Little learned and less gained
What Jian Ghomeshi was accused of doing to Kathryn Borel — and didn’t actually admit in his apology — a professional athlete once did to me, minus the hands-on-hips.
Because there was no touching involved and my back was turned, I didn’t immediately realize why the chorus of snickers and snorts. It was another player who clued me in — the same veteran player who admonished his teammate for the crude incident: “Grow up, idiot.”
When made aware of the pelvisthrusting gesture, I was intensely embarrassed. And, although no fault of mine, ashamed.
It happened a long time ago so I won’t identify the team involved, or even the sport, to avoid any guilt by association after all these years.
As a young sports reporter, it never crossed my mind to make a formal complaint or inform my editor. But even if such an episode occurred today, I wouldn’t seek redress or an arm-twisted apology. I fight my own battles. And I chose to focus on the positive — that a player had broken rank in the dressing room, openly calling out a teammate. That carried a lot more moral weight than any remedial action I might have sought.
While I loathe confessional journalism, I mention this event to emphasize that what Borel experienced as a CBC employee is far from uncommon — though doubtlessly rarer in the modern-day workplace, where everyone is more aware of physical boundaries and inappropriate behaviour. Ghomeshi, of course, is the poster boy for manifest obtuseness and sexualized invasiveness. The sheer number of complainants point to a chronically toxic atmosphere that was allowed to fester, even though CBC management had been informed. Nobody at the national broadcaster — notoriously smug as an institutional finger-pointer when it comes to the misdeeds of others — was willing to put their media-star darling on a leash.
Ghomeshi was a fraud, a hipster radio personality who hit all the sensitivity grace-notes over the airwaves but acted like a pig in his private life — and the far-fromprivate life which is the domain of a workplace environment. He bullied and browbeat. He made life hell for female subordinates. He was cocooned within his no-touch status. And yes, he’s been brought to ruin — the only comeuppance from a slew of criminal charges that ended in either acquittal (rightly so, given the mash-up his accusers made of their evidence) or reprieve via negotiated apology.
Editorial writers and commentators looking for an encouraging take-away from the Ghomeshi Chronicles claim that it wasn’t all for naught, that an 18-month national conversation ensuing from the scandal spawned an epoch of enlightenment about the scourge of sexual harassment, sexual impropriety and sexual assault. I’m dubious about that. So-called empowerment trickles down slowly, sluggishly — if at all — to the working-class reality of most women’s lives. Ghomeshi’s fall from the marquee firmament will have little impact, I suspect, on the sexual brute who torments a twenty-something office clerk or an immigrant sweatshop worker. They’re not so sexy as victims or victimizers. They also have a great deal more to fear as complainants with zero leverage.
The thing is, I don’t believe that criminal law or the clumsy apparatus of human-rights commissions can fix what ails us still as a society of inequalities. Standards of justice are too high — as indeed they must be — in a sexual-assault criminal proceeding where it’s so difficult to prove an allegation beyond reasonable doubt. That’s not, let me stress, what doomed the Ghomeshi trial in March on four charges of sexual assault and one count of choking to overcome resistance. His accusers were flat-out not credible. Absent any supporting evidence, their demonstrable mendacity mattered enormously. It was a conviction-killer.
On the charge against Ghomeshi that was withdrawn Wednesday, my mind says, yes, it was sexual assault, as set out in the Criminal Code. But my gut says, no, it didn’t rise to the level of sexual assault as a criminal violation that could have resulted in a jail sentence. It’s terribly unfashionable to say so, but the charge should not have been laid. It trivializes sexual assault. Perverse behaviour is not necessarily criminal and prosecution not necessarily the best recourse.
I do question why Borel, tuned out by tone-deaf CBC management, didn’t file a complaint with — as an option — the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, if what she wanted was relief from Ghomeshi’s creepy contamination of the shared work space. But by then, of course, police were verily pleading for victims to come forward, assuring them that they would be believed — when they should have assured them that their complaints would be properly investigated.
As a procedural alternative, human-rights tribunals are a poor substitute for the courts. Innately agenda-driven, they have precious little regard for the grey zones of human interaction. This too often results in head-smacking overcorrection. The truth is we all live in those grey zones of complex human behaviour, which do not lend themselves to pat solutions, by court or by coercion. The truth is rotters like Ghomeshi thrive there. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.