E Jean Carroll tore through the doors of the Fifth Avenue entrance of Bergdorf Goodman, her heart racing.

Ms Carroll, a journalist and the host of the Ask E Jean television show at the time, had taped a segment that day in 1996 at a studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. When it ended around 5pm, she decided to come into Manhattan to shop at her favourite store.

From the sidewalk, she phoned Lisa Birnbach, a friend and author of The Official Preppy Handbook. Ms Carroll was laughing at first as she described an encounter she said she had just had in a Bergdorf dressing room with Donald Trump that began as cheeky banter. But what she was saying did not strike Ms Birnbach as funny.

“I remember her being very overwrought,” Ms Birnbach said in an interview. “I remember her repeatedly saying: ‘He pulled down my tights, he pulled down my tights.’”

When Ms Carroll finished her account, Ms Birnbach said: “‘I think he raped you.’”

#MeToo movement – In pictures Show all 24 1 /24 #MeToo movement – In pictures #MeToo movement – In pictures 2017 A picture shows the messages "#Me too" and #Balancetonporc ("expose your pig") on the hand of a protester during a gathering against gender-based and sexual violence called by the Effronte-e-s Collective, on the Place de la Republique square in Paris AFP #MeToo movement – In pictures 2018 Italian actress Asia Argento (C) and US singer and actress Rose McGowan, who both accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, take part in a march organised by 'Non Una Di Meno' (Me too) movement as part of the International Women's Day in Rome AFP/Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2017 Victims of sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual abuse and their supporters protest during a #MeToo march in Hollywood, California AFP/Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2018 South Korean women staging a monthly protest against secretly-filmed spycam pornography in Seoul. Since May 2018, the monthly demonstrations against secretly-filmed spycam pornography in Seoul has shattered records to become the biggest-ever women's protest in South Korea where the global #MeToo movement has unleashed an unprecedented wave of female-led activism AFP/Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2017 Swedish MEP Linnéa Engström sits behind a placard placed on her desk that reads "Me too" during a debate about combating sexual harassment and abuse in the EU at the European Parliament in Strasbourg AFP/Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2018 Activists participate in front of the Brandenburg Gate in a demonstration for women's rights in Berlin Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2018 A McDonald's employee holds a sign during a protest against sexual harassment in the workplace in Chicago AFP/Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2018 An activist participates in the 2018 #MeToo March in Hollywood Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2018 Women protest in New York Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2018 Women hold a banner reading "still feminist" with the Eiffel tower in background AFP/Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2017 French activist Jean-Baptiste Redde, aka Voltuan, holds a placard as protesters take part in a gathering against gender-based and sexual violence in Paris AFP/Getty #MeToo movement – In pictures 2018 Activists and advocates for survivors of sexual abuse, including Democratic candidate for Illinois governor at the time JB Prtizker (left), gather in the Federal Building Plaza to protest the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in Chicago, Illinois after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted out Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh and agreed to an additional week of investigation into accusations of sexual assault against him before the full Senate votes on his confirmation. 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“Let’s go to the police,” she recalled telling Ms Carroll. But Ms Carroll refused. A day or two later, she described the episode to another friend, Carol Martin, a TV host at the same network. She advised Ms Carroll to stay silent.

“These traumas stay with you,” Ms Martin said. “I didn’t know what to do except listen.”

The three women did not speak about the incident again until Ms Carroll began preparing for her forthcoming book, they said.

It became public last week when Ms Carroll, in a New York magazine excerpt from the book, accused the president of sexually assaulting her years ago. It was the most serious of multiple allegations women have made against him, all of which he has denied.

Ms Birnbach and Ms Martin, who have not previously spoken publicly about Ms Carroll’s account, say they are doing so now to bolster their friend, especially since she has been attacked in recent days by sceptics and some supporters of Mr Trump.

“I saw some horrible things that people were posting on social media,” Ms Birnbach said. “I believe E Jean in this episode that she recounted to me in 1996. Yes. Without hesitation. She’s not a fabulist.” She added: “She doesn’t make things up.”

Mr Trump has said Ms Carroll was “totally lying,” that he did not know her and that “she’s not my type.”

In media interviews in recent days, Ms Carroll, who once wrote for Saturday Night Live, has been confident.

Asked on MSNBC why she made her accusation in a book, she replied: “What? A woman is not allowed to take a pen and put it to a piece of paper?” (“That didn’t go over very well,” she said in an interview later.)

On CNN, she explained why she preferred the word “fight” to “rape”: “I think most people think rape is sexy. Think of the fantasies.” (She explained later that she was referring to romance novels that depict men ravishing women. “This was not thrilling, this was a fight,” she said. “A fight where I’m stamping on his feet and I think I’m banging him on the head with my purse.”)

In her book, What Do We Need Men For?, which comes out on Tuesday, Ms Carroll describes “hideous men” in her life. In addition to Mr Trump, the list includes former CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves, who she said groped her in a hotel elevator when she interviewed him for a 1997 Esquire story; a childhood camp friend who sexually assaulted her as a young girl; and her second husband, television personality John Johnson, whom she described as physically abusive.

Mr Moonves has denied Ms Carroll’s account of his groping. Reached by phone, Mr Johnson declined to comment.

Confidantes provided some corroboration of Ms Carroll’s claims. Nancy Hass, a writer for The New York Times’ T Magazine, said that in the late 1990s, Ms Carroll mentioned having been groped by Mr Moonves, but did not go into detail.

“E Jean is the anti-victim,” Ms Hass said in an interview. “She can’t bear pity.”

Another friend, a former news producer named C C Dyer, said in an interview that she was with Ms Carroll one morning and saw red marks on her neck, a ripped nightgown and bloodshot eyes after what Ms Carroll said was an altercation with Mr Johnson, an incident described in the book.

Ms Dyer said she told her husband at the time, Geraldo Rivera, about it. (A Fox News spokesperson said Mr Rivera was travelling and not available for an interview.)

Ms Dyer was among more than a dozen former colleagues, family members and friends interviewed by The Times who attested to Ms Carroll’s credibility.

“It’s inconceivable to me that she would make up a story like this,” said Stephen Byers, a former editor at National Geographic and her first husband, referring to the Trump allegation. He and Ms Carroll were married for more than a decade. “She’s a very honourable woman.”

Olivia Munn speaks to The View panel about sexual assault accusations against Donald Trump

Still, there are unresolved questions about Ms Carroll’s accusations, including the absence of any witnesses or, apparently, staff in the lingerie department at Bergdorf’s, and the lack of physical evidence.

She has acknowledged that her response afterward — when she called her friend, laughing — may appear odd, but she attributes it to being in shock. In her book, she was hazy about whether the incident had taken place in 1995 or 1996; after recent conversations with Ms Birnbach, they believe that it was most likely in 1996. And despite the president’s growing political profile, for years Ms Carroll never raised the subject of her encounter with Mr Trump.

Why speak up only now? If not when it happened, why not in 2016, when more than 10 other women came forward accusing Mr Trump of sexual improprieties? Or when the Access Hollywood tape, in which he bragged about assaulting women, was revealed?

Cande Carroll said that she, E Jean, and their two other siblings — Tommy and Barbara — were in Indiana at their dying mother’s bedside the day the tape was disclosed. “We were all horrified,” Cande Carroll said. Her sister, though, said nothing about a personal story.

E Jean Carroll said the Access Hollywood tape and the allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr Trump did not compel her to speak about her own experience with him.

If anything, said Ms Carroll, who describes herself as a “gun-owning Democrat,” she figured the accusations made Mr Trump appear strong in the eyes of his supporters. “I suspected it was helping,” she said.

On election night in 2016, Ms Carroll was at Ms Birnbach’s home watching the results. Ms Carroll thought there was a moment when she and Ms Birnbach shared a knowing look about Mr Trump, but Ms Birnbach did not recall it. In fact, she said, by that point she had forgotten what Ms Carroll had told her.

As Ms Carroll described it, the original idea for her book had nothing to do with Mr Trump. Rather, after years of listening to her readers’ concerns — most of them related to men — she had decided to take her dog on a trip around America and ask women the question: Do we really need men?

The plan was to visit towns named after women, such as Cynthiana, Indiana — “It sounds like poetry!” she said — to eat in restaurants named for women, read books by women and listen to women artists in the car.

“I actually thought this was going to be a ‘Travels with Charley,’” Ms Carroll said in an interview.

But then #MeToo happened. The news of allegations against Harvey Weinstein broke as she was driving through Pennsylvania in the fall of 2017. “I just kept pulling over to see the story,” she said. “And I couldn’t help but think of men in my own life.”

She also thought of the women she had advised over the years to buck up, to speak up, to go to the police or “move everything out when he’s at work.”

“I felt like a fraud,” she said, because she had taken no such action herself. By the time she submitted her book proposal, in May 2018, she had rethought it as part memoir, with the Trump allegation included. St Martin’s Press paid a modest sum.

Ms Carroll invited Ms Birnbach and Ms Martin to lunch last year and showed them the chapter depicting the encounter with Mr Trump and the friends’ discussions about it. (Their names do not appear in the book.)

In it, she wrote that she and Mr Trump had recognised each other at Bergdorf’s, talked playfully about what gift he might buy for a woman, and ended up in the lingerie department, challenging each other to try on a lilac bodysuit. She remembered thinking it would make a great story.

But in the dressing room, with no one nearby, Ms Carroll said Mr Trump pushed her against a wall, pulled down her tights and put his penis inside her. “It was violent, I fought, but didn’t think of it as ...” she trailed off, never saying “rape.” “I have a hard time even saying that word,” she said.