Jian Ghomeshi, or, Innocent Until Proven Guilty...?

This story is rocking, practically screaming in some venues, across Canada. I suspect it's hardly a blip in the US.

CBC fired a major radio personality with a highly popular show with no public explanation.

Ghomeshi himself then proceeded to publish a lengthy post (Mostly on facebook but disseminated elsewhere as such things are) which said: I'm into BDSM. *** I did some consensual things with a woman. After we broke up, she started claiming we did non-consensual abusive things. She took her invented story to the media. I told CBC about her wild accusations, presented them proof everything was consented to. They fired me anyhow, to cover their own arses.

This is I should say an unfair rendering of his letter, which on the surface is a remarkably convincing document. It rang all the right bells; big corporation fires perfectly nice person for being part of a subculture it's okay to vilify.

At first I was inclined to believe him. I thought about how rare are false accusations - but rare is not absent, and those real false accusations really hurt, too.

Also, his story version was first out of the gate, which tends to create and set the narrative in peoples' minds unless there's an overwhelming counter-response.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

Then the Toronto Star's first news story broke. With not one but THREE women - asking to remain anonymous - reporting non-consensual beating or choking. A story the paper had apparently been working on, and sitting on, for a year, and might not have released now if Ghomeshi hadn't put forth his narrative.

And I was given some pause. ONE accuser leaves a lot of room for wondering. Three false accusations, even in collusion, even anonymous, seems - unlikely?

Still, my attitude was "Let's wait and see." I got at least one highly heated comment for being that moderate, from someone who was SURE he was innocent.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

Around now, this comment from a friend of his came out, but I read it rather later in the sequence. Owen Pallett's take.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

Then another woman came forward. Then another was interviewed, on CBC's afternoon show. Both still anonymous, but now we had at least one voice speaking directly. And yes, the interview was highly disturbing. No consent - the cornerstone of BDSM. Of ALL sex. Of ALL physical interaction between adults able to consent.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

Another very familiar line: people had known; people had whispered. But without anything that could be taken to a court, or a boss.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

At least one person created a twitter account back in April about Ghomeshi that's coming to light again now.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

We are now up to NINE women who've stood up - two of them have allowed themselves to be named.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

The first one named, Lucy DeCoutere, was interviewed on CBC, again, but this time, AFTER she had come forward to other venues. Her story was over 10 years old, but contained most of the same elements. Abruptly hit and choked - not during a sexual encounter, not after any discussion of BDSM, barely inside the door - by someone who afterwards treated the rest of the evening as perfectly normal**. How she could not process it at all, at the time, certainly not enough to come up with any clear response. How sudden unexpected abuse isn't easy to react to.

How, and this is significant, how hearing the other womens' stories convinced her to speak up. But she was the first to put a name to it.

But:

Innocent until Proven guilty.

On the wrong comment threads, she, and all eight other women, have been called liars, and bitches, and attention-mongers, and whores. Or all at once.

There seem to be a number of people who want to believe one man's testimony over that of nine women, some of whom spoke up independently and don't even know the names of the others, making collusion difficult.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

At least one person has cited that there are more false rape accusations than real rapes (Do I even need to say this is a pure lie?), and this is more of the same. I don't want to know if there are more of these than I've personally witnessed. One was enough.

At least one person has said that the fact that so many women are jumping up now is evidence the whole thing is being railroaded.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

Several people have said that they're in it for easy money - what money? - or for fame, or for revenge, or for just about any motivation other than "Maybe he did something wrong and should be investigated."

Several people have suggested at least some women might not even know him before they're telling these stories, something they seem to think a reporter doing due diligence might somehow miss.


Multiple people keep asking why they can't keep this whole thing private, and only a few acknowledge that Ghomeshi's letter, not the women speaking up since, is the reason it's in the public eye to this degree.

The fact that nobody went to the police or any other authority* prior to the media story breaking -- even the ones who came out to the media BECAUSE the media broke the story and they would now be heard, a pretty obvious causation - is brought up over and over.

Innocent until Proven guilty.

I've seen some ugly racism crop up against Ghomeshi - mostly to say he could be guilty because he's "one of THEM", not one of us. A way of making him a monster, an OTHER, an equivalent to the rapist in the bushes. A creep whose scary Middle Eastern culture taught him to be evil. Not a liberal Canadian. Not a normal man like me/my husband/my boyfriend/whoever it is we're desperately not trying to vilify today. Notallmen.

(I have no trouble distinguishing my own husband and brother from Ghomeshi without reference to anyone's ethnic origin. Neither of my relatives would beat a woman, and I know more than enough of their exes to know nobody will ever be coming forward making such accusations. I cannot say the same with confidence of Ghomeshi.)

Innocent until Proven guilty. innocent until proven guilty. Innocent until proven guilty. innocent until proven guilty. Innocent until proven guilty. innocent until proven guilty. Innocent until proven guilty. innocent until proven guilty. Innocent until proven guilty. innocent until proven guilty. Innocent until proven guilty. innocent until proven guilty.

Nobody is allowed to suggest he can do wrong without a court of law. Never mind that this is one way to GET him to a court of law.

Do I think he's guilty? I think the evidence is tending strongly that way. That's not a yes. It's a we don't know but we have good reason to believe. It's an I refuse to disbelieve nine women without evidence against THEM, either.

Do I think he should be investigated and charged? Damn straight. That's how you find out the answers.

Or.

At least, it should be and I want to believe that of our courts. We've certainly had proof this isn't always the case. Sometimes, even after conviction.

Do I think it was wrong or inappropriate for these women to go public in the media first?

NO.

Not when the alleged abuser has already had his say in the media.

Also.

I feel like I've seen this before. Maybe more than once. Maybe more than that.

And one thing these cases have in common? GOING PUBLIC FORCES ACTION THAT WOULD OTHERWISE NEVER HAPPEN. And I don't mean that by way of "if you don't report your abuse, it's all your fault if it happens again". That's BS, even if the person making the accusation weren't always treated as a liar, a whore, a gold digger out for wealth or fame. Not treated worse for speaking out or dealing with it..

I mean "Now that you've spoken, others speak."

I mean, "Oh, crap, people are watching. Now that we have witnesses, we're obliged to take this seriously, to not dismiss it the way we really want to. We're going to do it, and with luck, do it right."

Of course, I can't help note, all of the things I mentioned above didn't get dealt with right by the relevant due process. And I don't mean because I didn't like the verdict. The verdict was guilt. What happened afterwards was not just.

They got revisited, sometimes, after public outcry at a blatant, screamingly obvious miscarriage of justice.

So maybe I'm a bit cynical. A bit worried that even the courts won't answer. Even if the evidence is there and the guilt determined.

But we'll be able to watch. Because when it comes to the safety of the people targeted by a probable abuser, the priority isn't perfectly determining legal guilt. The priority is protect them and prevent more abuse. Because the law court can't provide that protection to victims, and future victims are entirely out of its purview. And the whispered warnings that have been happening for years absent that publicity only protected those few who happened to know someone who knows Ghomeshi.

But we'll know at least that here's someone to watch, someone not to trust. Because someone went public. Public knowledge protects everyone.


* One of the first four anonymous ones had reported she made a sexual harassment claim while he worked for CBC, and nothing came of it.

** There's a moment in Labyrinth where a character is telling a story about how she had something similar happen - an unexpected abusive turn in a previously mostly-normal situation, which then reverted to normal and left her half doubting it had even happened. I was worried it was going to ring as extreme and unrealistic to readers. I wrote that scene last November. I could almost have lifted that moment from Lucy DeCoutere's account verbatim. I was chilled.

***I'm not going to further address this side, because while it led to some interesting side conversations, and the public examination of an interesting point of law, it's a red herring.