Writer E. Jean Carroll took the witness stand for her lawsuit against former President Donald Trump Wednesday, telling jurors: “I’m here because Trump raped me."

When she stepped forward to say what happened in 2019, Trump "lied and shattered my reputation and I’m trying to get my life back," Carroll said during her testimony as the civil trial opens in federal court in lower Manhattan.

Carroll, 79, said she first met Trump — who's said he doesn't know who she is and had never met her — in 1987 at a "Saturday Night Live" party, where she was a writer at the time. She said she believes that's where a picture of her with Trump, his then-wife Ivana and her husband, a popular local news anchor, was taken.

Carroll, who previously wrote an advice column for Elle magazine, said the next time she spoke to Trump was when she ran into him at the Bergdorf Goodman department store near Trump Tower in 1995 or 1996.

"He said, 'You're that advice lady' and I said 'you're that real estate tycoon,'" she told the jury. "He was very personable."

She said Trump, who was married to model Marla Maples at the time, told her he was there to buy a present for someone, and asked if she'd help him. They first went to handbags and then hats before Trump suggested they go to the lingerie section on the sixth floor, she said.

"He was very talkative on the escalator and said he was thinking of buying Bergdorf," Carroll said. "I was thinking 'I have a great story' and I was delighted to go to lingerie" with him. She said they then looked at lingerie together and "he was joshing and pleasant and very funny."

Carroll said they each suggested the other try on lingerie, adding she thought that was funny. She said that she "didn't think anything about what was about to happen" because the door was open when he motioned her toward the dressing room.

Trump then "shut the door and shoved me against the wall," Carroll said. "I pushed him back and he thrust me back against the wall, banging my head."

"He put his shoulder against me and held me against wall," she testified. Carroll broke down in tears as she recalled Trump penetrating her during her testimony.

"I couldn’t see anything was happening but I could certainly feel that pain," she said.

The attack lasted "very few minutes," she said, and then she rushed out of the store before calling a friend to tell her what had happened.

Carroll said the friend, writer Lisa Birnbach who's expected to testify later in the trial, encouraged her to go to the police. She said responded, "No way." "I thought it was my fault," she said.

Carroll sued Trump for battery over the alleged rape — which she says happened in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s — as well as defamation for his claims that she made up her story to promote sales of her book and raise her public profile.

Trump has denied the allegations, including in posts on his social media website Truth Social on Wednesday morning.

In two statements on the case shortly before testimony was set to begin, Trump called Carroll's allegations “fraudulent & false” and a “SCAM.”

He also brought up in his posts to Truth Social two topics the judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, had previously told both sides not to bring up in front of the jury — one having to do with DNA evidence and the other having to do with the payment of Carroll’s legal fees.

Trump's DNA evidence comment involved the dress Carroll said she was wearing on the day of the attack, which has a small amount of “genetic material” from an unidentified male. Carroll’s attorneys had asked Trump for a sample of DNA to compare it, but never asked for a court order for the sample.

Trump’s attorneys never provided a sample, and the judge ruled in February that neither side could bring the issue up at trial.

In his post Wednesday, Trump wrote, “She said there was a dress, using the ol’ Monica Lewinsky ‘stuff’, then she didn’t want to produce it. The dress should be allowed to be part of the case.”

The judge told Tacopina that his client had refused to give a DNA sample for three years, “and now he wants it in the case?”

Trump's posts also complained about Carroll getting financial support for her lawsuit from a Democratic donor, something she'd denied when she was initially deposed in the case but later acknowledged. The judge is scheduled to rule this week on whether the jury can be told about the omission, and had instructed both sides not to say anything about it to the jury in the meantime.

"Your client may be tampering with a new source of potential liability. And I think you know what I mean," Kaplan told Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopina.

Tacopina said he would ask Trump not to post about the case.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com