Yep. And the police have opened investigations on incidents with 4 of the women. Word is that one incident was with someone at work which is why the CBC canned him. I think he's fucked and doesn't see a penny of that $55 million he's after.
I think this is the best article I've read on the situation so far: http://www.aux.tv/2014/10/read-owen...ement-about-jian-ghomeshis-abuse-allegations/ I think most people have a fairly skewed representation of what kink/BDSM is all about. But Owen Pallett describes it very well: As someone with fairly kinky inclinations, if I'm going to be engaging in non-vanilla sex with someone I absolutely want to have a talk about limits, what's cool and what's not. Someone asked if these talks were like fore-foreplay and I think they are. Usually after a talk, we're both pretty excited to get down to business. If you're not sure about whether something you want to do is okay, just ask. I'd way rather have someone ask me, even in the middle of sex, than have them do something that I'm not comfortable with. The worst that's going to happen is that I'm going to tell you that I'm not into it. Sure, playing with power dynamics is fun, but you also have to get to a point where you are comfortable with someone to explore those and that point is likely not on the first time you meet someone.
This is why I was pretty sure he was full of shit when I read that defense. He was trying to play himself off as the real victim from a bunch of angry scornful women. The idea that multiple women were going to make such serious accusations because they were all bitter he cut them off didn't make any sense. If it happened as the article in the OP described I think he should do prison time. No idea what the law in Canada is in relations to these things. Punching and then strangling someone without talking it over first is more than a little out of bounds. For fuck's sake, if a woman shows up at some guys place and he starts choking her like that she might think she's about to get murdered. And in the off chance it was all consensual, which I'm really doubting at this point, I still think he's a complete moron for doing this stuff on first dates. As a celebrity no less that's just asking for trouble.
Just to add a little update to the Ghomeshi case, he withdrew his $55M lawsuit against the CBC yesterday, was ordered to pay the CBC's legal fees in the amount of $18K, and this morning, he was arrested on sexual assault charges.
I'm going to direct everyone to Jesse Brown's twitter account. twitter.com/JesseBrown He has been instrumental in doing the foot work that led to Jian's exposure.
As always, the plural of anecdote is data. When you have one woman accusing you, it's possible to play it off as "She's just mad we broke up and is being vindictive." But when multiple women are all saying the same thing, it starts turning into "So, you've got eight scorned exes, all with the same story, who all want you in prison with the animals," and it's pretty difficult not to think that he's a fucking scumbag at best and a serial rapist at worst. My guess is that he's going to get charged and probably plead guilty to some lesser charges. Relatively little prison time, (if any) but no more career and no more celebrity.
Jesus, this shit writes itself. You've got the following people: The up-and-coming multi-racial female lawyer who grew up in a broken, abusive home and is filled with fire and determination to do "whatever it takes." She once stood for idealism and stopping injustice, but she's on Part 2 of Citizen Kane and is giving less and less of a shit about morals and more and more about the alleged rapist with millions of dollars. Her shitty family pops up ever now and then, especially her ghetto booty sister who despises her for joining "the system." The nerdy bookish programmer / accountant / expert on esoteric law who lives in her cubicle and snaps at anyone who goes near her. The fat chick from Criminal Minds, but more appealing to the supermarket tabloid-buying crowd who will say things like, "She'd be so beautiful if she wore better clothes and makeup and smiled a little more." She'd be great at everything if it weren't for the fact that she has Ass-burgers and can't function socially. The brash, ugly asshole who is only there to lend urgency and emotion to the discussions. Notable lines include "It doesn't MATTER what he did, it matters what they can PROVE he did" and "Do you think I care about what's right?" Take a drink every time he slams a door, gets in someone's face to correct misplaced idealism, or has a violent, angry outburst for no real reason. The intern, who functions as the clueless outsider. "Whaddya mean this technicality in Canadian tribal law exists? I don't remember that from my Communications major, sorority parties, and year and a half of law school." Also functions for the supermarket tabloid-buying crowd to wear cute, revealing clothes and cultivate sexual tension. The nerdy chick hates her because she's young, pretty, clueless, and destined for greatness. The cerebral fatherly lawyer who was once a force of nature in the courtroom but was forced to step down to a supportive role because his health cracked under the strain of 100-hour weeks and Johnny Walker binges. His kids despise him and all suck at life, so they'll also be in the show begging for money or free DUI representation. He's the voice of reason and would put them all to shame if he could get rid of his demons. The bleeding heart idealist who is constantly imploring everyone to do what's right. She functions as a foil to the multi-racial protagonist, showing how wayward everyone is becoming. Everyone hates her, and she really doesn't contribute much other than whining. Oh, and smelly lowlifes who were Screwed Over by The System get pro bono representation because she won't shut the fuck up. The handsome, arrogant, misogynist associate who is excellent in the courtroom but hates anything involving the library. He comes from a privileged background and hates his business magnate daddy, who was expecting him to take over the family business (an enormous multinational corporation). How dare he! He also functions for the supermarket tabloid-readers as the Man who has "things" for the different women on the show. The nerdy chick hates him because he's the one who gets credit for her preparation, but she knows that she needs someone who will just say whatever she wants him to say without ignorant arguments. The bleeding heart hates him because he's everything wrong with American capitalism, and the nerdy chick can't stand talking to him, so he alternates between hitting on the intern and the protagonist. Gimme twenty minutes, and I'll have the first season's screenplays written up, all of the issues taken from current events and past Law & Order episodes. Fox should be calling me within the hour.
That photo is retarded beyond the call of duty. It looks like the poster for Flatliners when did lawyers start taking this badass approach to their jobs like we're supposed to buy that they're a CIA wet team crossed with Hamlet in a think-tank? I miss the old days when they'd sit at their desk with two huge stacks of assorted, 75-year-old legal books behind them and they would tell you with a car salesman-esque grin why you should trust the good people at the firm of Beatum, Runn & Fakkem.
The chick on the far right is hot though, thats a plus. Jezebel will hate her. And probably when every other fucking new show on network TV, other than NCIS/CSI spinoffs, is about lawyers in some new and exciting fashion. People still mistakenly think the law is ANYTHING like what you see on TV. My dad is currently in a lawsuit on behalf of his company due to malpractice. Their previous patent attorney failed to file paperwork, they lost their patent exclusivity, and it cost the company millions in revenue over 2-3 years. Its open and shut, evidence is damning, it will never make it to trial and will be settled on the courthouse steps....YET, 2015 will begin the 3rd year of the process. Injuctions, continuances, feet dragging, document shuffling, and a law firm refusing to sue a lawyer at another law firm because its "taboo"...thats what law is. Not dramatically serving supoenas, finding the missing document to swing a billion dollar case and seeing resolution the next day, and sipping celebratory scotch on a grandiose downtown balcony. Oh, and 80% of new lawyers not being able to find jobs or being dramatically underemployed.
I was very shocked at my DUI case, as I fought the charge, the insane amount of time wasted over cases. We had three continuances and the prosecutor wanted a fourth which would have put my case at a year since the incident. This doesn't even count the fact that the judge's docket and getting through it was based entirely on the discretion of the judge and their schmoozing with prosecutors and lawyers they knew. They just work at the pace they want to work, fuck everyone else. Three witnesses in my case stopped showing up for subpoenas because it was insanely inconvenient for them to miss work and school classes repeatedly when the case would just be continued. This is under the threat of arrest! This could be a whole thread by itself how shitty our court system is.
All this is why even though I went to law school I have no intention of practicing law. Its all insane procrastination to the point it piles up with new stuff and nothing gets done. No one cares from the judges down. Day is supposed to start at calendar call at 930? Haha. Try 1015. Oh and half the lawyers aren't even there yet. So you have to do a second calendar call 30 minutes later. You're lucky if the judge decides to hear the first case by 1130. Then lunch is at 1, so everything shuts down for an hour. Now, you have the morning cases still waiting to be heard and now the afternoon cases. And, if you're the guy that refuses to give the "courtesy" of an adjournment when someone had 90 days to put together a 5 page motion you're suddenly the asshole.
From the little bit of the testimony I read, the women involved seemed to enjoy the behaviour, but then became disgusted with themselves afterwards. Not unlike when a guy whacks off to something really fucking out there, and then becomes disgusted with himself for doing so during his refractory period. I have no doubt that the guy's behaviour was on the creepy side as a result of his sexual preferences, but I can't say I'm surprised by the verdict. Of course I have no idea of the technicalities, nor was I following it that closely, but nothing I saw seemed like anything close to a slam-dunk... it was all very much he-said-she-said, with some very contradictory statements coming from the women themselves.
People are flipping the fuck out about this verdict, and I saw the "other side" preemptively flipping out about a prospective loss. I've never understood people's concrete certainty about legal cases they tangentially follow, especially in cases with such a dearth of hard evidence. The jurors in the room, who have heard every word of every testimony, aren't as confident that they know what happened as these internet jockeys are. Same thing in the Emma Sulkowicz case. They act like a trial is a mere formality to either "serve justice" or "let down the 'real victims' yet again," depending on whether the outcome matches the verdict they predetermined before the trial even got underway.
These people would love nothing more than to see due process completely suspended and have people accused of rape be automatically convicted. When people are falsely accused and their lives subsequently destroyed, they deflect and say that the real victims still got no justice. Bla bla bla victim blaming and misogyny.
Not surprised by the verdict, it seems the testimonies had "U-turn" written all over it. Do yourselves a favour and stay off the popular social media sites. It's nothing but nasty back-and-forth.
It's not just one side though. Seen a ton of people who know that a given rape didn't happen, or know that an alleged victim is lying. Seems like a widespread failing to deal in probabilities, and to realize that even if you're correct in the general, it doesn't mean every single example goes the same way.
As someone who likes sex on the rougher side, I think what he did (or, at least, what it's now basically concluded that he did) was bad and I sympathize a lot with those women because having someone go beyond your boundaries can be scary as hell, especially when it comes to rough sex. (Waking up covered in bruises after spending the night with someone you know and trust? Hot! Waking up covered in bruises after spending the night with some random person you'll never see again? Upsetting!) I think that is a million more times likely to be what happened rather than those women feeling icky and regretful about a 100% consensual encounter and straight up lying about it, or pretending to have been assaulted just for fun or to bring Ghomeshi down. But, I do not think having rougher sex than you were expecting or even comfortable with is the same thing as rape. But. I also think this case in particular highlights a lot of problems with how our justice system (and court of public opinion, for that matter) handles rape, and I think the root of a lot of the outrage is about how it can so often be stacked against rape victims. It is still very much working in the framing of rape can only be a violent attack from a complete stranger. Typically, someone is only found guilty of rape if there is a rape kit/DNA evidence or if there's a video recording of the assault itself (which didn't even convince a lot of people pre-jury, in the case of Steubenville). And rape kit/DNA evidence is really only proof of guilt if the attacker was someone the victim didn't know, because there can be a whole slew of reasons why it could be present if it's someone they know and especially someone they've consensually had sex with before or after the rape. (And that's assuming, even in the case of stranger rapes, that the victim ever got a rape kit thanks to all of the reasons people might not be particularly eager to go get one, and that even if they DID get a rape kit that it didn't just sit ignored until the statute of limitations ran out or was destroyed before it got to that point, because that's perfectly legal to do, because the importance of investigating rape cases is considered on par with your iPhone getting stolen.) If it's a case of any other kind of rape (the majority of rape cases) where the victim knows/was hooking up with/dated/was in a relationship with/was married to their attacker it's completely a matter of he-said-she-said and when the goal is just to get to reasonable doubt that's extremely easy to do when a jury of your peers is already likely to come to the trial with a shitload of misinformation/judgement/bias/misconceptions of what rape is and what rape victims are like. (Yes, I have been dancing around the phrase "rape culture" this whole time, I know how you guys love the term so.) I know that one of the biggest tactics the defense used was showing that the women kept in contact with him afterwards and continued flirting with him and continued to have consensual sex with him, and that's used in a lot of cases. Acting like this is damning evidence not only discredits basically all cases of marital rape or attacks in serious committed relationships but disregards the tons of reasons why this can happen (and often does) when the victim is less tied to the attacker like shock, denial, not wanting to be considered a victim, trying to regain control, trying to get a confession or more solid evidence, or if it's a woman all of the societal conditioning of not being confrontational, caring more about being likeable than standing up for themselves, trying to solve the problem themselves without making a fuss about it, assuming it's somehow their own fault, making excuses for boys being boys, etc etc etc. But people don't care to think about this stuff and are much more comfortable with not buying it than believing victims/psychologists/sociologists who come out and explain this is what happens and having their worldview of what the perfect rape victim looks and acts like shattered. (And speaking of the whole "what a perfect rape victim looks like" thing, there's the matter of using a rape victim's sexual history and/or appearance against her. But as far as I can tell that wasn't involved in this case so I'll keep at least that part short.) Then the other big tactic was making her not seem credible by finding inconsistencies or points she couldn't remember at all. I think the bigger timeline issues are fair game, but I'm talking more like the question of whether or not she was wearing hair extensions or what color his car was or things like that. Now, I think this is an issue with our justice system in general, not just in rape cases. But because it's working so much with the "bitches always be lying about rape" narrative, it has a larger impact than just the verdict of the case. It's nuts to me how much of our justice system depends on the extremely fallible human memory. I've been keeping a journal since I was 6. When I go back through them I have had some doozies of revelations of how my memory has just totally switched the details of some things, especially traumatic events. For example, I have a very vivid memory of my mom's funeral with the sun shining and me wearing a dress and the funeral being held outside and there being a lot of roses around. When I wrote about it, and my dad has confirmed this, it was snowing and unseasonably cold. Granted, I was 7, so there are other memory issues relating to that, but there are plenty of other examples. I once totally accidentally mistold some big details of the night my wallet got stolen and didn't realize it until I reread that entry. Does that mean I was lying about my wallet being stolen? No. The most important part of that story still remains the same. I was assaulted on the bus two weeks ago and did all the "right" things like make a big stink of it and the driver called the cops and the guy was pulled off the bus at the next stop. That was only two weeks ago and I struggle to remember the kind of details that get asked about these things. I don't remember what bus I was on because it's one I never take or where we were when he got taken off the bus or what either of us were wearing or what I was looking at on my phone when he started talking to me or the exact order of his actions like whether he grabbed my crotch or kissed my face first or even what day of the week it was. Of course I'm going to remember even less of this shit years from now in a courtroom (I'm not taking it to court, but still) and that would be used against me. And that's all it takes for the person to be considered untrustworthy or not credible. When "she said" is all she has to rely on that's always going to be what she has to face and no one's able to pass that kind of test so perfectly. Rape is ridiculously difficult to prove without a rape kit or DNA evidence and yet any time a not guilty verdict is given out it gets chalked up to "women are always lying about rape" in the public eye, regardless of the details of the case. The WORST part of all of this - and I think this any time a rape case makes the news, whether or not the accused gets prosecuted - is thinking about all of the rape cases that come to light publicly without going to court, and how there's always this "argument" that if it were really rape, why not just bring it to the cops? As if clearly not wanting to get the legal system involved is evidence that the person is lying about it. Yes, I wonder why someone wouldn't want to do that.