Two organizations involved in the campus-controversial Men’s Rights Movement are offering to pay $2,000 for information leading to a conviction for the March 26 assault on a fourth-year Queen’s University student.

Attila Vinczer, of Men’s Rights Canada, who also serves as director of activism for A Voice for Men, a U-S based online Men’s Rights Movement publication, initially offered a $1,000 reward for the information on April 17. That was the same day he came to Kingston to put up reward posters on and around the Queen’s campus.

Paul Elam, founder and publisher of A Voice for Men, immediately posted an online pledge to match that reward with a second $1,000.

The assault came to light after the victim, Danielle d’Entremont, displayed a post-attack photo of herself to Facebook, revealing a broken front tooth and swollen left eye. Kingston Police were told a man she didn’t know accosted her as she was leaving her home near Victoria Park around 11 p.m. and punched her multiple times.

She also disclosed that prior to being assaulted she’d received several threatening emails referencing her support for feminist activities on Queen’s campus. And she wrote that her assailant knew her name.

The beating occurred the night before a campus group, the Men’s Issues Awareness Society (MIAS), and the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) hosted a public forum on campus featuring author and University of Ottawa professor Janice Fiamengo, who has infuriated some feminists by questioning the existence of a ‘rape culture’ in Canada.

The event titled What’s Equality Got to Do With It? Men’s Issues and Feminism’s Double Standards and Fiamengo’s talk were previously disrupted by protesters and malicious fire alarms when CAFE offered it at the University of Ottawa.

Opposition to that same forum being presented at Queen’s was so vehement that the Alma Mater Society was unsuccessfully petitioned to de-ratify MIAS a little more than a week before d’Entremont’s beating.

Queen’s Journal also reported that de’Entremont was actively involved in opposition to the forum taking place at Queen’s.

Kingston Police haven’t discounted the possibility of the attack being ideologically motivated. But the fact is, with no suspect, the motives and politics of her assailant are pure speculation.

Some men’s rights proponents like Vinczer, went so far as to question whether the fourth-year student ‘s assault was even real, given her politics and the timing.

“Admittedly, at first blush, I just questioned it,” he said, when contacted by phone.

After the reward was announced, however, his tone was more temperate, if not entirely accepting.

Alluding to the money, he said, “nobody else has taken this kind of initiative, to find the perpetrator of this terrible incident.”

Both Vinczer and A Voice for Men managing editor and operations manager Dean Esmay challenged feminists at Queen’s to either add to or offer a reward of their own for information.

Vinczer was adamant that Men’s Rights Canada doesn’t advocate or condone violence.

On the activism page of A Voice for Men, he writes: “If anybody involved in the Men’s Human Rights Movement in any way physically harmed or seriously threatened anyone we would instantly denounce them.”

And “…no matter who attacked this young woman, we want them found, arrested and prosecuted.”

The site urges anyone with pertinent information about the crime to contact Kingston Police and Vinczer said the reward money, should a qualifying tipster emerge, will be channelled through the police department.

The Whig-Standard was unable to reach anyone at the police department for an update on the case, however, or any feminist representatives at Queen’s, following the Easter long weekend.

sue.yanagisawa@sunmedia.ca