After a jury determined that Taylor Swift had been groped by a radio station host before a concert in Denver, the singer-songwriter said she hoped the verdict would inspire other victims of sexual assault, the Associated Press reports. Swift hugged her crying mother after the six-woman, two-man jury said in U.S. District Court yesterday that former Denver DJ David Mueller had groped the pop star during a photo op four years ago. At Swift’s request, jurors awarded her $1 in damages, a sum her attorney, Douglas Baldridge, called “a single symbolic dollar, the value of which is immeasurable to all women in this situation.”
Swift said, “My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard,” promising to make donations to groups that help victims of sexual assault. University of Denver law Prof. Nancy Leong said the verdict is important because “we are getting to the point in society that women are believed in court. For many decades and centuries, that was not the case. “The fact that she was believed will allow women to understand that they will not automatically be disbelieved, and I think that’s a good thing.” Swift and her mother tried to keep the accusation quiet by reporting the incident to Mueller’s bosses and not the police. It became public when Mueller sued Swift for up to $3 million, claiming the allegation cost him his $150,000-a-year job at country station KYGO-FM.