What did Ivana Trump say about her marriage and any abuse in interviews or her memoirs?

1. The deposition allegation that entered the record

Reporting on contemporaneous and later sources says that Ivana’s 1990 sworn deposition, made during the couple’s divorce, included language that she had said “my husband had raped me,” and that journalist Tony Schwartz and others later published accounts based on that deposition and related narratives describing an alleged 1989 violent incident involving hair-pulling and forced sex ^{[1] [4] [5]}.

2. Ivana’s later public disavowal and clarifying statements

Ivana publicly walked back the rape wording in the years after the divorce, issuing a statement that the deposition remark was made during “a time of very high tension” and describing the story as “totally without merit,” and she characterized the phrasing as an “inarticulate comment” she did not believe and apologized for ^{[2] [4]}.

3. How she framed the allegation in interviews and press around her memoir

When asked in later interviews, including around the release of her memoir Raising Trump, Ivana clarified that any accusation was not intended “in a literal or criminal sense,” and she emphasized her continued amicable contact with Donald, saying they spoke regularly and that she wrote glowingly about aspects of their life and her role in the Trump Organization even while acknowledging the hurt caused by his affair ^{[6] [3] [7]}.

4. What the memoir said about marriage, abuse and the affair

Raising Trump presents a “soft-focus” but emotionally candid portrait: Ivana writes positively about her marriage’s earlier years and her managerial role at the company while also recounting the pain and “insane” public fallout when she learned of Donald’s affair with Marla Maples, framing the divorce as traumatic for her and the children rather than as a criminal allegation in the book itself ^{[7] [3] [8]}.

5. Corroborating accounts, journalistic treatments and counterclaims

Journalists and authors — including those who published passages from sealed divorce materials or interviewed friends — have reported corroborating recollections that Ivana privately described a violent episode, and those versions appear in works such as Lost Tycoon and in magazine accounts; at the same time, Donald Trump has consistently denied the assault and some reporting highlights that Ivana later distanced herself from the literal interpretation of “rape,” creating competing narratives in the public record ^{[1] [4] [5]}.

6. Reading the record: reconciliation of apparent contradictions and possible agendas

The available sources show a tension between a sworn deposition that contained charged language, subsequent public recantation/clarification by Ivana, and a memoir that emphasizes affection and managerial pride while acknowledging emotional injury from infidelity; motivations behind those shifts could include legal strategy, press management, personal reconciliation, or brand considerations, and readers should note that reporters and biographers have their own editorial frames when presenting the deposition excerpts or sensational details ^{[2] [3] [7]}.

7. What the reporting cannot resolve from the sources provided

The supplied reporting documents the deposition language, Ivana’s later statements, and the memoir’s tone, but these sources do not provide a contemporaneous, fully public transcript of the sealed divorce records, independent forensic evidence, or Ivana’s private, unmediated testimony beyond what journalists and book authors quoted or summarized; therefore the question of precisely what occurred in 1989 cannot be conclusively settled from the material cited here ^{[1] [4] [2]}.