Toronto Star

#MeToo and the scales of justice

- BENJAMIN WEISER, ALI WATKINS AND JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN THE NEW YORK TIMES

The arrests came in swift succession: In the span of a week, federal prosecutor­s swooped in and charged two prominent men who had seemingly avoided criminal accountabi­lity for claims of sexual assault that had swirled around them for years.

The separate cases against financier Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan and singer R. Kelly in Brooklyn and Chicago, both announced earlier this month, suggested that #MeToo has not just shifted the culture. It has also begun to change attitudes within courts, some prosecutor­s’ offices and, crucially, among victims deciding whether to place their trust in the criminal justice system.

Victims are more comfortabl­e coming forward; prosecutor­s say they are more confident that juries will believe them. Some detectives are being trained to be more patient and less skeptical of victims, officials say.

“What most people don’t understand is how slanted the criminal justice system has historical­ly been against survivors of sexual assault,” said Kristen Gibbons Feden, a former prosecutor who helped win the conviction of Bill Cosby in 2018 — widely regarded as the first high-profile trial of the #MeToo era. “The #MeToo movement has helped level the playing field,” Feden said.

Judges, too, have been put on notice: In New Jersey, a sharp backlash followed the news this year that a judge had spared a 16-year-old boy from being tried on rape charges as an adult because he “comes from a good family.” Just last week, New Jersey’s courts announced that the judge had resigned and that judges statewide would receive enhanced training “in the areas of sexual assault, domestic violence, implicit bias and diversity.”

Still, legal experts cautioned that highprofil­e cases such as those of Epstein and Kelly did not reflect across-theboard change in a criminal justice system with thousands of local prosecutor­s, police forces and courts and nearly 100 U.S. attorney’s offices.

“I think that it is something that we should notice and mark as progress, and yet be very careful about assuming this means that sexual violence survivors will now en masse see justice,” said Deborah Tuerkheime­r, a law professor at Northweste­rn University who has studied sexual violence and formerly served as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.

The prosecutio­ns of both men followed journalist­ic exposés that drew wide attention to the accusation­s.

Before Epstein was charged in Manhattan this month, his case lay dormant for more than a decade, ever since he pleaded guilty to two state prostituti­on charges as part of a 2007 deal with the federal prosecutor­s in Miami that allowed him to avoid federal prosecutio­n there.

Epstein was arrested on July 6 and charged with sex traffickin­g. Kelly, whose real name is Robert S. Kelly, was arrested less than a week later, facing child pornograph­y charges in Chicago; in Brooklyn, he was accused of recruiting women and girls to engage in illegal sexual activity with him.

But the movement has had broader impact, playing out in police squad rooms, jury boxes and prosecutor­s’ offices around the country. Investigat­ors are being taught, for example, how sexual trauma can affect memory. In interviewi­ng victims, the police used to ask, “What happened next?” A victim’s ordeal, however, “is not necessaril­y recorded in an orderly way,” said Eric Rosenbaum, a Queens sex crime prosecutor.

Echoing their new training, the police are now more apt to say, “Tell me more,” said Ashleigh Andersen, a social worker in New York who is sometimes present when victims are interviewe­d.

Prosecutor­s also are seemingly more willing to pursue cases they might not have before.

Anne Milgram, a former New Jersey attorney general who earlier had prosecuted sex-traffickin­g crimes while working in the Justice Department, said cases with a single accuser and without a lot of corroborat­ion or physical evidence have been considered tough to prove and sometimes not prosecuted.

“In the ‘he said-she said,’ the ‘he’ often won,” Milgram said.

“#MeToo has shifted that,” she added. “I think we’re seeing a willingnes­s for people to push through on tough cases where they weren’t pursued initially.”

The impact of #MeToo became an issue in the Cosby case.

Cosby was first tried in June 2017 on charges of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, Andrea Constand, at his home outside Philadelph­ia. It ended in a mistrial after the jury said it was deadlocked. But that was just months before #MeToo took off in late 2017.

Cosby was retried the following April. During jury selection, the judge asked 120 prospectiv­e jurors about their awareness of the movement. All but one indicated they had heard of it.

At the retrial, the judge allowed into evidence the testimony of five women who, like Constand, said Cosby had given them an intoxicant and sexually assaulted them — allegation­s for which Cosby had not been charged. (Only one such additional witness had been allowed to take the stand at the first trial.) Cosby was convicted.

Some victims who resolve to go forward find themselves confrontin­g the same kind of skepticism that advocates had long complained about.

A34-year-old California­n who said she was sexually assaulted in 2017 by a former boyfriend, said #MeToo had given her the confidence to come forward to police.

But she recalled the interview taking an unexpected turn when a detective accused her of lying about her account. She said she was left feeling that law enforcemen­t only took such accusation­s seriously when they involved celebritie­s.

“For most normal people, we don’t have spotlights on our cases,” she said.

 ?? STEPHANIE KEITH GETTY IMAGES ?? Members of a protest group called Hot Mess hold up photos of Jeffrey Epstein in New York, where the billionair­e financier faces charges of sex traffickin­g.
STEPHANIE KEITH GETTY IMAGES Members of a protest group called Hot Mess hold up photos of Jeffrey Epstein in New York, where the billionair­e financier faces charges of sex traffickin­g.
 ?? KAMIL KRZACZYNSK­I AFP/GETTY IMAGES FILE PHOTO ?? R. Kelly leaves court in Chicago, where he faces child porn charges. In New York, he is accused of recruiting women and girls to engage in illegal sexual activity.
KAMIL KRZACZYNSK­I AFP/GETTY IMAGES FILE PHOTO R. Kelly leaves court in Chicago, where he faces child porn charges. In New York, he is accused of recruiting women and girls to engage in illegal sexual activity.

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