Trudeau has to address 18-year-old allegation NP1
Allegations merit more than a vague non-denial
He has to address this. Ever since the story first surfaced — or rather, resurfaced — that Justin Trudeau had allegedly groped a young reporter for the Creston Valley Advance in 2000, his office has been issuing, and reissuing, the same statement. The prime minister “remembers being in” the small British Columbia town for an event at the time, “but doesn’t think he had any negative interactions there.”
It is hard to imagine how they could believe this would suffice. Yes, the events in question allegedly took place 18 years ago, when he was not yet in politics. Yes, it is unclear what exactly he is accused of. And yes, his accuser has refused to comment publicly. But, seriously: “he doesn’t think he had any negative interactions”?
What this opaque, thirdperson, lawyerly non-denial does not begin to deal with — what it hopes the public will ignore — is that all of this is real. This isn’t some bad dream that will pass if the prime minister ignores it long enough. The Creston Valley Advance is a real paper. The reporter is real; she has chosen not to reveal her identity publicly, but her name is known. The editor and publisher of the paper at the time are real. They have told the National Post that she confided in them about the alleged assault shortly after it happened, and that they believed her.
And whatever it was he did or did not do, the “interaction” apparently made her angry enough not only to tell her superiors, but to tell the world: it is understood she wrote the editorial that appeared some days later in the paper, protesting at Trudeau’s alleged inappropriate “handling” and “groping” of her.
It was that editorial, republished by Frank magazine in April, that brought the story to national attention.
So this can’t just be dismissed as fake news. This isn’t some rent-a-victim recruited by the prime minister’s enemies to make trouble. This isn’t a publicity-seeker in need of national attention. This isn’t someone remembering an ambiguous incident years later and reinterpreting it in a different and harsher light.
This is a complaint made at the time — including, by her own (again, contemporaneous) account, to the 28-year-old Trudeau, who the editorial said apologized, with this odd defence: “If I had known you were reporting for a national paper” — the Advance was then part of the same chain as the National Post — “I never would have been so forward.”
Now, none of this may have happened. An accusation, even a contemporaneous one, is not proof of guilt. He may never have touched her, inappropriately or otherwise, or said the words attributed to him. Perhaps she misinterpreted his actions or intentions. Perhaps he misinterpreted hers. Perhaps — it happens, rarely — she made the whole thing up.
Still, if you had to say, based on the facts at hand: what is most likely to be the case? Is it likely, given the glowing assessment both her former editor and former publisher gave of her to the Post, that she was either so delusional or so dishonest as to tell each of them, separately and immediately after the fact, that the former prime minister’s son had groped her, when in fact he had not?
And if the more likely scenario is that she was telling the truth then, what do we make of his long silence now? And of the terse piece of studied vagueness the PMO has been putting about on his behalf ?
He doesn’t think he had any “negative interactions,” whatever those might be, because he didn’t? Or because he did, but doesn’t remember them? If the former, why not say so? If the latter, is that really something you could just forget? Again: it would be one thing if she had raised no objection to his behaviour in the moment, and he had only learned much later that she had taken offence. But the editorial says he apologized at the time, albeit “a day late.”
The prime minister would appear to have some explaining to do. He has to say something, and he has to say it himself — he can’t just leave it to his media relations people. Yet what can he say? If he says flat out that it never happened, any of it, he risks being accused of victim-shaming: it was, after all, this prime minister who admonished the public that we should believe all such accusations.
On the other hand, if he acknowledges even having had an unpleasant confrontation with the reporter, never mind the misconduct of which he is accused, he admits that the story his office has been repeating for the past few weeks, that he “doesn’t think” there were any “negative interactions,” is a lie — unless he only just recalled it.
If he confessed “I did it. It was a fleeting moment of madness for which I apologized at the time, and which I regret today,” that would not be the worst thing in the world, assuming no other cases emerged. Except that, having famously established a zero-tolerance policy for his party and himself in such matters, with no statute of limitations, he would then have to explain why he should not have to pay the same price that others have had to pay for similar offences.
There are two issues here, in sum. There is the matter of what went on between two people in a small town in B.C. in August of 2000. And there is the prime minister’s continuing refusal to address it, and the many reasons why this might be so.
THIS ISN’T SOME RENT-A-VICTIM RECRUITED BY HIS ENEMIES.