Well, it happened, after months and months of publicity and public enthrallment, the ballad of Jian Ghomeshi has ended in a whimper.Now that it's all over there are several questions that come to mind, and even though they might not be too popular with some women, (like my sister) I think they need to be asked!
Was Jian Ghomeshi a self-centered, egotistical misogynist who liked to engage in what the press euphemistically referred to as "rough sex" .........., probably!
Did he take advantage of his position as a public figure to prey on women?
Once again ......., probably! (But then again, most men probably would too!)
Did the courts handle this case properly and did Ghomeshi receive an appropriate outcome?
YES and NO!
Yes, because he was eventually released from the clutches of some women who, for reasons unknown, [sic] seemed to have a vendetta against him, and would go to great lengths to manipulate the system for their own ends!
No, because if the prosecution and defence teams had objectively compared their evidence from the beginning of this whole mess, everyone would have realized that there was something rotten in Denmark! (Or in this case the, Old City Hall Courtroom.)
The end result is that Ghomeshi comes off looking like both a perpetrator AND a victim ..............., and that ain't right!
RIGHT AFTER HIS APOLOGY, TODAY'S 'VICTIM' MADE THIS STATEMENT: Kathryn Borel emerges from anonymity with scathing indictment of Ghomeshi and CBC
Hi, everyone, thanks for coming out and listening.http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/jian-ghomeshi-peace-bond
My name is Kathryn Borel. In December of 2014, I pressed sexual assault charges against Jian Ghomeshi.
As you know, Mr. Ghomeshi initially denied all the charges that were brought against him. But today, as you just heard, Jian Ghomeshi admitted wrongdoing and apologized to me. It’s unfortunate but maybe not surprising that he chose not say much about what exactly he was apologizing for.
I’m going to provide those details for you now.
Everyday, over the course of a three-year-period, Mr. Ghomeshi made it clear to me that he could do what he wanted to me and my body. He made it clear that he could humiliate me repeatedly and walk away with impunity. There are at least three documented incidents of physical touching. This includes the one charge he just apologized for, when he came up behind me while I was standing near my desk, put his hands on my hips and rammed his pelvis against my backside, over and over, simulating sexual intercourse.
Throughout the time that I worked with him, he framed his actions with near-daily verbal assaults and emotional manipulations. His inferences felt like threats, or declarations like I deserved to have happening to me what was happening to me. It became very difficult for me to trust what I was feeling. Up until recently, I didn’t even internalize that what he was doing to my body was sexual assault because, when I went to the CBC for help, what I received in return was a directive that yes, he could do this, and yes, it was my job to let him.
The relentless message to me from my celebrity boss and the national institution he worked for were that his whims were more important than my humanity or my dignity. So I came to accept this. I came to believe that it was his right.
But when I spoke to the police at the end of 2014, and detailed my experiences with Mr. Ghomeshi, they confirmed to me that what he did to me was, in fact, sexual assault. That’s what Jian Ghomeshi just apologized for. The crime of sexual assault.
This is the story of a man who had immense power over me and my livelihood admitting that he chronically abused his power and violated me in ways that violated the law. Mr. Ghomeshi’s constant workplace abuse of me and my many colleagues and friends has since been corroborated by multiple sources, a CBC fifth estate documentary and a third-party investigation.
In a perfect world, people who commit sexual assault would be convicted for their crimes. Jian Ghomeshi is guilty of having done the things that I have outlined today. So when it was presented to me the defence would be offering us an apology, I was prepared to forego a trial. It seemed to be the clearest path to the truth. A trial would have maintained his lie; the lie that he was not guilty. And it would have further subjected me to the very same pattern of abuse that I am currently trying to stop.
Jian Ghomesi has apologized, but only to me.
There are 20 other women who have come forward to the media and made serious allegations about this violent behaviour. Women who have come forward to say that he punched and choked and smothered and silenced them. There is no way that I would have come forward if it wasn’t for their courage.
And yet Mr. Ghomeshi hasn’t met any of their allegations head-on, as he vowed to do in his Facebook post of 2014. He hasn’t taken the stand on any charge. All he has said about his other accusers is that they are all lying, and that he is not guilty.
And remember, that’s what he said about me.
I think we all want this to be over, but it won’t be until he admits to everything that he has done.
Thank you.
NOW, AS A COUP DE GRAS TO THIS WHOLE SORDID MESS, WE HAVE A FEW WORDS FROM CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD!
The woman at the centre of the sexual assault charge that is expected to be dropped against Jian Ghomeshi Wednesday once cheerfully agreed with an interviewer that while she was working on the radio show Ghomeshi used to host she was “incredibly inappropriate, foul-mouthed and sexual” in the workplace.
The 41-minute interview took place with journalist Jesse Brown on his Canadaland podcast on Dec. 9, 2013, a year before the woman went fully public with her allegation, though in that story she acknowledged having been an earlier anonymous source for Brown.
The interview remains posted on the Canadaland website, where it was first publicized last month by YouTube vlogger Diana Davison.
Ironically, the woman’s name is now protected by a court-imposed publication ban.
The interview with Brown, a good friend of the woman and co-author of the original Toronto Star story on the allegations that Ghomeshi was physically violent to his partners, is important because it may suggest why prosecutors are expected to withdraw the single charge once the 48-year-old former CBC star signs a peace bond at the Old City Hall courts in downtown Toronto.
In other words, this complainant, like the three who went before her in March at Ghomeshi’s first trial, may be vulnerable to questions about her credibility.
In the current case, Ghomeshi is alleged to have sexually assaulted the woman on Feb. 7, 2008, at the CBC, where the two then worked.
The assault reportedly involved him grinding his pelvis into her rear.
But the 36-year-old woman, who now lives out of the country, revealed herself in the Canadaland interview not only as an articulate and ambitious talent but also as a sometimes-profane outlier at the staid CBC.
She told Brown that “I definitely got rapped on the knuckles for my behaviour” at the broadcaster for such things as “making a terrible fist-f—ing joke in the middle of a story meeting” and said she often felt she was walking “a tightrope.”
When Brown remembered how “tone-deaf” she had been to CBC politics, she agreed: “The feedback I was getting was that I was tone-deaf to office politics.”
And when he told her she was so much a fish out of water at the CBC — “incredibly inappropriate, foul-mouthed and sexual and culturally out of step” — that her behaviour would have got anyone else fired, she said she was just 23 and “making it up as I go along.”
Despite her public statements in December of 2014 that Ghomeshi’s constant sexually aggressive conduct had not only driven her to binge-drinking, overeating and depression, she, Brown and her boyfriend (who was part of the interview) discussed at length her copious wine-drinking, “manic” behaviour and outsized appetites.
“I wanted enough money for my appetites,” she told Brown once, “and my appetites have always been great. That’s it.”
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We managed to get some footage from a helicopter that flew over parts of Fort McMurray today, and it amazed me how some neighbourhoods are untouched and other areas are completely wiped out.
Part of this might be due to the fact that different areas of the city are quite spread out with hills and forests in between! (Plus the fact that the suburbs are built right up to the tree line in quite a few spots!)
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