Bar of proof can’t be lowered because of gender.
It symbolizes nothing. It signifies nothing.
Well, nothing beyond the gratifying fact that Canadian courtrooms are crucibles of the law and won’t be swayed by mob rule.
Jian Ghomeshi is an innocent man. Or, if you prefer the semantics promoted following — even well before — Thursday’s ruling from a Toronto bench: Not proven guilty.
The distinction, which doesn’t exist in jurisprudence, was nevertheless cleaved to by a quite shrill and defiant constituency that isn’t particularly interested in facts or evidence or burden of proof.
They are the shame brigade. Because if you can’t beat the onetime CBC darling in court, then damn well bully up on social media and mainstream media too, wherever a sympathetic audience can be found. And that’s pretty much everywhere.
Here too, in this little column corner of the world.
I believed the three women who testified against Ghomeshi. I believed their accounts of choking and slapping and punching and hairpulling.
Something nasty happened between the accused and the complainants. I believe the alleged assaults — yoked to sex, ergo sexual assault, because they occurred in the context of kissing, which was intimacy, granted — was nonconsensual. But if not consented to in the moment, then certainly acquiesced to in the afterward because all three women came back for more. More Ghomeshi, even after they’d been given a scare and a clear look-see into his kinky nature.
He is an awful man. But not so awful that Lucy DeCoutere didn’t send him a lovelorn handwritten letter, specifically declaring she loved his hands, the same hands he’d pressed around her throat. Not so awful that a witness, who’d been brought to her knees by Ghomeshi’s physical force, didn’t later email him a bikini photo. Not so awful that a witness, despite having been throttled on a park bench, didn’t in short order take Ghomeshi home and give him a hand job.
This case should never have come to court, where it was thoroughly undressed and dismantled by defence lawyer Marie Henein. But of course charges were laid and of course the cases were prosecuted — because then police chief Bill Blair set the I-believe-you tone from the outset and his sexual crimes unit boss banged that drum as the Toronto Police Service’s de facto charter. You are woman and you are believed and, geez, wonder why these accusations were so shabbily investigated? Wonder why the witnesses got bushwhacked on the stand, when finally someone bothered to ask: What’s this? What are these emails? Why this photo? How come the thousands of emails between DeCoutere and Witness No. 3, after the Ghomeshi creepiness had exploded in the media, giving a strong whiff (let’s “sink the prick”) of collusion between witnesses. As well, each of the witnesses had a shaky grasp of truthfulness under oath as stories were altered, depositions changed, crucial details added after the trial had started.
But we’re not supposed to look askance at any of this because . . . oh, right, they’re women and They Have Accused.
I believe women, whether strong or weak of character, are adults and they shouldn’t be infantilized in court. The bar of proof can’t be lowered because of gender or the nature of a crime. And I’ve seen far worse defendants than Ghomeshi waltz free when allegations haven’t been proven — even when I thought they had, but a jury or a judge concluded otherwise.
I certainly do not countenance shaming when the verdict is contrary to what some wanted. Parents of murdered children have left court with their hearts in pieces, failed by a system that demands exacting standards even for the most heinous of crimes. I’ve never seen such a mother bare her breasts in objection — as one protester did outside court Thursday, though the connection between exhibitionism and Ghomeshi’s acquittal escapes me.
Shaming is medieval, literally so. In days of yore, “offenders’’ — particularly against public morals — were made to wear metal masks and walk around town displaying their wickedness. Now social media has replaced stockades and dunking chairs, but it’s no less vile.
A few weeks ago, it was pointed out to me that the forces of protest were girding their loins for a Ghomeshi acquittal. The shout-out had been made via Twitter, “a global movement to flood social media with selfies and the hashtag #iBelieveSurvivors’’ as per one announcement from SACHA — Sexual Assault Centre (Hamilton and Area), which has been doing good work for a long time. This is not so good. I happened to be on the phone with one of the campaign’s organizers, Erin Crickett, public education co-ordinator for SACHA, as tweets began emanating from the Toronto courthouse where Judge William Horkins was reading his decision. “I’m distressed,” Crickett said.
I’ll leave for another day the very appropriation of “survivor” language and its application to the Ghomeshi proceedings, except to observe that it’s a very low threshold indeed when the “surviving” refers to alleged punches and slaps and choking that caused no physical injury.
Distressed, was Crickett — like so many others who hissed and booed as the judge’s comments were reported in real-time — because the guy had gone and reinforced all the scratchy stereotypes of sexual assault victims. “Quite a lot of victimblaming going on,” Crickett scolded.
There followed the usual gospel of sex assaults, much of which I happen to agree with, although I utterly disagree that society views complainants dimly or that they’re routinely not believed. More correct is to say a minority are ever prosecuted — because a police officer or a Crown attorney has concluded there is insufficient evidence and little likelihood of conviction.
“This is the justice system looking for a perfect survivor,” Crickett said, as the courtroom tweets piled up.
That’s bollocks. There is no such thing as a perfect survivor — alleged victim, complainant. There is what can be supported by evidence to justify a charge — which, frankly, didn’t exist in the Ghomeshi matter, not on the testimony of these women — and what can reasonably be tried in court.
Crickett feared, veritably warned, that the Ghomeshi outcome would discourage victims from coming forward in the future. This, too, is rubbish. Nothing about this trial can or should or will be projected outwards to other complainants, unless they too are on disastrously shaky ground.
No witness was browbeaten on the stand. No complainant was manhandled by detectives. The failure is that all three women were treated with kid gloves, indulged, unchallenged, untested, thus unprepared for court.
The Ghomeshi trial has no significance or symbolism precisely because it was colossally lame on its merits. That was recognized by anybody who stepped foot in the courtroom and listened to the testimony. If damage was done to the “cause,” to sexual assault victims, the blame rests with these complainants. Yes, I’m blaming them. Traumatized, Crickett said. And the rest of us don’t get it; don’t appreciate how memory is affected by horrid experiences.
I reject this particular standard of “trauma.”
The women were allegedly violated. The crimes — unproven — barely approached the level of misdemeanour.
“I have a problem with you writing this article,” Crickett said.
I just did. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.