Molestation claim a curious spectacle
Gold digger: A person who dates men purely to extort money from them, in particular a woman who strives to marry a wealthy man.
That’s the common definition, though the genders could easily be reversed when exploitation via sex — extortion even — is the game.
This is the gold: A $7.5-million lawsuit brought against 85-year-old Ron Joyce, co-founder of the Tim Hortons empire, by a complainant half a century younger who alleges the billionaire sexually molested her at his Burlington home in 2011.
The dig-dig-dig could describe a suitcase full of documents — affidavits, cross-examinations, depositions, factums, all the many pounds of legal paper this case has generated in the last year — which the plaintiff brought into court Tuesday for a hearing wherein the defendant’s lawyers are trying to have the action tossed.
Deep inside that heap o’ docs is the transcript of a May 2013 conversation between Joyce and the complainant, which the latter surreptitiously recorded. She tells Joyce that she is willing to negotiate a position for herself as his personal assistant if he would take responsibility and apologize for the incident that allegedly occurred two years earlier. She asked Joyce: “Why don’t you marry me?” Then they went for dinner.
In his cross-examination last year, the twice-divorced Joyce said he’d responded: “Christ, I’d love to marry you.” So why not? she countered. Joyce: “I’m too old.”
Reaching further into the bag of he-said, she-said, there is the affidavit sworn by prominent real estate tycoon Hunter Milborne, claiming he had an affair with the woman — she’d worked for him as a mortgage broker — and had shelled out $330,000 after she’d threatened to expose the liaison with the married father of seven, years after it had ended. She’d demanded $1 million. Around May or June of 2011, Milborne “reluctantly agreed to pay her $330,000 in exchange for her silence about our affair and nullify any future claims.”
Joyce paid, too — cut a cheque for $50,000 in November 2011, (her then-lawyer deposited the sum of $49,478.87 into her account), marking it “PAID IN FULL.” He also forgave the woman at least $100,000 in loans that she owed. This, he argues, was a gesture of friendship, in recognition of a five-year relationship that was “from time to time sexual,” though never exclusive, and the sexual aspect had ended by May 6, 2010 — a year before the alleged molestation. They remained friends thereafter.
And that’s essentially where this judge-alone hearing turns. Was there a handshake contract between them with the plaintiff “PAID IN FULL”? Joyce says yes, adamantly. She says no — that the money was never a settlement; merely intended to cover legal bills she’d rung up and “therapy.”
Superior Court Justice Paul Perell expressed befuddlement with the plaintiff’s explanation for the money. “You say there was no deal. So why did you get $50,000? You’re telling me he gave you money to use to sue him. It’s kind of bizarre that this sort of thing is alleged to have gone on, on the basis of a handshake.”
Complainant: “It was an advance on the suit. It was never a settlement.”
Yet the plaintiff also claims that money was earmarked — as Joyce purportedly knew — to pay legal bills she’d accrued in a separate sexual harassment case (since dropped) that she’d brought against a co-worker at Milborne’s company.
It is indeed hard to keep all the narratives, claims and counterclaims straight. And the complainant, who burned through three law firms getting to this point, is now representing herself in court, up against Joyce’s high-profile lead lawyer Chris Kostopoulos. Perell demonstrated the patience of Job trying to steer the plaintiff through her legal submissions while the lay-lawyer offered dimpled smiles and a sometimes-coquettish demeanour to excuse her incomprehension with the process.
For example: The complainant cited civil-court sexual assault tort law, which she said allowed her four years after the alleged assault to bring her suit forward. Perell pointed out the law has changed since the 2000 law-book text she quoted; it’s now two years. That’s the other underpinning of the defence’s motion to have the suit dismissed — the plaintiff missed the file deadline by two weeks. But deadline exceptions in sex-assault civil suits can be obtained if the complainant can prove that “awareness” of the assault only dawned at a later date, perhaps after a period of time to evaluate the trauma.
(Perell denied the complainant’s request for a publication ban on her name, which, unlike criminal cases, is not automatic in civil procedures. The Star’s policy is not to name alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent.)
Let’s go back to the beginning of this tangled liaison, which began when the plaintiff was 24 and Joyce 74. Or rather, let’s go to the midpoint, the crux of the allegation from 2011. The complainant notes that she then weighed 115 pounds — now 165 pounds. “Excessive weight gain is common in rape victims as a subconscious way to protect themselves,” the complainant asserts in her factum response to Joyce’s defence motion — a document replete with the gospels of sexual assault.
She had gone to Joyce’s home with the purpose of driving him the next day to an important doctor’s appointment and had slept alone in a guest bedroom. The plaintiff claims Joyce entered the room without permission about 6:30 a.m. and that she awoke shocked to find him in the bed, naked, with his arms wrapped around her. Joyce, she says, had the fingers of his right hand inserted into her vagina and the other hand feeling her breast.
“It felt like an eternity,” she said of the episode, as she tried to understand what was happening and who was violating her. She finally screamed and told him to stop, get off her.
Joyce (he wasn’t in the courtroom Tuesday), testified in earlier crossexamination that he did get into the bed, but only to wake her and “snuggle,” then left, changed out of his bathrobe and drove himself to the doctor’s. “I don’t know how much more clearer I can be than that. There was never a sexual assault of any kind.”
Left alone at the house, the plaintiff called her mother to pick her up. They stopped at a Starbucks on the way home, where the complainant’s mother spoke to a police officer who was in the lineup, describing the alleged sexual assault her daughter had just experienced. The mother was supposedly told by the officer that a complaint would likely go nowhere because her daughter had showered at Joyce’s home before leaving. There would be no physical evidence, and the case would come down to duelling versions of events.
The complainant repeated that purported conversation with the cop. “I had showered that morning, and I didn’t have semen on me.”
Semen? Rape? Where did that come from all of a sudden?
Cue the rape-culture myths. Or, as the complainant put it in her response statement: “Our misogynistic society re-victimizes and shames women into silence. The plaintiff refuses to stay silent and be made to feel ashamed for something she didn’t do.”
The hearing continues. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.