Ask E. Jean is a Powerful Look at Justice for Assault Against Women

While working in New York as a young public relations executive, I was assaulted.  I didn’t report my assailant and never said a word.  Why?  With certainty, I knew I would be blackballed and my career in entertainment would have ended before it had a chance to begin. No one would have believed me and all the blame would be pointing my direction.  I thought it was best to keep my mouth shut and to just chalk it up to a bad experience never to be revisited.

Millions of women have been sexually, physically and mentally assaulted for decades and the number one question is why didn’t they say anything. The number one reason is fear. Women are  always blamed for the assault.  What did you do?  What were you wearing?  Did you lead them on?  As if our sheer existence is an entitled enticement for men to do as they want with our bodies while poisoning our minds. So, in 2023, when  a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, awarding E. Jean Carroll $5 million and later in 2024, a jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million (later upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals) in a separate defamation lawsuit, I knew I had to find out what the deal was with this woman.

E. Jean Carroll’s writing was funny, bawdy, vivid and brutally honest about how women of her generation navigated the predations of men. She’d been a sorority sister, a beauty queen, a nationally ranked cheerleader, someone who knew how to use her looks to attract men. In no way did she see that as contradictory, instead she saw it as power. When sharing the events that took place with a powerful, now political figure with a close friend, they laughed instead of screaming, buried the memories and never reported to the police. They blamed themselves and n June 2019, everything changed.  Carroll graced the cover of New York Magazine where an excerpt from her book What Do We Need Men For  detailed Trump sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room and with that she instantly joined the ranks of a growing list of “Trump accusers” spreading “fake news.”

Directed by Ivy Meeropol, Ask E. Jean chronicles the life and career of f a former shoot from the hip talk show host, who didn’t suffer fools gladly and beat in court the only fool who counts – the leader of the so-called free world.

There are two stories laid out in the course of this doc.  The first one does a deep dive into Carroll’s past. We see her as a cheerleader, as a contestant on the game show “To Tell the Truth,” among other things. She was a woman writing for men’s magazines like Outside, Esquire, and Playboy, so when Elle magazine offered her a job as an advice columnist, she thought was her purpose…her calling in the lane of journalism. Ironically enough, former CEO and Chairman for FOX News, Roger Ailes,  gave her a daily live television show with an 800 number for people to phone in and ask her for advice.  She was blunt, unapologetic and ridiculously entertaining as the archival footage strewn throughout the doc from the illustrates in spades.

Yet, as much as we know about her, no one could have know what the inspiration was for the lawsuit…until now.  As luck would have it and true to form, after the Supreme Court made its ruling in Carroll’s favor, The Justice Department opened a criminal probe focused on her legal funding  investigating whether she lied under oath during depositions regarding the third-party financing of her defense costs, which were partially funded by a nonprofit founded by tech billionaire Reid Hoffman. The investigation is being run out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

Ask E. Jean demonstrates what happens when a woman is strong enough to advocate for justice and the truth.  Yet, at the same time reminds most of us why the cost of speaking up out isn’t always worth the pain, anguish and embarrassment that comes along with the reward