Swift ending, but a life left in ruins

It took 17 minutes to put an end to an 18-monthlong ordeal for Jian Ghomeshi, a sweet minimalist touch in a story that has been replete with florid language and hyperbole from the get-go.

That’s how long was the proceeding at the Old City Hall courts in downtown Toronto Wednesday that saw Ghomeshi sign on the dotted line of a recognizance to keep the peace and Ontario Court Judge Tim Lipson formally withdraw a single charge of sexual assault against him at the request of prosecutors.

The so-called peace bond means the 48-year-old fallen CBC star and former host of Q emerges from a tidal wave of allegations — most anonymous and made in the media only — without a criminal record.

All that has changed since late October of 2014 — when Ghomeshi was in short order fired by the CBC, subjected to the first of a series of Toronto Star stories from women alleging he’d either sexually assaulted or harassed them and then criminally charged by Toronto Police — is that his career and name are in tatters, his legal bills undoubtedly significant, his life in ruin. It was not enough. Outside the courts, protesters carried signs that read “Peace bonds don’t give survivors peace” and “Rape myths have no place in court” and the ubiquitous “#WeBelieveSurvivors.”

All that was missing was someone reading aloud (and signing) from the courthouse steps a “trigger warning” for the delicate assembled.

The complainant, Kathryn Borel, came out with a statement that was inaccurate in its recounting of what had just gone on moments before in Courtroom 125.

When she first told Toronto Police what had happened to her at Ghomeshi’s hands, she said, “They confirmed to me what he did to me was in fact sexual assault.

“And that’s what Jian Ghomeshi just apologized for — the crime of sexual assault. This is … a man who had immense power over me and my livelihood, admitting that he chronically abused his power and violated me in ways that violate the law.”

Later, Borel said, “Jian Ghomeshi has apologized, but only to me.

“There are 20 other women that have come forward to the media with serious allegations about his violent behaviour, women who have come forward to say that he punched and choked and smothered and silenced them … There is no way that I would have come forward if it weren’t for their courage and yet Mr. Ghomeshi hasn’t met any of their allegations head on, as he vowed to do … He hasn’t taken the stand on any other charge.

“All he has said about his other accusers is that they’re all lying and that he’s not guilty. And remember, that’s what he said about me.

“I think we all want this to be over, but it won’t be until he admits to everything that he’s done.”

In fact, Ghomeshi didn’t apologize for anything other than sexually inappropriate conduct and being insensitive to the fact that it was demeaning to Borel. He certainly didn’t apologize “for the crime of sexual assault.”

And for Borel to thank the legion of other Ghomeshi accusers for giving her strength to come forward was too cute by half: She was, after all, one of the original four women quoted if not named in the first Star story that set the ball rolling.

She came forward officially only two months later when she wrote a column in The Guardian, presumably having been inspired by her own courage in coming forward anonymously that she did it again but this time with her name.

And Linda Redgrave, one of three complainants in Ghomeshi’s first trial in March on a raft of sexual charges — where he was acquitted on all counts — showed up, too, to ask where her apology was.

Redgrave, like Trailer Park Boys actor Lucy DeCoutere and the unnamed third complainant, was pronounced wholly unreliable by Ontario Court Judge Bill Horkins, who presided at Ghomeshi’s first trial.

There’s good reason to suspect that if police had done a better job of questioning the first three complainants, those charges might have been deemed to have a lousy prospect of conviction, which is the test prosecutors use, and might have been dropped; at the very least, the women might have been more forthcoming had they not been treated like tender youngsters.

And there’s every reason to believe that with an ordinary Joe (i.e., not a famous CBC star at the centre of what his lawyer, Marie Henein, Wednesday called “one of the most intensely public trials in our history”), the peace bond solution would have been reached much earlier.

But remember, the charges against Ghomeshi were born at a time — it is still, particularly in Ontario — when women were pronounced as having the patent on truthtelling and when many of them determined that they must share their pain and be heard.

Still and all, however expensive this process was, and though it changed little except Ghomeshi’s life, it’s far better than the private justice arrangements that are now the rage, as with two federal Liberal MPs who were driven from office without a trial, let alone a charge, and the two Ontario Liberal MPPs who were similarly given the boot by Premier Kathleen Wynne.

And all of that is better than the other modern alternative to justice, the roiling, restless mob, always wanting more — more vengeance, more demonstrations of regret, more naked suffering, more payback.

WHEN I WENT TO THE CBC FOR HELP, WHAT I RECEIVED WAS A DIRECTIVE THAT YES, HE COULD DO THIS, AND YES, IT WAS MY JOB TO LET HIM. — KATHRYN BOREL