Review Of Secret Life: The Jian Ghomeshi Investigation

This article states how a new conversation on sexual assault needs to arise, regarding Jian Ghomeshi, a man who has four charges for sexual assault, and one charge for choking someone. Kevin Donovan published a book, Secret Life: The Jian Ghomeshi Investigation. In his book, he talks about several different aspects of Ghomeshi’s case; he mentions the challenges he had to face trying to chase the story to publish it, includes the meetings between Ghomeshi, lawyers, and CBC, states the phone calls between Ghomeshi and a publisher, John Cruickshank, and even talks about how once the judge found Ghomeshi to not be guilty of anything. The book includes the interview of the 17 women and two men who faced violence and inappropriate sexual behaviour
I believe it’s as wrong to not report a sexual assault just as much as its wrong to sexually assault someone, because not reporting it makes the perpetrators fearless of repeating their actions. Therefore, when you do not report the assault you are allowing it to happen to someone else in the future. Nevertheless, the victim is blamed for the rape or sexual assault sometimes, such as stated in the article; Justice Robin Camp once questioned a complainant in a 2014 case, “why she didn’t keep her legs closed.” We have judges who make such statements as if it is the victims fault for getting raped or sexually assaulted. I feel that the 17 women who did not file a complaint against Ghomeshi for his actions, are the type of people who cause these things to happen even more in our society because they do not take action immediately, so the police don’t know and can’t take action against people like Ghomeshi. Kathryn Borel dropped her charges against Ghomeshi for an apology. I believe that was a wrong action to take because it sets a bad example for all the other victims and woman in society. The article also briefly talks about Mustafa Ururyar’s case, where he was sentenced to jail for 18 months but got bail for appeal. The court allowing suspects bail for appeal on such serious issues does not help in reducing these type of crimes, consequently it makes other sexual assaulters not fear the law. In addition, the ending of the article is very important in my opinion, because it argues that no matter what situation the victim is in, it is not their fault they get raped or assaulted, because they never asked for