On Becoming a Witnessing Professional

“Donald Trump Sexually Abused and Defamed E.Jean Carroll, Jury Finds”

“A jury found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse against Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages.’” – May 9, 2023, New York Times

During these weeks that I have been reflecting on how violations of women’s and trans rights have impacted and inspired my work, writer E. Jean Carroll’s civil trial against Donald Trump has raged here in New York City. I cite the above headline and lede because they remind me that I would not be writing here – and I would not have been writing, speaking, teaching and even podcasting about the social and political impact of the traumas of sexual assault; of gender and race-based discrimination; and of the importance of seeing the intersections between psychology and politics for the past seven years, had it not been for Donald Trump’s election.

E. Jean Carroll’s courtroom triumph sent me back to the fall of 2016, when, following Trump’s election to the presidency, I was stirred to write an opinion piece for the news site Vox.com. At the time, while training to be a psychoanalyst, I was also working as a trauma therapist for the Office of Victims Services of a New York City hospital. There, I treated adult survivors of sexual assault, childhood molestation and domestic violence. Through the campaign season, we watched as Donald Trump bragged on tape about “pussy grabbing,” and was accused, over a dozen times, of sexual harassment or assault – including by E. Jean Carroll (“US election: Full transcript,” 2016). Yet this did not prevent him from becoming president of the United States.

For most of my patients, Trump’s win held the gut-punch message they feared: that the perpetrator always wins. Moreover, it delivered a second, perhaps more painful blow: that only the powerful matter, and might makes right. Throughout that November, I sat with the twenty some survivors I treated, many of them in their early- and mid-20s. They were of different races, religions,