The ‘Strange Sorority’
Donald Trump was their initiation.
Sometimes there are those stories that you just can’t quite let go of. Years after the news cycle moves on, after the public loses interest, after your editors tire of you hearing about it, you find yourselves thinking about your subjects.
In the movies, these are the stories that take down the villains, change the course of history, win prizes. There’s always a SVU-style crime wall somewhere. And while yes that does happen, there are plenty of other times you just have to move on because you have new stories to cover, deadlines to meet, other work to do, life, etc etc etc.
I didn’t have a crime wall for this, per se, but it is one of those pieces — about a group of women whose stories have stayed with me, in part because they remain profoundly unresolved. They are the women who accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, and they are still here.
I hope you’ll read an excerpt of my story below, or click here to read the whole thing in the NYT (no subscription required). Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting my work. <3
They Call Themselves the ‘Strange Sisterhood.’ Trump Was Their Initiation.
In Natasha Stoynoff’s fantasy, the women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct finally get to confront him. The details of the scenario change a bit, depending on how she tells it, but a few things remain consistent.
E. Jean Carroll, the former gonzo journalist who won millions of dollars in court after Mr. Trump denied assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, leads the questioning. Ms. Stoynoff, a sturdy Slavic blonde and trained boxer, who in real life is far too Canadian to intimidate anyone, makes sure his attention does not stray. Maybe Jill Harth, a makeup artist who sued Mr. Trump for sexual harassment and attempted rape, is there, too, shaking her head over the too-orange foundation she used to chide him about.
The women are not looking for revenge, exactly. They simply want an acknowledgment and an apology. An admission, from the man himself, that they aren’t crazy or hysterical or gold diggers or liars, that he really did what they say he did to them, even as he told the world they were too old, too ugly, too haggard to possibly be his type.
In the fantasy, which Stoynoff is narrating to me as she nervously paces, Trump admits that he sexually abused each of the women and agrees never to run for elected office again.
“If only,” Stoynoff says.
We are sitting on the porch of an old Victorian home in a suburb of Chicago, just a few miles from the Democratic National Convention, where Stoynoff is preparing to record a video that is probably the closest thing to a confrontation she’s going to get.
In it, she will recount the day in 2005 when she says Donald Trump assaulted her. She was on assignment from People magazine to write about his wedding anniversary. She says a seven-months-pregnant Melania Trump was upstairs changing. “You know my one regret,” she tells me, “is that I didn’t deck him.” She is in a red blouse and jeans, with Converse sneakers, and suddenly stops to widen her stance, as if preparing to spar. “I’m strong. I hit hard,” she says, feigning a punch with her right arm into the muggy air. “But it’s like a reflex thing. I was so shocked I just froze.”
The video Stoynoff records will eventually be cut into a 60-second ad spot aimed at influencing swing-state voters, independents and in particular, women. But it will also target Trump himself. In addition to airing nationally on a handful of networks — including CNN and MSNBC, and NewsNation during the veep debate next week — the ad will appear on the Golf Channel and Fox News, specifically in the markets where Trump is most likely to be watching: Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, N.J.
Stoynoff has written about what she says happened to her. She has been asked about it repeatedly by fellow journalists, and testified to it under oath during Carroll’s civil trial against Mr. Trump. And yet as I speak with her that day on the porch, she is nervous.
Karena Virginia, a yoga instructor (who accused Mr. Trump of groping her at the U.S. Open in 1998), was supposed to be there with her and had even traveled to Chicago but backed out that morning. Alva Johnson, a former human resources executive and event planner who worked for Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign (and has accused him of kissing her on the job), was also in Chicago, but the video’s backers decided that her story, which involved a lawsuit and arbitration over an NDA, was too complicated to get across in that short format. Jessica Leeds, a retired stockbroker (who accused Mr. Trump of molesting her on a plane in the late 1970s), had wanted to come, but at 82, she didn’t feel up to the trip; she would record her portion of the video separately.
And so the whole women-banding-together-to-confront-their-attacker fantasy was going to consist solely of Ms. Stoynoff, pleading with America to hear her. She takes a sip of coffee, black, clears her throat and begins to tell her story again. Her voice shaky, her eyes periodically tearing up, she looks less like a woman seeking vengeance than one issuing a lonely plea: Remember us? Remember what he did? We’re still here.
Thanks for this reporting. Like many of those who commented on the article, I am in awe of the women who did what they did was right on behalf of the greater good. I will stand a little taller today knowing these stories of bravery in the face of abuse.
You captured the Sisters, Jessica!