THE AMBIGUOUS LANGUAGE OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

Toronto (Canada) -  The two courts in which Jian Ghomeshi has been concurrently tried, the criminal justice system and the court of public opinion, collided with brute force on the day of the verdict.

The judge’s plainly worded decision was unsparing in describing the three complainants’ lack of reliability and credibility: they were “deceptive,” “manipulative” and showed “a wilful carelessness with the truth,” he said. If a hashtag had been attached, it would have read: ?#?IDoNotBelieveThem?.

This is a case where, bottom line, the complainants all lied,” he says, referring to the three women denying making contact with famed CBC anchorman ?#?Ghomeshi? after the alleged ?#?sexual? assaults.

Echoes of the “jilted girlfriend” trope were also evident the judge’s comparisons between the three complainants: each had “a brief relationship with [Ghomeshi] that ended badly,” the women continued to want contact with Ghomeshi and he did not.

This is a case that showed that the adversarial system worked and that someone didn’t get convicted on flimsy evidence,” Rosenthal says. Yet another cadre argues for a complete rethink of how sexual assault cases are tried; some call for specialized courts, similar to those used in drug and mental illness cases; others have suggested trying them like civil cases, which entails a lower burden of proof and lower penalties.

Whether “?#?sexualassault?” needs to be repositioned more generally as “assault” is another suggestion being floated; the aim here would be to remove the shame and blame institutionalized in the courts, which automatically impose publication bans to protect complainants’ identities, even as victims are reassured they have nothing to feel shameful about.

https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/what-jian-ghomeshi-did/