Antidotes to distress over Cosby verdict
One of the most impressive things about Andrea Constand, who through circumstance and bravery became the only complainant in a criminal trial against America’s Disgraced Dad, comedian Bill Cosby, alleging he drugged and sexually violated her in 2004, is her sheer physicality.
A former pro basketball player, Constand, 44, now a Toronto massage therapist, stands 6 feet tall and walks with the natural grace and strength of a powerful athlete.
We’re not supposed to talk objectively about the bodies of sexual assault survivors. But what the heck, as women, our bodies are on trial all the time anyway.
I was struck by Constand’s strength in every image I saw of her. Her shoulders are broad and they needed to be. There were dozens of women — what are we up to now, 50? — standing on them. These women were counting on Constand’s personal strength and the strength of her story to right a wrong they claimed to have endured themselves, especially when they were young and vulnerable: being sexually assaulted, most of them after being drugged, by one of the most famous, powerful and previously beloved men in the entertainment business.
On the day last weekend that a mistrial was declared after the jury deliberated for more than 52 hours and said they were deadlocked on each of the three charges of aggravated indecent assault, I can only imagine how shattered these women all felt.
Even I felt sad and defeated for a moment, although the outcome was sadly predictable.
We have started to hear directly from those jury members who, unlike Canadian juries post-trial, are allowed to speak publicly.
One has already said in an interview only two members of the jury refused to convict Cosby, 79. (Cosby himself admitted in a previous deposition to having given Quaaludes to the many women he had sex with over the years, quibbling only over that pesky issue of consent.)
Constand’s testimony was compelling and measured, but there were inconsistencies. I would still like to slip that now-disbanded jury a note: there will never be a perfect sexual assault victim, with no inconsistencies in her story and every fact verifiable. Accept that.
After the trial was nullified, my dismay turned to outrage watching Cosby’s spokesperson still at the Pennsylvania courthouse trumpet that his boss’s “power is back.” What a completely tone-deaf response.
Also ill-considered was a vindictive statement offered by Camille Cosby, the comedian’s wife of 53 years, in which she inveighed against the judge and prosecutors. But not, of course, against her husband.
Like many others, I believe Andrea Constand, and I hope that she hangs in for the retrial that the prosecutors vowed immediately they would hold.
In the meantime, I needed an antidote. So I went to see Wonder Woman. Gal Gadot, after all, the breakout star of the first femaledirected, female superhero movie now slaying at the box office is not only a martial arts expert but also served in the Israeli military. Gadot sure knows how to throw her power around physically and otherwise. I was momentarily cheered by her charming battle against evil.
Alas, it was still Hollywood, the land of Cosby and not the land of ordinary women who are sexually assaulted, harassed and abused so often one gets tired of stating this obvious fact. They have no magic shields.
What did bring me an odd comfort was watching The Keepers, a riveting seven-episode true crime docudrama now on Netflix.
Directed by Ryan White, The Keepers starts out to be about the unsolved 1969 murder of a young Baltimore nun, Sister Catherine Cesnick. But it turns into a wrenching chronicle about a horrific case of systemic sexual abuse of high school girls by Roman Catholic priests.
The Keepers tells the story of a plucky group of women, now in their 60s, who went to the same Catholic high school, adored Sister Cathy who was one of their teachers, and come together to try to solve the murder.
Most of them either suffered sexual abuse at the hands of malevolent priests or witnessed it. Some of these women are supported by wonderful husbands and brothers and male friends who believed what they had to say.
One quote from The Keepers that resonated with me was from a woman whose husband — a former priest — was initially suspected of the nun’s murder.
She wholly believed he was innocent but said “The truth is more important than some story that we tell ourselves to keep our lives untroubled on the surface.” (Of course, that could go either way for any jury but it’s a wonderful statement about the primacy of truth.)
Another is from a male sexual abuse survivor explaining why it takes so long for people to come forward with their stories of sexual assault. Sometimes it takes years, he said, to be ready to “take the deepest darkest secret you have and stand up in front of a jury and tell them about it.”
And the third was from a politician who was sexually abused by his foster father and who joined an unsuccessful appeal to extend the statute of limitations for child sex abuse claims.
“We can’t be unraped,” he said. “All we can do is try to hold people accountable.”
To that I would say, in the justice system, unfortunately you can be unraped.
But the battle to hold those accountable is getting stronger. Let’s see what happens in the Cosby retrial. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson