E. Jean Carroll was a trailblazing journalist before her defamation trial against Trump

When E. Jean Carroll took the stand Wednesday in her defamation lawsuit against former president President Donald Trump, she spoke of how he'd maligned her character.

"When I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,'' said Carroll, who first revealed the alleged assault in a 2019 memoir. "He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back."

Carroll who was cross-examined for hours by Trump's attorney Thursday, first sued Trump in 2019 and then filed another claim in November under a New York state law which gives abuse victims a year to sue even if the statute of limitation has ended for the alleged crime.

Trump has repeatedly denied Carroll's rape allegation, and Carroll says Trump's statements that she was "lying'' and engaged in a "complete con job'' led to her being bombarded with a deluge of hateful messages.

Cross-examined:Donald Trump's lawyer questions rape accuser E. Jean Carroll 

Carroll has been questioned and scrutinized for the story she told and the winding, sometimes colorful way she told it ever since she lodged her accusation. But the pioneering journalist has said that initially, she was surrounded by support.

”I’ve been in a cocoon of love and support,'' Carroll told USA TODAY in a phone interview in 2019, saying then that people had been sending her positive messages, texts, and even approaching her on the street.

It was likely not the response some would have imagined. But Carroll has spent a lifetime defying expectations. 

Journalism pioneer, beauty queen

A former beauty queen, she became a pioneer in the world of literary journalism. A daughter of the Midwest, she found renown in the elite media circles of New York. And in her 70s, Carroll remained a beacon to millions of readers seeking out her frank talk about sex, success and love.

The accusation: E. Jean Carroll told two people about her alleged rape. This is what they remember.

The coverage: Why are we so reluctant to talk about Carroll's accusation?

In 2019, Lisa Chase remembered the first time she read a piece by Carroll.

“I thought she was hilarious,'' said Chase, who'd first edited Carroll three decades earlier when Chase was an editor with Outside magazine. "When you hire E. Jean, you want a funny story with feeling and empathy.''

But though the two women became friends, Carroll's allegations of being sexually assaulted byTrump in a posh Manhattan department store nearly 30 years ago was one Carroll never shared.

"I was asking her for years to write a memoir,'' said Chase, who edited Carroll's advice column in Elle magazine from 2005 to 2017. "I had no idea she had these stories. She kept them to herself."

Carroll's book, “What Do We Need Men For?'' detailed an allegation, first excerpted in New York magazine, that Trump assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Two of Carroll's friends confirmed to the New York Times that she told them about the incident shortly after it allegedly occurred. Trump has continuously denied assaulting her.

The book: E. Jean Carroll's book is out. What to know about her allegation

"This is a fraudulent & false story," Trump has said on his Truth Social website.

E. Jean Carroll was 'out talking to people'

Long before this fraught moment in the media's glare, Carroll was a journalistic luminary, known for her Ask E. Jean advice column, and for being a presence amid the glitzy nightlife scene of 1980s and 90s New York.

"There's a circuit in New York,'' said Chase. "You go out to events. You go to premieres.  ... You go to dinner parties. She was on TV. She was writing. She was beautiful and smart and funny. She was married to a person (John Johnson) who was a big on-air personality. She was in that world.''

Carroll carved a niche in television, writing for "Saturday Night Live" in the 1980s and hosting her own "Ask E. Jean'' show on MSNBC's predecessor, America's Talking, from 1994 to 1996.

But it was her writing, featured in publications like Rolling Stone and Playboy – where Carroll became the first woman to be named a contributing editor – that established Carroll as a trailblazer.

"That was the tabloid era,'' Roger Friedman, editor-in-chief of the entertainment news website Showbiz411, said in a 2019 interview.

Friedman, who edited Fame magazine from 1987 to 1991 and later wrote New York magazine's Intelligencer column said: "People were chasing scoops. You didn't have cell phones. You didn't have the internet. You had to get up, put your hat on and get the story. ... She was a person out talking to people.''

Carroll became known for a style of writing and reporting dubbed gonzo journalism. A hallmark of writers like Hunter S. Thompson, whose biography Carroll wrote, and Tom Wolfe, it was a school of storytelling in which journalists often made themselves part of the tale, offering up humorous – sometimes outrageous – personal experiences.

"In the literary journalism world, she was a player, which is saying a lot,'' Chase said. "There weren't a lot of women who were being hired by men's magazines. And she was.''

Carroll also drew comparisons to famed filmmaker and writer Nora Ephron.

"Both are fiendish reporters who find their subject matter in left field,'' Kirkus Review wrote in a critique of "Female Difficulties: Sorority Sisters, Rodeo Queens, Frigid Women, Smut Stars, And Other Modern Girls," a book Carroll penned in the 1980s. "Carroll, though, is wilder than Ephron, content not just to set a scene but sometimes to steal one, too.”

Candace Bushnell, the writer whose "Sex and The City'' column in the New York Observer inspired the iconic HBO show of the same name, was a fan.

"I’ve known E. Jean or known of her since at least the ’ ’80s,'' Bushnell said in an email sent to USA TODAY in 2019. "She was the coolest woman journalist around – daring, had a ton of guts, and was as funny as the guys. She was a female gonzo journalist. In the mid-nineties I hung out with her quite a bit. ... There really wasn’t and isn’t anyone else like her.''

Chase said the last piece she asked Carroll to write was about an all-woman rafting trip. "I think we called it women who run with no clothes on because at some point in the trip all the women took off their clothes and rafted naked down the river, which I'm sure was her idea. ... She's had an adventurous life.''

Young E. Jean Carroll

Elizabeth Jean "Jeannie" Carroll's journey started out much more conventionally.

Carroll spent her childhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the oldest of four children in a family that included a younger brother and two sisters.

It was a Midwestern life, in mid-century America. But Carroll felt that she could be whatever, and whoever, she wanted to be. "I was free,'' she told USA TODAY. "I grew up in the '40s and '50s. I rode my bike all over town. I started to drive when I was 14. ... The world will knock you down, pay you less, tell you you're not as good. But when you're a kid, everything is possible.''

Carroll's writing ambitions bloomed early. "I was filling the U.S. mail with pitches to magazines ... at the age of 12,'' she remembers. "So apparently I thought of myself as a writer. I mean, if I'm writing to the Sears and Roebuck catalog, pitching a story to them, I guess I wanted to be a writer.''

A member of the class of 1967, Carroll was named Miss Indiana University, as well as Miss Cheerleader U.S.A., which earned her a scholarship.

Carroll was also a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority, but in an article in the October 1996 issue of Indianapolis Monthly, she says that the group "kicked me out 20 years later for something I wrote for Playboy about sorority rush. I wasn't too kind.''

The first time Carroll touched down in New York was after college.

"I thought it was the most marvelous place in the world,'' she said. Her first job? "Honda had their new motorcycle, and I sat on the Honda and greeted people at the World's Fair in the Japanese exhibit right across from the Japanese tea ceremony people. It was fabulous.''

People from Indiana visiting the exhibition recognized her, asking if she was that cheerleader who'd been Miss Indiana University. "I'd say, 'No, who are you talking about?' "

After that first brush with Manhattan, Carroll traveled to Africa, lived in Montana with her first husband, Steve Byers, and spent time in Chicago. But after she landed a piece in Esquire, Carroll's writing career began to take off.

She returned to New York to interview Fran Lebowitz for the cover of Outside magazine, and she stayed for good.

"I had jeans, cowgirl boots, a fringe jacket, a couple of shirts,'' she says. "And that's it."

E. Jean Carroll in the 80s

In her book, Carroll says that she had only met Trump once before the day she says she encountered him at Bergdorf Goodman. Trump, meanwhile, has said that he doesn't know her.

However, there is a photograph showing that their paths did cross. Dated "around 1987,'' it is a shot of Carroll; her then-husband, former New York City anchorman John Johnson; and Trump with his first wife, Ivana.

At the time the picture was taken, Times Square had not yet become the tourist mecca some later disparagingly likened to Disneyland. In those days, visitors to New York were still being warned not to ride the subway after dark.

“In the 80s, everyone worried about getting mugged,'' Friedman recalled. "There was graffiti everywhere and your car was constantly broken into. ... Cars all had signs that said 'no radio inside.' "

But New York was also the capital of media, finance and fashion, and for a glittering set, it was a glamorous, golden era. Studio 54, the legendary disco, shut its doors in 1980, but new night spots like Nell's rose up on the scene, and eateries like Michael's were among the cool corners where the chic and powerful gathered.

One of the most legendary was the bar and restaurant Elaine's, frequented by a local who's who of writers, actors and artists.

"I lived in Elaine's,'' Carroll said. "I knew everybody there. I was sitting at the writer's table and that was heaven on Earth. ... You could go in at any time and there was always a table of writers, and you would just sit down. Sometimes detectives would join us. Sometimes prizefighters. But there was always a writers' table, and it was usually on a Thursday night.''

Everyone who was anyone in the world of publishing would pass through, she says,  including Jackie Kennedy, who was an editor, Norman Mailer, and Gay Talese. "Sometimes the evenings would be so hot with celebrities, it was unbelievable.''

Elaine's was also where she met Johnson, "the big-time New York anchorman, and one of the prettiest and most accomplished men in Manhattan,'' she wrote in "What Do We Need Men For?" Johnson was sitting with TV journalist Geraldo Rivera, who, when the couple got married in the Hamptons, served as their best man.

Trump was also a fixture on New York's nightlife scene. The 1980s was the decade when Trump Tower first opened its doors and Trump's memoir "The Art of the Deal'' was published. Both helped turn him into a celebrity, propelling Trump's brash, boastful persona beyond the pages of the local tabloids to appearances on national shows like "Late Night with David Letterman" and "60 Minutes."

E. Jean Carroll in the 90s

Meanwhile, Carroll's writing career continued to thrive. In 1993, her Ask E. Jean column debuted in Elle, and for nearly three decades, Carroll doled out tough love to its millions of readers, cushioning her guidance with humor, irreverence and references that included Saint Teresa and the artist Frida Kahlo.

In one column, dated Sept. 20, 2006, a woman wrote that she was "married to the perfect man'' but was miserable because her wealthy husband was reluctant to even pay for her to get a facial.

Carroll first gave the woman a recipe for homemade beauty treatment ("Puree three tablespoons of honey, two tablespoons of milk and 10 strawberries ... Your skin will be instantly shimmerized."). She then told the advice seeker to get a job and to get out of the marriage.

"Now that you feel better, take a look around and ask yourself: Why am I letting this creep control my life?'' Carroll wrote. "Hunny, he's well on his way to becoming an abuser. Get out while you can. ... Hire a good divorce attorney and leave."

"There was a lot of realism in her advice to women." said Chase, Carroll's editor at Elle. "She thought about the way women really lived. ... She might say, 'Yes, you should leave him, but will you? Can you? And if you can’t, here's what you can do to ... get to that point.' "

In the course of their friendship, Chase said she, too, had received some straightforward advice from Carroll, who ran a dating service and had set her up on a couple of dates.

"She said to me ... 'It's impossible, you're never going to find anybody,'' said Chase, who was resuming dating after her husband, Peter Kaplan, the former editor of the New York Observer, died in 2013. "I knew what she was saying. 'It's going to be very hard for you to find somebody who you love the way you loved him.' ...   It turns out she wasn’t totally right because I did find someone I love. But it was a truthful moment, which I really appreciated.’’

Still, given the era in which Carroll grew up, Chase said that she was not surprised that a consummate giver of guidance would keep some of her own troubling experiences to herself.

"She’s of a generation of women who were brought up not to do that,'' Chase said. "She was beautiful and expected to do and be certain things and she wanted a bigger life. ...She's empathic. But she's also private about things.''

Carroll's writing style and voice have informed her recounting of Trump's alleged sexual assault. And some have questioned the way she's described a traumatic event, as well as her refusal initially to call what she says happened rape.

“Every woman gets to choose her word,'' Carroll said in an interview on the New York Times' The Daily podcast after her allegation against Trump was first revealed.  "Every woman gets to choose how she describes it. ... I have not been raped. Something has not been done to me. I fought. That’s the thing.’’

But during her first day of testimony Wednesday, Carroll was clear.

"I'm here because Donald Trump raped me," she said.

'You've got nothing to lose'

Carroll told USA TODAY that there was no mystery to how she came up with the nuggets she dispensed over decades to her readers.

"Giving advice is just following common sense,'' she said . "Nothing special. That's it. I think that's why a lot of therapists write to me. ... They have studied for years and years and years, the psychology and the human being, but sometimes it’s just a common-sense thing and the simplest advice will work.''

When Carroll needs guidance, she said she turned to an unexpected source, reading passages written by classic writers like Henry David Thoreau and Marcus Aurelius.

Aurelius in particular has provided her the words she seems to have lived by.

"I learned that when you get up in the morning you have to believe that this could be the day you die and that grass will be very shortly growing on your grave, and so get on with it," she says. "It’s a real good way to get up. ... It really keeps you happy, oddly enough, because you've got nothing to lose.''

Contributing: Associated Press, Maria Puente, Nyssa Kruse, Indianapolis Star

Follow Charisse Jones on Twitter @charissejones

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: E. Jean Carroll: A fixture of New York night life, media before suit