Ghomeshi’s allure hard to fathom.
Licence my roving hands and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below. John Donne
The Oxford Dictionary defines seduction as enticing someone into sexual activity.
I’ve yet to understand how Jian Ghomeshi enticed any of the three women who accused him of sexual assault into intimacy and enthrallment.
And then, abruptly, without warning, into violation of their trust — assuming you believe, as I still do, that the complainants told at least that much truth on the witness stand.
In reviewing my notes from the trial, there seems no distinct gotcha moment when Ghomeshi might have believed himself licensed to indulge his admitted proclivity for sadism and masochism.
More than a decade ago, those tastes might have been known around the CBC and the circles in which Ghomeshi moved, although for most of us, realization arrived only when the media darling, scrambling to avoid termination by the national broadcaster, boasted his S&M manifesto online.
I’ll assume the three accusers were not versed in Ghomeshi’s tendencies when each found herself the object of his attention.
The attraction may have been mutual but only for women did it appear to have extended beyond the moment, the day, the week, the month. Ghomeshi was a player; he dipped in and out of women’s lives.
At least these women, I should say, because we don’t know about the rest, or his relationship patterns as an adult, apart from some of the cautionary tales that — after the fact, after the fall — were recounted to the media by some of his paramours, whether fleeting or more long-lasting.
That beguiling, I don’t get. But it’s impossible to understand what turns some people on and some people off.
Given Ghomeshi’s profound vanity, his self-absorption, I would have given him a wide berth. But the heart wants what it wants. So do the nether regions.
He was, is, a handsome man and a minted celebrity within the admittedly low-wattage galaxy of CanCult fame.
Witness No. 1 seemed the most star-struck of the bunch so her non-fatal attraction to Ghomeshi — hair pulled on one occasion, struck in the head on the only other time they were together — is easier to appreciate.
An older separated mom from the suburbs who wandered into Ghomeshi’s orbit while serving cocktails at an industry party — not so much wandered, actually, but steered herself there by afterwards repeatedly showing up at his show tapings — there was a touching dollop of the naif about her under oath.
She testified about Ghomeshi’s charisma and his overt interest in her at the CBC Christmas party. “He was smitten with me.”
I suspect that was part of Ghomeshi’s M.O., playing the smitten, appealing to a woman’s vanity, never a bad approach. On a later occasion, Ghomeshi drove the woman a short distance to her own car.
As Judge William Horkins wrote in his acquittal decision: “The ‘Love Bug’ car significant to her because it contributed to her impression of his softness, his kindness and generally that it was safe to be with him.”
She claimed that Ghomeshi yanked hard on her hair in that car, that night — after she said no to his request that she undo a couple of her blouse buttons.
Does this strike anybody else as awfully 1950s — almost clumsy sweet? In any event, Ghomeshi then grabbed hold of her long hair and yanked it “really, really hard.” Hard enough that her thought at the time was, “What have I gotten into here?”
Yet she got herself into more of the same, deeper, because, gosh, he was Jian Ghomeshi and she was just this cocktail waitress with a kid, albeit a very pretty woman.
So, yes, it’s understandable that Accuser No. 1 would have, at the next opportunity, accepted Ghomeshi’s invitation to his house, following an hour of flirting at a pub.
She was stunned by the violence that came out of nowhere, whilst they were kissing and messing around; punching her hard in the head several times, she testified, pulling her to her knees. Then suddenly the rage was gone. It may all have been deeply confusing. But there was nothing unmistakable about it, as she described the incident.
Why then would she have subsequently sent Ghomeshi a photo of herself in a bikini, clearly angling to seduce, though she characterized that email as “setting bait.”
The thing is, out of all three complainants, Witness No. 1 had the clearest ring of truth about her.
She forgot some details, was mistaken about others — understandable, 10 years after the fact — conceded possible misremembering, such as her original allegation to police that Ghomeshi had smashed her head against the window in that Love Bug.
Her inconsistencies were not a deal-breaker. But she did lie, firm in her evidence that she chose not to have any further contact with Ghomeshi, until confronted with the flirtatious emails she’d subsequently sent him, a detail never disclosed to police or the Crown.
She was the most credible of the trio, though. Judge Horkins thought so too, to a point.
“(Her) evidence-in-chief seemed rational and balanced. Under crossexamination, the value of her evidence suffered irreparable damage. Defence counsel’s questioning revealed inconsistencies, and incongruous and deceptive conduct. (She) has been exposed as a witness willing to withhold relevant information from the police, from the Crown and from the Court. It is clear that she deliberately breached her oath to tell the truth. Her value as a reliable witness is diminished accordingly.”
Witness No. 1 had a fan-crush, I think, on Ghomeshi. Thrilled that he’d noticed her at all; had pursued however briefly and peremptorily. She didn’t want her moment in the sunshine of Ghomeshi’s favour to end.
The other two complainants — more worldly, both in the entertainment business, one an actress, the other a dancer — were at least as captivated by Ghomeshi as the lady from the ’burbs, though each provided some revisionist character analysis on the stand, noting the man’s off-putting qualities, from the get-go.
Nevertheless, both quite evidently remained star-struck even as Ghomeshi had purportedly struck them.
As witnesses, they were disastrous — deceitful.
They failed to seduce the judge. They failed to seduce any clear-eyed spectator. But they certainly tried hard to play the poor-victim card.
As a fellow feminist and colleague observed: Mind-boggling how eagerly a younger generation of females will take back the mantle of spineless, hopeless, poor little fragile creatures they are, guilty of nothing more than too much niceness.
Just one more fallacy about females. We are not raised to be nice. We are not raised to be acquiescent. And we are definitely not raised as saps for seducers. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.