Johnson: Hockey trial raised new questions about women and perceived threats

Yahoo

a day ago

Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.
Why would a woman offer herself up to a group of men she doesn't know if she wasn't actually 'into it'? I drove from Ottawa to London three times during the now-infamous 'hockey players trial' to find the answer to this question.
I observed E.M. (as the complainant is known) testify for two days under cross-examination. I saw the videos where she looks straight into hockey player Michael McLeod's camera and says she's good with it all. I heard Crown and defence counsels' full closing submissions.
The episode at the Delta Armouries on the night of June 18, 2018 involved strapping, fully-clothed, intoxicated young men in a hotel room in the middle of the night with a small, naked, intoxicated young woman. You need only imagine your own daughter or granddaughter in that room to appreciate the power imbalance. But the situation presents in some confusing ways. Not only did E.M. not leave the hotel room when it seems she had opportunity to do so, she appears to have participated enthusiastically in sexual activity with the men. If she didn't want to have sex with them, why did she? If she wasn't OK with it, why would she say she was?
Fight, flight, freeze and fawn are well-documented responses to trauma. But facilitate? E.M. testified that she adopted 'a porn star persona' in the hotel room. Why would a woman enable her own sexual abuse?
Indeed, this was the dilemma confronting the judge, who acquitted the five hockey players charged. She also said she did not find E.M. to be a credible witness.
***
I have worked with survivors of male violence for decades, but E.M.'s actions in the hotel room didn't seem to fit with those I'd seen before. I needed to think it through; to see E.M., and hear the facts, for myself. I went to London with an open but educated mind, like an oncologist studying an unusual pattern of symptoms. It's an eight-hour drive and I had a lot of time to think.
If fewer than six per cent of sexual assaults are reported to police, how much can we really know about how a woman responds when she is naked in a room full of men eager for sex?
***
Arriving at the courthouse the first day, I encounter a group of women demonstrating in support of the complainant. It seems every woman I speak with is there because she has been sexually assaulted. I ask if they are coming inside to witness the trial. They all say no, it would be too 'triggering' — code for 'never resolved.' Few would have seen justice for their assault. One woman tells me her own case is before the courts right now.
***
Observing E.M. on the stand, I find her dignified, and as credible as any assaulted woman I've met, and these number in the thousands. Her answers in cross-examination are thoughtful, nuanced, understated. In my experience, victims of male violence do not embellish. If anything, they minimize; you have to drag what happened out of them. If anything, they are abundantly fair, taking the blame when they shouldn't; often showing compassion for the perpetrator. E.M.'s behaviour following the alleged assaults was entirely consistent with this. She was ashamed; blamed herself; didn't want to go to police; didn't want to get anybody in trouble. But her actions in the hotel room remained a conundrum for me.
***
On my second trip to London, I meet a young woman who has also come to observe the trial. We go for lunch to discuss the case. I ask her if she understands why a woman would act like she's enjoying herself in a situation where she claims to be afraid.
'I totally understand it,' she said. 'A similar thing happened to me.'
She tells me that she and a friend recently found themselves in a situation with two guys they'd met at a concert. The men said they knew where the after-party was and invited them along. The women were taken to an isolated apartment building. Turns out the men were human traffickers. When they realized they were in serious trouble, the women did not protest or try to leave but began to play along, acting like they were enjoying themselves. It was as if some primal survival instinct kicked in.
When the men were transporting them to an alternate location, they made a run for it. They are convinced that had they resisted or shown fear, they might have been seriously harmed.
***
Judith Herman, foremost expert on trauma in the aftermath of violence, writes that it's easy to take the side of the perpetrator. 'The perpetrator asks nothing of us, appealing to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the other hand, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.'
I begin to remember all the cases I've worked on where women acted in ways that were counterintuitive. All the women who offered sex to avoid a beating, to protect their children, or to buy time until they could safely get away. If she can keep him calm, maybe he won't hurt her. If she shows fear or distress, it might trigger rage or shame in him, which could be deadly for her. We're always telling women they should have 'just left.' I remember all the funerals I've been to for women who have 'just left.'
I remember the 2012 Delhi bus rape, where a young couple returning from a night at the cinema were attacked by five men and a boy. The woman fought back and later died of her injuries. Like the men of Mazan, France who lined up to abuse the unconscious Gisèle Pelicot, the Delhi rapists were, by all accounts, ordinary, apparently normal men.
I remember what it is to be a woman.
***
The problem we have as women is that we have no way of knowing which man is going to hurt us. No woman knows what any man, or group of men, might do to her, especially when aroused or inflamed Every woman knows this fear. We know it when we are riding a bike on a back road and a car slows down. We know it when we are walking in the woods and come upon a man, or group of men. We know it when we are by ourselves in any isolated location. The guy in the car might be looking for directions. The men in the woods might be birdwatching. But for a woman alone, these men are threats, and if she is lucky her survival instincts will kick in if required.
E.M. told the court she was slapped and spit on, and that the men mused about inserting a golf club and golf balls inside her. She testified she was drunk, scared, overwhelmed, humiliated; that her mind separated from her body; and that she did what she had to do to get through it. She said that she assumed a coping strategy that she herself didn't completely understand; that's why she couldn't really explain it. She gives them sex because she knows that's what they want. What will happen if she resists? She doesn't know.
The problem we have as women is that we have no way of knowing which man is going to hurt us.
But we don't believe her. 'Nobody forced her to do anything. If anything we should put charges on her,' said Brett Howden, who was in the room, but was not charged. What would have happened if E.M. had walked out of that room crying?
They would have certainly known she was upset. I'm not implying that these particular men would have harmed E.M. I'm saying that there would have been no way for her to know what they might do.
***
I returned to London on July 24 for the verdicts. Justice Maria Carroccia found E.M. neither credible nor reliable, excoriating her in a 90-page judgment and acquitting the defendants on all counts. This time, the court was filled with rape survivors. Leaving the courthouse was like walking through a battlefield in the aftermath of war, the defeated troops lying scattered in the ditches; maimed, disgraced, demoralized. Said one woman: 'This verdict has screamed to men, from every platform, you are good guys … and you will get away with it. '
But all is not lost. When we take the long view, we have every reason to celebrate this trial as an important chapter in the battle for women's rights. It has changed the landscape for women in Canada.
E.M.'s contribution in coming forward, taking on not just five men but the entire hockey establishment, cannot be overstated. If Gisèle Pelicot in France taught women to beware of chemical submission, E.M. has shone a light on women's behaviour under what they believe to be a conscious threat. I am loathe to put it in these terms, but she has also taught women a survival strategy.
I hope this case opens the floodgates for victims of sexual assault. May they come forward in droves demanding justice from our courts as they better understand their own complicated reactions in situations of perceived peril; as they come to realize that, in a world rife with violence against women, their 'consent' was, to use the legal term, vitiated: impaired by threat or the perception of threat.
Donna F. Johnson helped establish Canada's first monument to murdered women in Minto Park, Ottawa. She has worked as a crisis counsellor in an urban police service, taught feminist social work practice, educated judges on domestic violence and published countless essays on abused women. She is on the Canadian team for Hague Mothers, a global campaign aimed at ending the injustices created by the Hague Convention for mothers and children fleeing abusive men. She is the author of Shattered Motherhood; Surviving the Guilt of a Child's Suicide.
Related
Johnson: The murder of Hanadi Mohamed — her husband didn't act alone
Ford: Hockey Canada trial should put spotlight on morality of society