A New York jury found Donald Trump guilty of sexually assaulting former Elle magazine journalist E. Jean Carroll 27 years ago.

This is the first time a former US president has been declared a sexual predator, but since this is a civil case, not a criminal one, the only legal sanction Trump will face is a financial one.

76-year-old Donald Trump must pay 79-year-old E. Jean Carroll five million dollars in compensation for the physical and psychological suffering she caused him.

“This verdict is a disgrace,” Donald Trump immediately condemned.

In November 2019, E. Jean Carroll (79), known for her former chronicles in Elle magazine, sued the former leader of the White House for defamation after he described the woman’s accusations as “absolute lies” in June 2019. who says Donald Trump raped her in a fitting room at a New York department store in the mid-1990s.

In 2019, Carroll was unable to file a rape complaint because the statute of limitations had expired.

However, on November 24, 2022, a New York State law (the “Adult Survivors Act”) went into effect that allows victims of sexual assault to reopen their civil cases within one year.

So Carroll filed a new complaint in November in New York alleging “defamation” as well as “assault” and “battery” and seeking civil damages.

Both filed affidavits last October.

In his Oct. 19 video conference testimony, Donald Trump reiterated his line of defense: “I will say this with the utmost respect: First, she is not my type; secondly, it never happened.”

But when shown a photo of him with Carroll at a party in the 1990s, he replied: “That’s Marla, that’s my wife,” before being corrected by his own lawyer, Alina Hubba.

Donald Trump was married from 1993 to 1999 to comedian Marley Maples, 59, and met his current wife Melania in 1998.

In a defamation lawsuit, E. Jean Carroll filed a civil suit against Trump in November 2019. She is suing him for defamation after he called her rape allegations “total lies” in June of that year.

The then resident of the White House always replied that the journalist was not “his kind of woman”, and his lawyers argued that in 2019 he was protected by immunity as the head of state.