As the mother of a teenage daughter, one of the most wrenching aspects of Trump’s presidency is his vicious behavior toward women and girls. Thanks to the internet, my daughter knows that a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, that he’s bragged about groping women because he is a “star;” and that he was a close friends with notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

Small wonder that when Trump was reelected, many therapists reported an unsettling trend of “high-functioning depression” among their female clients, according to an article on Forbes.com. It quoted Judith Johnson, MD, who said that “leading up to the election I noticed a peak in anxiety from my female patients.” Its outcome, she said, “left many women feeling downright depressed and anxious.” Trump’s second term has brought more to light, not least confirmation from him that Epstein recruited young female employees from Mar-a-Lago, including at least one teenager. As the administration continues to directly interfere with the justice process, that anxiety is turning to fury.

New information is prompting some to revisit old testimony, including a first-person account from Katie Johnson, the pseudonym of a woman who alleges she was raped by Trump at age 13 in 1994 at the home of Jeffrey Epstein. Johnson’s account was recently resurrected and published by Cornell associate professor and author Kate Manne. (Trigger warning for the full Substack piece: Child rape, violent content).

Hoping to become a teen model, Johnson had gone to New York City looking for modeling work. There she met a girl named Tiffany, who brought her to events which, she said, would help her meet “higher-ups” and help her career. Among other things, Johnson said, she introduced her to Epstein and his friends, including Donald Trump. Johnson stated she never planned to go public about the horror she experienced, but did so in 2016, when Trump was running for president.

At the time, the extent of Epstein’s crimes was not as widely known, and Johnson dropped her lawsuit after receiving death threats. For the same reason, Manne wrote, Johnson “cancelled her planned press conference in LA a few days before the presidential election, where she had planned to warn America about the kind of man they were on the verge of electing.”

At that time, Manne explained, Johnson had gone public with the help of Norm Lublow, a TV producer she’d met at a party. Lublow had worked on the Jerry Springer show and also “had an anti-Trump agenda, among other red flags; the story fizzled out and Katie was assumed to be a liar,” she wrote.

However, Manne noted that a questionable attorney didn’t stop Stormy Daniels from prevailing in court against Trump – the judge ruled in her favor, as another judge did for E. Jean Carroll in her sexual assault case. (Several other Substack writers, including former trial attorney and author Seth Abramson, have published posts supporting Johnson’s allegations; Abramson also compiled numerous interviews with eyewitnesses who said Trump regularly hosted parties in Manhattan in the 1980s and 90s with rich older men and underage girls.)

Johnson’s story has been corroborated in a statement by her female “handler” for Epstein. Manne also discusses many details in Johnson’s account – including descriptions of Trump’s germophobia – that help explain why she finds Johnson’s account credible, especially in context of other Trump victims and his own words and behavior. “Her story is all too believable,” Manne says. “And we have buried it and ignored it to our national peril.”