of complaints — including allegations of sexual assault — have been lodged against one of the main candidates: Donald Trump.

Six days ago, the plaintiff in a lurid rape case against Trump dropped the lawsuit; this after she canceled a press conference due to death threats. The allegations of the lawsuit were as follows: In the 1990s, Trump attended parties hosted by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. At four of these parties, Trump engaged in sexual contact with the plaintiff, who was then 13; at the fourth party, Trump tied her to a bed and forcibly raped her. Two anonymous witnesses corroborate various aspects of her story.

A number of outlets have covered the case, though up until a few days ago, it had garnered considerably less attention than other aspects of the 2016 campaign — including allegations by a number of women regarding other inappropriate behavior on the part of the Republican candidate.

The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grimm provides some insight as to why the case has not been much addressed by the mainstream media. However, the key reasons cited — anonymity of the plaintiff, who goes by the pseudonyms Katie Johnson and Jane Doe; severity of the claims; problematic backers — don’t…

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The Establishment
The Establishment

Published in The Establishment

The archives of culture + politics site, The Establishment. Media funded and founded by women — Nikki Gloudeman, Kelley Calkins and Katie Tandy with Ijeoma Oluo, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jessica Sutherland. The conversation is much more interesting when everyone has a voice.