Ghomeshi looks weary in court appearance where he was ordered held on $100,000 bail and formally charged with four counts sexual assault

Canadian broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi has turned himself into police after being formally charged with four counts of sexual assault, Toronto police announced on Wednesday.

He was also charged with one count of “overcome resistance – choking”.

At a brief bail hearing, a justice of the peace granted him bail on condition that he surrender his passport and lives with his mother until trial. Bail was set at $100,000. A publication ban has been imposed on details about the case.

Dressed in a dark blazer over a white shirt, Ghomeshi looked weary. After the hearing, he left the downtown courthouse with a police escort, followed by a scrum of reporters, in scenes reminiscent of the media circus which blew up around the former Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

The arrest comes days after the announcement that Ghomeshi was dropping his C$55m lawsuit against his former employer, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, leaving him to pay C$18,000 in legal fees. He has reportedly filed a grievance through his union, the Canadian Media Guild.



Ghomeshi, one of Canada’s most popular broadcasters, had been the host of the hit CBC radio show Q. But on 24 October, CBC announced that he was taking an indefinite leave of absence after it received information about Ghomeshi’s alleged penchant for sadomasochistic sex – reportedly from Ghomeshi himself, who had realised he was the subject of an investigation by reporters working for the Toronto Star.

Ghomeshi posted an emotional defense of his actions on Facebook in an effort to get out in front of the story, and hired a public relations firm to help him.

In his Facebook post, he said that it was not unusual for him to engage in “adventurous forms of sex that included role-play, dominance and submission” but said that it was always consensual.

The post implied that the allegations against him were the act of a jilted ex-girlfriend.

The day after his statement was posted, the Toronto Star published a story detailing allegations from three women who said Ghomeshi had verbally and physically abused them without their consent.

On 26 October he was officially fired from his job at the CBC.

In a second Facebook post Ghomeshi said that he intended to “meet these allegations directly”. But the following day four more women came forward with allegations of sexual violence.

One of these was Lucy DeCoutere, an actor and the star of the comedy series Trailer Park Boys. She told the Star that she met Ghomeshi at a television festival in Banff in 2003, and that later, at his home in Toronto, Ghomeshi had “pushed her against the wall, choked her with his hands around her neck, and then slapped her”, the paper reported.

Another of the women, a former CBC producer in Montreal, told the Star that she “dreamed of being on [Ghomeshi’s radio show] Q”. The paper reported that she told them Ghomeshi threw her against the wall of his hotel room and was “forceful” with her. She told the paper that she performed oral sex just “to get out of there”.

After the new allegations emerged, the crisis-management firm Ghomeshi had hired announced that it would no longer be working with him. The Toronto police began investigating Ghomeshi on 31 October.