"Ms. Carroll, 75, stopped short of using the word 'rape' on Monday to characterize the episode..."

"... which she said in the New York magazine excerpt that she disclosed to two friends at the time. One urged her to report it to the police, while a journalist friend warned her to keep quiet because Mr. Trump would 'bury you.' The New York Times spoke to the two friends, who confirmed that Ms. Carroll had spoken about it with them but said they did not want to be identified. 'I have difficulty with the word,' Ms. Carroll, the author of 'Ask E. Jean' in Elle, said Monday. 'I see it as a fight. He pulled down my tights. It was over very quickly. It was against my will 100 percent.'"

From "‘She’s Not My Type’: Accused Again of Sexual Assault, Trump Resorts to Old Insult" (NYT).

To assume for the sake of discussion that she is telling the truth, I can see why Carroll did not go to the police, why she listened to the journalist friend who warned her that Trump would "bury" her. I haven't read her New York Magazine article, but I see in this Times article, that Trump — as she described it — "asked her to model lingerie that he was looking to purchase." As she tells it, she willingly went into the department store dressing room with him to undress to the point of being able to put on lingerie while he watched. That's consent to some fairly intimate shared behavior, with her undressing and him watching.

Of course, she has the right to withdraw from that plan at any point, but his lawyers would use that level of consent against her, and the question now is whether her allegations are credible in light of her failure to go to the police at the time. And I think the way she's answering that question is that she chose to protect herself from the legal battle in which he would have exploited the evidence she would not deny — that she voluntarily went into the dressing room with him with the express plan to get into lingerie that he had picked out.

Don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that under those circumstances, he was entitled to proceed with ideas about additional activities she might agree to. I'm just talking about how her story today could be true even though she did not report it to the police.

Notice that even today she will not call it "rape." She describes penetration and says "It was against my will 100 percent." I don't understand not calling that rape. That is rape, for sure. She just doesn't want to use the word. Is she one of those people who think when you get yourself into the circumstance of being in a private space with someone you know is thinking about you sexually, it's not real rape?