Did Donald Trump rape E. Jean Carroll? Here's what a jury and judge said.

Note: This story contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse that may be offensive to some readers or painful to survivors of sexual assault.

When E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump went to trial last spring over her sexual assault allegations, a nine-person civil jury found that Trump sexually abused her but that she failed to prove he raped her.

The former president made hay of that distinction when he sued Carroll in June, alleging Carroll defamed him by saying she was raped in a media interview after the verdict.

The counterattack was quickly shot down.

Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in August that the jury verdict showed Carroll's rape allegation was "substantially true" and dismissed the counterclaim.

In May, Carroll was awarded a combined $5 million for sexual abuse and for a 2022 denial by Trump that the jury concluded defamed Carroll. On Friday, a jury in a separate civil defamation case awarded Carroll $83.3 million for two lengthy denials Trump made in 2019, soon after Carroll went public with her story.

Trump has always denied Carroll's allegations. He has already appealed the first verdict and has vowed to appeal the second.

So did a jury find Trump raped Carroll, or didn't it?

More: In Trump E. Jean Carroll verdict, former president ordered to pay $83 million

How New York defines 'rape'

The answer has to do with what "rape" means.

Because the jurors rendered their May verdict in a civil case, they were asked only whether Carroll proved her allegation was probably true. In a criminal case, prosecutors would need to prove the allegation beyond a reasonable doubt.

Carroll testified that she struggled to get Trump off her as he shoved his mouth on hers, yanked her tights down, and penetrated her with his hand and then his penis. She described him curving his finger inside her, saying it was "extremely painful" and "a horrible feeling."

Under New York criminal law, an assault constitutes "rape" only if it involves vaginal penetration by a penis. That was the definition the jury was instructed to use in the civil case.

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By responding "no" to the question of whether Carroll proved Trump raped her, the jurors indicated they weren't convinced Trump penetrated Carroll with his penis, according to Kaplan, who first wrote about the issue in July when he denied Trump a new trial in the sexual abuse case.

But the jurors' conclusion that Trump sexually abused Carroll "necessarily implies" that they did, in fact, believe he penetrated her with his fingers, Kaplan said.

Here was his reasoning:

Kaplan noted his instruction to the jury that, for Trump to have sexually abused Carroll, Trump needed to have touched her sexual or intimate parts. The only allegations from Carroll that could possibly fit that bill were forcible kissing, pulling down her tights, and vaginal penetration, he said.

More: 'I don't know who the woman is,' Donald Trump erupts at E. Jean Carroll defamation trial

But the jury couldn't find Trump sexually abused Carroll solely based on a nonconsensual kiss without ignoring testimony and accepting a version of events "contradicted by the overwhelming weight of the evidence," Kaplan said. He noted the kiss was less significant in Carroll's testimony: She said she thought she had laughed after it to throw cold water on anything further, and she hadn't described any physical pain or lasting trauma from it.

Kaplan has also pointed to the size of the jury's sexual abuse award ? more than $2 million ? as bolstering his conclusion that the verdict was based on finding Trump forcibly penetrated Carroll with his hand.

And that act, in common modern speech, is rape, Kaplan said.

As he later summed it up in August, when he dismissed Trump's countersuit: "It accordingly is the 'truth,' as relevant here, that Mr. Trump digitally raped Ms. Carroll."

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Why did the jury accept only part of the story?

The jurors weren't required to explain why, under the definitions they were given, they concluded Trump sexually abused Carroll but were less convinced he raped her.

However, in analyzing the jury's verdict, Kaplan said Carroll's testimony about penetration by fingers was more "repeated and clear." She said she "couldn’t see anything that was happening," although she could feel it, describing the pain from his finger in particular. She testified that she wasn't sure if he got his penis fully or only partially inside her.

Kaplan also said a psychologist's testimony bolstered Carroll's allegation about digital penetration: the psychologist described Carroll "squirming" as she remembered Trump's fingers inside her.

The stories of other women also could have played a role.

Two women testified that they too had been assaulted by Trump. One described Trump groping her breasts and reaching up her skirt with what seemed like “40 zillion hands” on a plane flight. The other said he pushed her against a wall and forcibly kissed her while she was reporting for a magazine article about Trump's first wedding anniversary with his wife, Melania.

The jury also watched the tape of Trump's notorious "Access Hollywood" comments, in which he crudely describes moving on a woman "very heavily" and says that when you're a celebrity "you can do anything," including grabbing women's private parts.

In those ways, the jury heard corroboration of Carroll's allegation when it came to Trump groping and assaulting women, but not when it came to rape with a penis.

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The jurors also didn't need to find Trump liable for rape to award Carroll damages for sexual assault. The judge instructed them that the rape allegation was just one of three options that could trigger damages under Carroll's sexual battery lawsuit, along with sexual abuse and forcible touching.

That fact meant the jury's verdict on the rape question was "unnecessary and immaterial," Kaplan said.

In any case, the jury's verdict was conclusive on the broader question of whether Trump raped Carroll in some way, consistent with Carroll's post-verdict statements about rape, according to Kaplan.

"As a result, Ms. Carroll's statements are 'substantially true,'" he said.

If you are a survivor of sexual assault, RAINN offers support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800-656-HOPE & online.rainn.org).

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Did Donald Trump rape E. Jean Carroll? What the judge and jury said