Oh Lucy, you have a lot of ’splaining to do.

My bias admitted: As a woman, I so wanted Lucy DeCoutere to be a strong witness in the Jian Ghomeshi sexual assault case. After the first complainant’s story fell apart so spectacularly earlier this week, I wanted the Trailer Park Boys actress to show legitimate victims with credible accounts that they shouldn’t fear coming forward, that the system would treat them fairly, honourably.

As a successful actor and a captain in the military with a master’s in education, she was a smart woman who would certainly be able to hold her own against any defence lawyer, even the terrifying Marie Henein. I was pulling for her.

Sad to say, she let us down. But so, too, did the Crown and the police who did a disastrous job in preparing this case for trial.

Another cross-examination, another implosion. Once again, it was a series of retrieved e-mails, photos and even a handwritten love letter produced by Henein like a magician from her hat of tricks that showed that contrary to what she told police and the media, DeCoutere was infatuated with the radio personality and sought to see him often — even just hours after she says he choked and slapped her in his Riverdale home on July 4, 2003.

Ghomeshi, 48, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of sexual assault and one count of overcoming resistance by choking, all related to alleged assaults against DeCoutere and two other women between 2002 to 2003.

Like the first witness who accused Ghomeshi of punching her, DeCoutere said she forgot about these multiple efforts to reconnect with the man who allegedly attacked her. “Memory is a funny thing,” she mused.

She acknowledged how difficult her post-incident conduct would be for others to understand.

It’s complicated, she said. It’s weird, she admitted. This was her way of trying to “neutralize” what had been a bad, inexplicable act by a man she found cool and funny. Her way of dealing with it was by pursuing him as a friend. “To make him more human to me,” she explained.

“When dealing with trauma, it’s not a straight line.” Look at abused women, she said, who continually go back to the spouses who hurt them.

But as Henein coldly pointed out, this isn’t the same. DeCoutere spent one weekend with the guy. They were never involved in a relationship. She was financially independent, they shared no children, she could have easily cut off complete contact.

Instead, she continued to send him flirtatious e-mails and raunchy photos. Just hours after the alleged assault, DeCoutere wrote: “You kicked my ass last night and that makes me want to f--k your brains out. Tonight.”

She sent him flowers after that supposedly violent date. She wrote a handwritten love letter: “We hooked up for dinner and you totally knocked me out,” the actress wrote, using language that made us wince. “I loved spending time with you ... I am sad we didn’t spend the night together.”

And then DeCoutere signed off, “I love your hands, Lucy.”

“I love your hands” — seriously? Did she just allude to the very hands she said had been wrapped around her neck?

“The last line of it is me pointing love to the very thing that he used to hurt me,” DeCoutere said, struggling to explain.

It’s a psychology we may find bewildering but, she insisted, it doesn’t change the fact that Ghomeshi assaulted her.

Was this all smoke and mirrors then by an expert lawyer? Is this trial about how these women behaved after they said they were assaulted — or is it about what Ghomeshi did or did not do?

”This is and remains a trial about Mr. Ghomeshi’s conduct,” her lawyer Gillian Hnatiw reminded reporters. “What Lucy did and how she felt after the (alleged assault) does not change that essential fact.”

That may very well be true. But she didn’t come clean about it. And fair or not, it can’t help but cripple her credibility.

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THE DRAMATIC EXCHANGE BETWEEN HENEIN AND DECOUTERE

It was a duel of high drama, with Lucy DeCoutere in the crosshairs.

“You told the police you didn’t really have any dealings with him afterwards, except professionally, that you didn’t engage with him, that you weren’t friends with him, that there were no romantic feelings afterwards. Those were your words,” says defence lawyer Marie Henein.

“There were no romantic feelings afterward, I guarantee you that,” DeCoutere agrees.

“Do you? Under oath, you’re going to guarantee me that?”

“Oh god yes,” she replies.

The trap was set.

Henein went on to show her a series of friendly, sometimes flirtatious, sometimes bawdy e-mails DeCoutere sent Ghomeshi asking to meet.

Henein reminds her that she’s told police and the media that the assault was so upsetting she can still feel his hands on her throat.

“To this day,” she agrees.

And you said there was never anything romantic between you? she asks again. DeCoutere agrees.

The groundwork is set. “I’m going to show you an e-mail you sent to him 13 days after you say this happened,” Henein says.

“I think you are magic and would love to see you,” it begins and goes on to ask Ghomeshi to hang out with her again.

“Are you prepared to admit that you have been lying about your feelings, that you have been lying about the incident? Are you prepared to admit that now?” Henein demands.

“Absolutely not,” DeCoutere replies.

Her feelings about him were conflicted but that doesn’t change what happened, she insists.

The lawyer pulls up another e-mail dated July 5, 2003. “The very next day, the day after you say he chokes you, read into the record the e-mail.”

And there it is. The first bombshell.

“You kicked my ass last night and that makes me want to f--- your brains out. Tonight,” DeCoutere wrote Ghomeshi.

There are audible groans in the gallery of the courtroom.

She struggles to explain that this forgotten e-mail doesn’t change the fact that Ghomeshi choked and slapped her without her consent.

“It was no sexual assault,” charges Henein. “The next night you wanted to f--- his brains out.”

And then comes the second explosive reveal.

“You wrote him a love letter ... is this your handwriting, Miss DeCoutere?” the lawyer asks. “Let’s go through it line by line.”

It’s dated July 9, 2003, five days after the alleged assault. “I loved spending time with you this weekend,” DeCoutere wrote. “I am sad we didn’t spend the night together.”

With her final dramatic flourish, Henein asks the witness to read the last line aloud, her sign off to the man she says choked her only days before. It is almost impossible to believe: “I love your hands,” she wrote.

More gasps from the court.

“It never happened,” Henein says of the alleged assault.

“Oh, it happened,” DeCoutere fires back.