Article content continued

Rooney, according to Boyd, ultimately disavowed her earlier recollections. Open and shut, one might think. But Galloway’s accusers became a mob on social media, viciously attacking anyone who stood up for his right even to due process. Even Canadian feminist icon Margaret Atwood was not spared from the attacks of the Twittersphere for declaring that, “I believe in order to have civil and human rights for women there have to be civil and human rights… Including the right to fundamental justice… In regard to the specifics of Galloway’s case, any fair-minded person would withhold judgment until the report and the evidence are available for us to see. We are grownups: we can make up our own minds, one way or the other.”

The Galloway story has been well covered in the pages of this newspaper, including, in his own words, in a remarkable three page spread.

The result for Galloway: ruination reputationally, financially and psychologically. Shockingly, while Galloway’s name is pilloried, his accuser, M.C., retains her anonymity. She does not deserve this and I would be delighted to name her. Indeed, in my view, she, Rooney and the entire coterie that so viciously attacked Galloway and Atwood should be named, shamed and sued.

And Galloway is not the only one.

Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim, an assistant professor at McGill University, recently sued a student and another professor, Pasha Khan, for $600,000 as a result of what he claims to be a “ruthless campaign” to destroy his reputation and right to privacy. He claims that he was in a consensual relationship with a student three years earlier but, after it ended, a smear campaign erupted with the goal of having him fired, with stickers appearing in bathrooms alleging that he was a sexual predator and allegations made in the student newspaper. Although the messages were posted by an anonymous group, the lawsuit claims that the student he sued was behind them. The lawsuit also alleges that Khan warned female students to stay away from him to avoid sexually inappropriate behaviour. His tenure application was denied, and he now must leave McGill at the end of his existing contract and he asserts, with good reason, that he is unemployable in academia.