Who is E Jean Carroll, woman who has accused Donald Trump of raping her?

E Jean Carroll's suit is a civil case, meaning that no matter the outcome, Donald Trump isn't in danger of going to jail.

E Jean Carroll, a writer and columnist, has accused Donald Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s, in the latest scandal to involve the former US President. Carroll alleges that the incident took place inside a luxury department store dressing room in New York City. In her case against Trump, Carroll says that after she ran into the future president at Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified spring Thursday evening in 1996. He invited her to shop with him for a woman's lingerie gift before they teased one another to try on a bodysuit. Carroll says they ended up alone together in a store dressing room, where Trump pushed her against a wall and raped before she fought him off and fled. Trump has vehemently denied the allegations, saying Carroll was motivated by money and fame as opening arguments kicked off the much-anticipated proceedings.

Here are 5 things to know about E Jean Carroll:

• Carroll wrote the popular “Ask E. Jean” relationship advice column in Elle magazine for 26 years, from 1993 to 2019. It was one of the longest-running columns in the United States.
• She had written for the iconic late-night show “Saturday Night Live” in the mid-1980s and was a contributing editor to Esquire, Outside, Playboy and New York magazines. She was the first woman contributing editor of Playboy.
• Carroll first made the rape allegation against Donald Trump in an excerpt from her book published by New York Magazine in 2019.
• In 2019, she was among the 13 women who accused CBS Corporation executive Les Moonves of sexual assault in the 1990s, an allegation he has denied.
• Born in Michigan and raised in Indiana, Carroll is the oldest of four children. She says she now lives in a “little cabin on an island (it's about the size of a mattress) in upstate New York”.