Ghomeshi trial shows that the justice system works
Ihave always considered myself a feminist, at least as much as a man can lay claim to the term. My mother is a strong, committed feminist, my wife — a criminal lawyer and former Crown prosecutor — is certainly a feminist, not that it is the central focus of her selfidentity, my sister is a feminist, and one of my grandmothers, by her actions, was clearly a feminist, not that I can recall her ever using the word to describe herself.
Throughout my adult life, I would be shocked if any of the women I am related to, have dated or been friends with would say that they are not feminists, particularly in the sense of the second-wave feminism of the 1960s to about 1990.
Basically, everyone I know believes in full legal equality for women, in equality of opportunity for both sexes (and in eliminating notions of what constitutes women’s or men’s work), in equal pay, and that women deserve respect.
There is nothing special or controversial about these views, which are shared by the majority of citizens because they fit comfortably with our Canadian belief in fairness.
But the debate around the prosecution and acquittal of former CBC darling Jian Ghomeshi for sex crimes has raised questions about the disturbing attitudes of modern, so-called third-wave feminists.
While most people — certainly those I’ve spoken with, especially my lawyer friends — believe that Ghomeshi’s acquittal was the only possible verdict given the lies and bizarre conduct of the three complainants, the media is full of comments from modern feminists claiming that the trial shows how badly sexual-assault victims are treated by the justice system.
Count me among those who think that Ghomeshi is a dork and not someone many women would want to date. (In June, the Crown will take another shot at branding him a sexual criminal.) But women’s-rights activists are picking the wrong case upon which to push their point that police and prosecutors don’t care about sexual-assault victims or that we all live in a “rape culture,” where sexual abuse of women is quietly acceptable.
I don’t buy it and I think those arguments do more harm than good. Thousands of female (and male) sexual-assault victims have secured convictions for the creeps who attacked them with the help of police, Crown lawyers and judges.
While the 42-per-cent conviction rate for sexual-assault charges is lower than other violent crimes, it’s not radically lower. (The conviction rate for murder trials is 47 per cent, for instance, and no one argues that we live in a “homicide culture.”)
Of 3,989 sexual-assault charges in Canada in 2010-11, there were 1,680 convictions, while 1,860 were stayed or withdrawn, which is normally done when the Crown knows it can’t prove the case. Only 369 ended in acquittals — nine per cent of the charges. That doesn’t exactly support the feminist view that women are systematically not believed by the courts.
As with all cases, the credibility of witnesses and sexual-assault victims is key. If you complain more than a decade after an alleged sex crime, later have sex with your alleged abuser or send him flirty emails, get basic facts wrong or collude with other alleged victims “to sink the pr--k”, as happened in the Ghomeshi cases, how can judges or the rest of us not have doubts?
Some feminists are pushing for changes to the rules of evidence or in how sexual-assault victims are treated in court to increase conviction rates. That would be wrong.
First, rigging the system simply to produce a subjectively “better” conviction rate would not be about seeking justice, it would be about obtaining feminist vengeance.
It would be dangerous to do what some women’s-rights activists want — that we uncritically “believe women.”
As Ontario Court Judge William Horkins said in his ruling, “the twists and turns of the complainants’ evidence in this trial illustrate the need to be vigilant in avoiding the equally dangerous false assumption that sexual-assault complainants are always truthful.”
But more importantly, there is something ironically sexist in the third-wave feminist calls for special, protective provisions for female witnesses or other special deals for women. It implies that women are weaker — delicate orchids too fragile to be treated equally to other witnesses. That sounds an awful lot like how women were once viewed by men.