Former radio star Jian Ghomeshi will appear in Toronto’s Old City Hall courtroom on Monday for the first trial to emerge from a barrage of accusations that the disgraced celebrity subjected multiple women to violent acts of sexual assault.



The accusations stunned millions of fans of the popular folk artist turned radio personality and his hugely popular program with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Q. The culture and current events show loomed large in Canadian entertainment and attracted a substantial following in the US. Ghomeshi, at once an engaging and an easygoing interviewer, attracted a broad range of guests: Jon Stewart, Paul McCartney, Jay-Z, Michael Moore, Werner Herzog, Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA, and Brian Wilson. His show was one of the CBC’s most successful.

Accusations against the celebrity host burst into public view in late October 2014. On 26 October, the Toronto Star published disturbing accounts from three unnamed women who claimed Ghomeshi had attacked them on dates.



The women told broadly consistent stories of abuse. Ghomeshi started out sweet and flirty but soon alluded to “violent sex acts”. “When they failed to respond or expressed displeasure, they recalled Ghomeshi dismissing his remarks as ‘just fantasies’, reassuring them he wouldn’t ask them to do anything they weren’t comfortable with,” the Star reported.

Ghomeshi eventually slapped, punched, bit, choked, or smothered them, the women claimed. One of the women said Ghomeshi choked her almost to the point of unconsciousness. Another said she struggled to breathe as he covered her nose and mouth.

A fourth woman, who was employed at the CBC, claimed Ghomeshi touched her buttocks at the office and told her: “I want to hate-fuck you.” She reported his actions to her union, which made the CBC aware of her complaints. The employee, who later allowed press to publicly identify her as former Q staffer Kathryn Borel, says she quit the radio show because of CBC’s lackluster response.

The report, which was the product of a months-long investigation, followed three days of turmoil among higher-ups at the CBC. Ghomeshi had told network executives about the possibility of a news article that he claimed would distort his private life. On 24 October, the network announced that Ghomeshi was taking an indefinite leave of absence “to deal with some personal issues”. Two days later, and just hours before the Star story was published, the CBC announced that it had fired Ghomeshi because of “information” that “precluded” employing him further.

Ghomeshi was quick with a public response to his firing. In an emotional Facebook post that has since disappeared, he accused “a jilted ex girlfriend” of falsely portraying their rough but consensual sex as abusive to members of the media. Ghomeshi informed the CBC that “someone was reframing what had been an ongoing consensual relationship as something nefarious”, he wrote, and showed executives evidence of consent. It later came out that Ghomeshi had showed them video of a bruised woman, evidently injured with a broken rib, whom he said he had dated. He said the injuries were from consensual activities.

In his post, Ghomeshi claimed the network fired him because the behavior was unbecoming and any news story could give the impression of abuse. “Let me be the first to say that my tastes in the bedroom may not be palatable to some folks,” he wrote. “But that is my private life … And no one, and certainly no employer, should have dominion over what people do consensually in their private life.”

The Star report followed later that day.

The next few weeks brought a surge of similar allegations against Ghomeshi. Within days, four more alleged victims had identified themselves to the press or police. Within a month, the accusers numbered more than twenty, including several who agreed to make their identities public. Numerous women and one man accused Ghomeshi of behavior that ranged from forceful groping and unwanted touching to punching and choking. Several accusers said he punched or choked them without warning. The incidents allegedly took place between the years of 1988 and 2013 – dating to his time in college and his career as the frontman for Moxy Früvous, a beloved pop-folk band.

“I was surprised by how violent the allegations against him were,” Jim Hounslow, an employee of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg and one of Ghomeshi’s accusers, told the Guardian. “But I wasn’t shocked by how many. I was really expecting more allegations to come out.”

Ghomeshi sued the CBC for $55m the day after his firing. He withdrew his lawsuit a month later following an undisclosed agreement with the network.

On 26 November, Ghomeshi turned himself in to Toronto police and was charged with four counts of sexual assault and one count of “overcome resistance” by choking. Ghomeshi was released on bail. Prosecutors added three more charges of sexual assault in January, and dropped two in May, citing a likelihood that they could not secure convictions.

The remaining charges stem from accusations by four different women. Only one of the women has shared her name with the public: Lucy DeCoutere, an actor on the TV comedy Trailer Park Boys. DeCoutere met Ghomeshi at a TV festival and went on a date with him in 2003. The two were kissing at his house, she has said, when he turned violent. “He did take me by the throat and press me against the wall and choke me,” DeCoutere said. “And he did slap me across the face a couple of times.”

On Monday, Ghomeshi will face the first of two criminal trials before the Ontario court of justice, for the choking charge and four counts of sexual assault. Ghomeshi has pleaded not guilty to all counts. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

A test of the legal system

The accusations against the former radio host have highlighted concerns about Canada’s past handling of sexual assault cases. Photograph: Keith Beaty/Getty Images

As the Ghomeshi case moves into the trial phase, observers are wondering where it will fit into Canada’s troubled history of handling sexual assault cases.

The accusations against Ghomeshi have renewed attention to the barriers and stigma facing those who make allegations of sexual violence. Many of the women who came forward, for instance, accused Ghomeshi of assaulting them ten or twenty years ago. They said they didn’t feel law enforcement would act on their complaints. Several said they were afraid to be named. Those women cited a 2013 piece by Carla Ciccone on the website XOJane, describing her “bad date” with a radio host who touched her despite her objections. Ciccone did not identify Ghomeshi by name. Still, legions of his fans singled her out for vitriolic harassment on social media.

At least one Ghomeshi accuser was motivated to come forward by all that fear. Hounslow, who met Ghomeshi when the two were York University undergraduates, said he told the Toronto Star about his own alleged abuse out of a hope that he could encourage others to come forward. The two worked together in student government. Hounslow claimed that one night as they waited for an elevator, Ghomeshi grabbed his genitals and fondled them.

“I wanted to be supportive, to encourage others to come out,” Hounslow told the Guardian. “I also wanted to show that [Ghomeshi] had a history of assaulting people who worked with him … There was a long history of this behavior.”

Law enforcement in Toronto seemed to move quickly and effectively at the first sign that Ghomeshi could be a serial sex offender. In an unusual move, the chief of police invited victims to make formal complaints.

But the Canadian courts bear a long history of brutal cross-examinations of women claiming sexual assault. Appellate courts have repeatedly restrained trial judges from intervening in cross-examination, said Janine Benedet, a law professor at the University of British Columbia.

“In sexual assault cases, there has been a really troubling history of defense counsel resorting to what are often impermissible inferences – trying to bring in sexual history without proper application, trying to rely on the fact the complainant didn’t disclose right away, or should have fought back,” Benedet continued.

Indeed, news reports have noted that many of Ghomeshi’s accusers maintained contact with him or waited long periods of time after the alleged abuse to report to law enforcement. These are normal behaviors for victims of abuse that can nevertheless appear to undermine their stories.

Beyond the courtroom, the accusations have prompted scrutiny of Ghomeshi’s former employer. As early as 2012, CBC management received repeated complaints of inappropriate workplace behavior.



Several former and current CBC employees have said the network did little to act on those reports. The summer before Ghomeshi’s accusers went public, a network executive had conducted an investigation into his conduct that found no evidence of wrongdoing.

In January 2015, however, CBC put that executive, Chris Boyce, and Todd Spencer, head of human resources, on leave. That May, investigators commissioned by CBC released a report that excoriated upper management for mishandling complaints as Ghomeshi’s star rose. CBC announced that it would end its relationships with Boyce and Spencer. In March, the CBC announced that it would replace Ghomeshi with the rapper Shad.

The allegations fractured a wide circle of friends, artists, and admirers who surrounded Ghomeshi and resulted in a sometimes vicious debate about the women’s credibility. Many immediately used social media to insist on his innocence. Others were vocal about their belief in the victims. “Jian is my friend,” Owen Pallett, an indie musician, wrote in a Facebook post. “But there is no grey area here.”

Ghomeshi has maintained his innocence since the first of the allegations in 2014 and repeatedly suggested that any contact he had with his accusers was consensual. At one point, his attorneys told the Star that messages between Ghomeshi and a woman he believed to be a Star source would prove that all their contact was consensual, but they declined to share the messages.

Just before he was charged, Ghomeshi added the prominent defense attorney Marie Henein to his team of attorneys. Henein, whom former clients have described as “my shark” and a person who “seemed to channel Hannibal Lecter”, has a reputation for ruthlessness. To many, the choice signals that Ghomeshi’s accusers will face ferocious cross-examination.

Hounslow, who accuses Ghomeshi of assaulting him as a student, will be following the trial. But he thinks about the tidal wave of accusations less than he did last year.

“I just felt sickened for a couple of weeks,” he recalled. “Nauseous and worried about the people I knew who had dated him.” But as more women came forward, his worries turned into empathy and admiration. “Some of them are just very brave to put their names and faces out there in connection with these charges,” he said. “I felt it was all very cathartic.”

