The criminal justice system on trial: Shaming,outrage,and gendered tensions in public responses to the Jian Ghomeshi verdict

Introduction

On October 24, 2014, Canadian musician, journalist, and former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio host Jian Ghomeshi announced publicly that he was taking a personal leave of absence from his popular CBC Radio One show, Q. The show featured interviews with prominent film stars, musicians, comedians, novelists, and politicians. The series, which Ghomeshi co-created and hosted from 2007 to 2014, became the highest rated time slot in the history of the CBC. At the time of his abrupt announcement, little did people know that this decision would mark the first of a series of events and controversy that would take our nation by storm and develop into one of the most notorious and widely publicized sexual assault cases in Canadian history.

Just two days after Ghomeshi communicated his choice to temporarily vacate his position, the CBC terminated his employment. Ghomeshi responded that day with a Facebook post accusing the CBC of firing him “because of the risk of [his] private sex life being made public as a result of a campaign of false allegations pursued by a jilted ex girlfriend and a freelance writer” (Toronto Star, 2014). In the same post, he claimed his relations with an “on-and-off” sexual partner were consensual and “like a mild form of Fifty Shades of Grey” (Toronto Star, 2014). Not only did these comments suggest that he enjoyed some components of bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, and masochism (BDSM), they also alluded to the informed, non-coerced consensual relations that members of the BDSM community practice. In what he described as a “campaign of harassment, vengeance and demonization against [him] that would lead to months of anxiety” (Toronto Star, 2014), Ghomeshi denied having abused women, and was adamant that any allegations of assault surfacing against him were untrue. On October 27, 2014, Ghomeshi filed a $50 million lawsuit against the CBC for wrongful dismissal. Over the course of the following month, several major Canadian media outlets publicized more accusations of sexual assault and abusive behaviour against Ghomeshi, and lawyer Janice Rubin launched an internal investigation into the working environment at Q. On November 25, 2014, Ghomeshi withdrew his lawsuit against the CBC. The next day Ghomeshi was charged with four counts of sexual assault and one count of overcoming resistance by choking. Police would eventually lay three more charges of sexual assault against him, but the Crown later dropped two of the charges. Ghomeshi pleaded not guilty to all five of the charges that he was to be tried for in February of 2016, while another trial was set for the spring to hear the remaining charge of sexual assault.

During this timeline, a long and relentless social war erupted on social media concerning how the public ought to make sense of the allegations. Before Ghomeshi removed his Facebook account, the authors recall witnessing a number of his followers commenting on his last and widely publicized post. A small number of people expressed their support to Ghomeshi during his period of unrest and turmoil, encouraging the public to allow due process to take its course before rendering judgments. Others viciously shamed Ghomeshi for his alleged behaviour. A few of these individuals (mostly men) went as far to ‘caution’ him that he would eventually be raped in prison following the outcome of his trial. Others encouraged him to commit suicide. We also witnessed some people dismissing the allegations of the women as fallacious and vengeful, and identifying Ghomeshi and other men accused of sexual assault as victims of deceit and feminist backlash. It became quickly evident that sides were being taken across Canada, and competing notions of gender, justice, and questions over what counts as truth were fuelling these divisions.

Ghomeshi’s case received extensive media coverage and was discussed intermittently in our academic circles up until his trial concluded on February 11, 2016. Before the trial, a great deal of the narratives presented by media focused on the nature of the allegations (CBC News, 2014; Globe and Mail, 2014; Mandel, 2015). Once Ghomeshi’s defence attorney, Marie Henein, intensively cross-examined the complainants in court, positions on the case grew unstable as some media outlets started to scorn his accusers (Blatchford, 2016). These divisions intensified in public discourse as well as our own social networks and communities: people either believed the testimonies of the survivors and viewed their coming forward as an act of courage against all forms of patriarchal violence and rule, or they believed that Ghomeshi was a victim of revenge-seeking women, and/or that the allegations were false on account of the evidence (or lack thereof) that was presented in court. On March 24, 2016, the judge acquitted Ghomeshi on all five charges because he did not consider the complainants to be credible. In his decision, the judge described the first complainant’s testimony as having “suffered irreparable damage” due to inconsistencies in her memories of events; he felt the second complainant had “consciously suppress[ed] relevant and material information” which indicated “a wilful carelessness with the truth”, while the third complainant “was clearly ‘playing chicken’ with the justice system” because she “was prepared to tell half the truth for as long as she thought she might get away with it” (CBC News, 2016). Many members of the public found these comments to be worded in an offensive and victim-blaming manner, while other legal experts saw them as demonstrative of the need to separate ideas of legal guilt from moral guilt when trying to determine the consistency of testimony and possibility of reasonable doubt. On May 11, 2016, Ghomeshi signed a peace bond with the courts and apologized to the remaining complainant, a former CBC employee, for what he characterized as “sexually inappropriate” (but not criminal) behaviour (Perkel and Mehta, 2016), which resulted in the Crown dropping the final charge of sexual assault.

Our aim in this article is to reveal more amply the nuances, complexities, emotions, rationales, and tensions found in the public discourses surrounding one of Canada’s highest profile criminal cases. We begin by reviewing the literature on how sexual violence and agency is understood. After describing our affective framework and research design, we engage a qualitative content analysis of the public responses on Twitter in the hours following Jian Ghomeshi’s not guilty verdict (n = 3943 tweets). Our analysis reveals two key discourses of public opinion. Twitter users depicted the criminal justice system (CJS) as having worked and/or failed, and these intensifying divisions were highly gendered. More specifically, members of the public pitted notions of the “rational male” against the “emotional female”, and these debates heavily supported or opposed a patriarchal legal rationality. Our encounters with public opinion expose the nuance of truths and problematic agonism inherent to the CJS, which leads us to conclude that there is a need to rethink how the criminal justice system responds to cases of sexual assault.

Contextualizing understandings of sexual violence: Community, friction, and hostility

Salter’s (2013) key case study of three women who publicly identified as sexual assault victims demonstrates how online networks and social media platforms circulate counter-hegemonic discourses whereby allegations of sexual assault become understood and framed in very different ways than by legal apparatuses, politicians, and journalists. Even when entangled by a masculine ethos and sexist interface that often posits women’s words and actions as irrational and inferior (Cover, 2015; Kendall, 2000), online mediums of communication and support can accentuate the truth value essential to women’s claims of victimization. The more implicit masculine codes of conduct that propagate in mainstream media and the public sphere, many of which are problematically demarcated as gender neutral (Fraser, 1990; Mopas and Moore, 2012), appropriate feminist discourses in antagonistic ways that privilege victim credibility and prosecutorial motive over the legitimization of women’s concerns and resistances towards their patriarchal victimization and subordination (Maglione, 2016; Mason, 2014; North, 2009; O’Hara, 2012; Smolej, 2010; Van Dijk, 2009). When part of the intent of online counter-spaces is to punish and shame the alleged perpetrator through extra-judicial means, it is documented that such a breaching of social and legal norms can subvert the accused person’s fundamental rights to a fair trial and presumption of innocence (Greer and McLaughlin, 2011, 2012; Waterhouse-Watson, 2009). Still, these “alternative modes of discourse” and what some consider to be vigilante reactions to physical and social harm speak to the inadequacies of the CJS to respond to sexual violence, as well as women and their allies’ potential to form empathetic communities, build solidarity within networks, and develop new and discursive strategies for collective action (Salter, 2013: 229).

Feminist scholarship more broadly has redefined understandings of sexual agency to account for how women assert control over their sexual lives when they seek pleasure, engage in wanted sexual activity, or decline to have sex at someone else’s request (Erchull and Liss, 2013; Fahs and McClelland, 2016; Fetterolf and Sanchez, 2015). In recognition of how notions of sexual assault, consent, and complainant processes change throughout cultural and neoliberal political shifts (Cossins, 2003; Freedman, 2013; Gill and Scharff, 2011), others critique the concept of sexual agency for its assumption that people—especially young women—are all equally equipped with the necessary support and resources to make informed sexual choices (Bay-Cheng, 2015). Systematic tendencies to reduce sexual consent and refusal to a dichotomous yes or no distinction overlook the messy, nuanced, and heteronormative power relations upon which intention is negotiated, which in turn do not emphasize men as perpetrators but burden women with the sole responsibility of avoiding sexual assault, coercion, pressure, and unwanted or partially unwanted sexual acts (Bay-Cheng and Eliseo-Arras, 2008; Fahs, 2011; Fahs and McClelland, 2016). Feminist resistances embodied within social movements and academia confront these and other essentialist discourses that try to establish women’s bodies and words as inadequate, lacking, and in need of acquiescing to the perspectives put forth by dominant, ‘truth-bearing’ men or masculine figures (Braun and Tiefer, 2010; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Fahs, 2014; Fraser, 1990).

Just as the personal-political realms bound to gender relations and experiences steer feminist liberation, emotions play a pivotal role in the conscription, organization, and catalytic mobilization of social movements and public scholarship (Gould, 2009; Jasper, 1998). Activists and researchers transfigure sentiments into collective action (Arenas, 2015), turning “fear into outrage, and outrage into hope for a better humanity” (Castells, 2015: 2). Intensive emotions expressed and channelled through networked, digital, and online societies are an instigating demonstration of counter-power and autonomy that emphasizes protestors’ capacities to break free from the control of those bearing institutional and political power (Castells, 2015). It is thus imperative not to invalidate how public emotional responses to harm or alleged harm shape the perceptions that communities hold towards the imagined criminal ‘Other’, inequalities in the CJS, penal practices, due process, and mass and social media representations of crime, punishment, guilt, and innocence (Garland and Sparks, 2000; Mopas and Moore, 2012; Young, 1996).

Amidst controversy (Cossins, 2008), the inefficient and punitive governmental responses to harm have steered researchers to imagine alternative, less retributive and stigmatizing criminal justice practices, such as the implementation of restorative justice circles in cases of sexual assault (Daly, 2006; Daly et al., 2013; Hannem, 2013; Koss, 2014; Van Wormer, 2009). Other reactions to the contemptuous treatment and ridicule of sexual assault survivors include the implementation of victim-orientated advocacy programs, policy reforms in police agencies, and public protests calling for the empowerment and validation of sexual assault survivors’ complaints and stories (Campbell, 2006; Padmanabhanunni and Edwards, 2016; Patterson and Tringali, 2015; Stanko, 2007). Our findings and discussion will reaffirm the need to explore alternative criminal justice practices and programs that can improve how sexual violence is responded to by scholars, agents of the CJS, and members of the public.

Affective and rhizomatic framework

Twitter is a medium through which messages and ideologies are constructed (Hermes, 2007; Zappavigna, 2011), and social borders are erected between people. Our affective framework does not see emotions in a psycho-biological manner residing in an individual (Strongman, 2003; White, 1993), even when this shapes sociality (Sedgwick and Frank, 1995). Such an inward-out perspective views affect as a biological mechanism that delivers information to the biological being and intensifies its triggers and drives. In sharp contrast, we view affect as immanently amongst things and relations, intertwined in and emerging from the assemblage of individuals, bodies, and social worlds.

For Deleuze and Guattari (1987), affect is the change that occurs when bodies collide or come into contact with discursive, competing, and coinciding representations of discourse. Ahmed (2014) clarifies this change when she explains that emotions shape and are shaped by objects, and contour what bodies are able to do by increasing or decreasing power on a body. How people affectively respond to their contact with other people (or objects) forms the relational distinctions between the person and Others and allows people to take the shape of Others. Emotions “produce the very surfaces and boundaries that allow the individual and the social to be delineated as if they are objects” (Ahmed, 2014: 10). As bodies come together, surfaces are distinguished—emerging out of infinite possibilities (Massumi, 2002). Surfaces become distinguished through various vectors of movement within and between people that arise via emotions. Pertinent to our later discussion are the vectors of movement that result from fear, anxiety, and love.

Fear repels, or causes people to move away. There is a need for proximity that draws the subject towards the object of fear prior to the repulsion. Fear, then, is a vectoral bounce, pulling people close enough to experience an intensity of emotion that then causes repulsion. The double movement of fear is also repeated in the body of the subject, who shrinks in preparation for flight. We view this movement as a body coiling, or as a fractal of the coiling that occurs between subject and object. The body recoils so that it might spring away. As there is a shrinking of the distance between object and subject, the subject’s body shrinks until this energy is transferred into flight, causing the subject’s body and the distance between object and subject to expand in flight. Anxiety is similar to fear, except that the subject sticks to the objects. Even after the object passes by, the subject remains fastened to the object, so that the subject continually approaches the object. As Ahmed (2014: 66) explains, “[a]nxiety becomes an approach to objects rather than, as with fear, being approached by an object’s approach”. Regarding love, Ahmed (2014) demonstrates that subjects identify with those who are assumed to be a sign of resemblance of an ideal that the subject impossibly strives towards. The object of this love, however, also cannot meet the ideal. Despite the unrealizable ideal, it is the stickiness of the idealization that makes the other into an object of affection.

Affect, too, is rhizomatic in that it sparks new and imaginary ways of thinking about interactions beyond a structuralist frame that does not consider the emotive complexions of life. Organized non-hierarchically, the rhizome is a highly adaptable concept that “offers us a metaphor through which to consider the indirect, informal, unanticipated, and unpredictable dimensions of social movement activity” (Khasnabish, 2008: 29). This approach redirects the bulk of analytical attention to uncovering the complexity of socio-political struggle rather than scrutinizing its successes and failures. More specific to this research, a rhizomatic-affective lens affords us three critical advantages. First, it allows us to view the antagonism that occurs in the Twittersphere regarding the Ghomeshi verdict less polemically. Second, this theoretical approach affords our analysis new opportunities to capture the fluidness resonating throughout the multitude of contentious and highly gendered tweets. Finally, an affective lens betters our understanding of the points of rupture and imbalances within the CJS; namely the ways in which the CJS perpetuate oppositional modes of interaction between citizens, self-righteous and confrontational gender performances and masculinities (see Kimmel, 2013; Johnston, 2016; Johnston and Kilty, 2015, 2016; Spencer, 2012), and positions on truth.

By analyzing the emotions and perspectives articulated by Twitter users in response to the not guilty verdict in the Ghomeshi trial, this research disinters a deeper understanding of how adversarial justice systems reproduce adversarial discourses on crime. Following a description of our chosen methodology and analysis, we engage these understandings generated by Twitter users to examine the potential for alternative criminal justice practices to ease some of the social war and conflict extant between critical feminist social movements and their opponents.

Research design

We conducted a qualitative content analysis of the themes, discourses, and emotions that circulated on Twitter about the verdict of the Ghomeshi trial. To obtain the data, we archived all tweets (N = 21,743) that included “#Ghomeshi” in their text. Twitter limits the number of tweets one can access to approximately 1500 and confines this access for about a week (Mosca, 2014), so it was necessary to archive the tweets in order to have a stable object of study. To do this we operated software, Twitter Archiver, that searched for tweets based on the query parameters we employed. The software stored the data in a spreadsheet, where we then coded and organized the tweets (n = 3943). For this study, we targeted tweets within the first hours of the trial outcome to capture Twitter discourse that included immediate emotional reactions to the verdict.

Since information on Twitter is available to be read without passing through any gatekeeping, this information is considered public and available to researchers (Mosca, 2014; Poynter, 2010). This stands in contrast to other websites where the accessibility of user-generated content tends to be accessible to those who have been validated by the user as belonging to their network. ¹ To acknowledge the responsibilities of researchers to limit the possible harms to those coming under the online gaze, we employed more rigorous criteria before considering a tweet public. Hashtags are used to identify a tweet as a part of a larger conversation, allowing the tweet to reach a larger audience than just a user’s followers (Bruns and Moe, 2014). By only querying tweets with a specific hashtag (#Ghomeshi), we ignored tweets that were discussing the topic but whose users did not make an effort to tag a tweet to be included in a public discussion. Often present alongside “#Ghomeshi” was “#BelieveSurvivors”. We felt #BelieveSurvivors could be used by some Twitter users to provide a space of healing, empathy, and empowerment for marginalized and vulnerable people who have survived rape and assault, and so to honour this space we refrained from collecting and analyzing those tweets. If this hashtag occurred in the same tweets as “#Ghomeshi” we did not exclude them because we understood these tweets as wishing to be included in the public discourse. This approach brought nuance and sensitivity to our analysis by including narratives of empathy for survivors, while giving those that needed to come together to heal the online space to do so.

Due to the volume of tweets and the ephemeral nature of the online content, it was not possible to obtain informed consent from those whose tweets we read and analyzed. Informed consent is not always required for online public spaces (Ackland, 2013; Hine, 2008; Tratner, 2016), but special attention should be paid to the criteria of anonymity and confidentiality (Ackland, 2013). To this end we anonymized our data by removing the usernames from our original database and stored this file on a unique spreadsheet. We only read and analyzed the tweets contained in the “tweets only” spreadsheet, which blinded us to most of the personal details about the users. The one exception to this case was if a person’s tweet was retweeted. ² When this occurred it was possible to see the original tweeter’s handle. While handles are often a pseudonym with no identifiable linkage to the person tweeting, it would be possible to follow the handle back to a user’s account. However since there was so much content, we found it impossible to remember anything other than our process and themes for coding. The plethora of tweets that we analyzed, then, offered confidentiality to any handles we encountered due to selective inattention and saturation of data.

Our inductive and qualitative approach to content analysis (Hämmerli et al., 2010; Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2012) involved several steps. First, we read through the archived tweets. This, coupled with our participation in the live Twitter feed, allowed us to get a “feel” for the data (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005). Second, we coded the data together. In this step we discussed the tweets and the themes that were emerging. Once we came to an agreement on each theme, we built a master coding form into the archival spreadsheet (Mazur, 2010) and used this until we reached saturation in the coding schedule. Saturation meant that no new themes were emerging, and that each theme had emerged consistently. Third, we coded the data individually. As new themes emerged, we would note the tweet and discuss this in follow-up meetings in order to obtain agreement on each theme. The research design was iterative in that we would cycle between coding and discussing the tweets, emergent themes, as well as our reactions, emotions, and thoughts towards the data. By cycling between coding and discussion, we were able to ensure inter-coder reliability while weaving nuances and intersectionality into our analysis. Finally, we analyzed the themes and myriad ways that these themes interacted together, and uncovered the meanings expressed and implied within the data.

Findings

Discussion

Our findings emphasize that Twitter offers a platform for many voices to express realities that are counter to legal, political, and media representations of crime (Salter, 2013). Twitter also provides space for traditional hegemonic voices. Such voices belonged to members of the public, representatives of the media, and legal and political experts, and generally and overwhelmingly championed a patriarchal legal rationality over the voices of women—especially anyone whose tweets embodied resistance to patriarchal victimization and subordination. We found that the discourse on Twitter replicated the findings of previous research where feminist discourses were antagonistically misappropriated in order to support a system that privileges victim credibility and prosecutorial motives (North, 2009; O’Hara, 2012). Not all rationalizations of the legal system were overtly hostile. While not as aggressive per se, these voices were still complicit in justifying an agonistic CJS in which there is a winner and loser, and where the winner of the court case is the purveyor of truth. These less confrontational voices, then, maintain some level of power by being complicit in a hegemonic project (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005) that champions one ontological truth.

We also found an empathetic love being expressed for survivors. Ahmed (2014) demonstrates that love is the return of an impossible ideal, and that people tend to gravitate towards those they identify as resembling an ideal. While the object of the Twitter users’ love cannot meet the ideal of healing all those damaged by this case, it is the messiness of the idealization that transforms the social media community into an object of affection. In some of the tweets that we read, the outpouring of love occurred alongside an outpouring of empathy. We want to label this empathetic love agape in order to point out its different effect on the borders between people. Unlike how love—as the return of an impossible ideal—exaggerates the borders between bodies, agape—the all-encompassing empathy—expands the borders and makes them permeable. Our findings emphasize how emotions result in the surface between bodies. This is usually done through a tightening of borders so as to clearly demarcate bodies. To put it differently, emotions serve to highlight “us” and “them”, and exactly where each begins to take form. Agape is an emotion that expands borders into the space of other bodies. It does so, however, with a permeable border that allows “them” to breach the surface that distinguishes between bodies. Agape, then, is an emotion that defines surfaces, but does so with the intention of a border that includes all. Agape strives for everyone as “us” and no one as “them”. With its ever-expanding inclusive border, the agape expressed on the continuum of femininities in this study approximates an erasure of borders, or “less oppressive” ways of knowing (Lather, 1991: 95), that challenge the domineering masculine hierarchies upon which the legal system is erected and reproduced. This all-inclusive intending agape stands in contrast to logic, the irrational-rationality, which allowed borders to surface.

In recognizing the inclusiveness of agape, we must also acknowledge that some extended support for survivors in ways that denied any appreciation for due process or constitutional rights that preserve one’s innocence until proven guilty. Some social media users denounced the scrutiny of testimony before determining its legal validity, while others implied that Ghomeshi’s conviction and subsequent incarceration would have been a victory in the Canadian CJS. These sentiments mirror the carceral feminist logic that assumes that more convictions of men who sexually offend advances gender justice, which has been criticized for “disingenuously denying its own influence on legal policy, and ignoring the harmful effects of using the violence of state coercion as a means of promoting women’s interest” (Gurnham, 2016: 142). Our findings revealed tensions in ensuring that feminist insights and concerns for sexual victimization, coercion, and violence are trusted and present in the criminal justice process, but alongside a reflexive capacity to remain critical about the theories and worldviews we use to frame victimization in sensitive ways that do not betray survivors or undermine feminist scholarship. Much evidence has led several critical criminologists to believe that systemic and social problems cannot be resolved through shame, punishment, or the criminalizing state and prison industrial complex (Bernstein, 2010; Christie, 2000; Davis, 2003; Khan, 2014; Lerum and Dworkin, 2015; Whittier, 2016). This case has proven just how difficult it is for legal experts, scholars, and members of the public to adopt a political position that honours the rights of victims to obtain support and accountability in a system that believes them and does not strip them of their dignity, as well as the rights of defendants to retain their constitutional entitlements to defend themselves from state retribution.

More than one quarter of Twitter users (26%) expressed dissatisfaction with the CJS, which exposes the inadequacy of the justice system to represent multiple realities and, by extension, to realize justice (Salter, 2013). The myriad voices reveal the nuance of truths that stands in juxtaposition to the dichotomous verdict rendered by the court, and opposes the agonism of the CJS. Our research also supports findings that label the CJS as incapable of recognizing the muddled, nuanced, and heteronormative power relations that currently steer the negotiation of consent and burden women with the responsibility to avoid sexual assault and coercion while wilfully ignoring men as potential perpetrators (Bay-Cheng and Eliseo-Arras, 2008; Fahs, 2011; Fahs and McClelland, 2016). Much of the Twittersphere believes that the CJS rules based on a male-centered judicial system that privileges the “truth” of men, and thus is inclined to rule in favour of this “truth”. This process thereby essentializes the winning truth as just and the losing truth(s) as unjust and false, which in this case reinforced the dominant discourse that men and masculine figures are “truth-bearing” (Braun and Tiefer, 2010; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Fahs, 2014; Fraser, 1990).

Moreover, this gendered, unnuanced CJS is replicated in its understanding of victims of sexual assault. This verdict, and the subsequent tweets that mansplained a defense of the verdict as preserving the rights of due process, illustrate an erred application of rationality to sexual consent. The CJS, and those who defend it in cases of sexual assault similar to this, apply a deontological utilitarianism to consent. This position suggests that, when faced with a decision, actors follow a consistent rule that will return the maximum value over infinite opportunities of action. Under this process, it is assumed that one follows a uniform rule. In the case of sexual consent, some members of the public assume that consent once is understood as consent always. This process is also perverted into an assumption that consent for one form of deviance is a consent for “similar” forms of deviance. Sexual consent, however, is not deontological. Previous consent to intercourse does not extend this consent to future times. Being attracted to someone discussing “rough sex” does not justify undefined non-consensual rough sex. Being assaulted and then trying to tend to the relationship after the fact does not post hoc give consent to the assault. A deontological utilitarianism of the courts and some public discourse not only ignores the nuance of truths, but it also ignores the complex nuance of the relationship between the victim and his or her assaulter (Erchull and Liss, 2013; Fahs and McClelland, 2016; Fetterolf and Sanchez, 2015).

With these failings of the CJS, our research emphasizes the importance of a public discourse that affords space for many voices, reiterating previous findings that stressed the imperative not to invalidate how public emotional responses to harm or alleged harm shape the perceptions that communities hold towards the imagined criminal “Other”, inequalities in the CJS, penal practices, due process, and mass and social media representations of crime, punishment, guilt, and innocence (Garland and Sparks, 2000; Mopas and Moore, 2012; Young, 1996). Everyone directly involved in the case was at some point blamed by the public. Regardless of how the criminal law defines Ghomeshi’s behaviour, many people spoke out on Twitter to say that he should be reprimanded and shamed for the harm he caused women during his relationship with them. Ghomeshi’s attorney was blamed for putting the complainants on trial through intensive and accusatory questioning that led to her client’s acquittal. Even though this was her job, some constructed her work as a betrayal to women. Police were blamed for shoddy work when they recorded statements from the complainants, and the prosecutors were viewed as being ill prepared and lacking enough court aggression to obtain a guilty verdict. The judge presiding over this case was blamed and shamed for rendering a verdict some felt was biased by his male privilege and lack of understanding of how many women experience and react to sexual violence. His role of determining legal culpability was constructed as siding on the binary of those who believed the victims and those who did not. Twitter’s reaction was very different than the reaction of some legal commentators who stated from the outset that the case would lead to a not guilty verdict because of inconsistencies found within the testimonies. Even more forcefully, the complainants were labelled as spiteful and vicious liars, and blamed for what many users felt was an attempt to make a mockery out of the justice system. Our findings establish that a justice system that prioritizes winners and losers will only perpetuate an “us versus them” discourse in the public, and we argue this is not conducive to healing or conceptions of justice that value accountability under conditions of love, respect, inclusivity, support, and empathy.

Conclusion

The implications of this research suggest that we need to continue to rethink our approaches to responding to sexual assault in ways that preserve the dignity of all members involved, and lead to paths of healing and restoration rather than blame, judgment, punishment, and social war. Restorative justice programs have had success in rehabilitating sexual offenders, restoring peace in communities that have been completely poisoned by the harm, and ensuring that victims’ voices are more represented in the healing and accountability process (Daly, 2006; Daly et al., 2013; Hannem, 2013; Koss, 2014; Van Wormer, 2009). With the consent of victims, these programs offer a more inclusive and safe space for victims to express how the harm has influenced their lives, while providing the person who has offended with an opportunity to offer a sincere apology to their victims, and uncover the deep inner troubles and pain that might help explain (but not excuse) their destructive conduct. Nobody wins in a CJS that fixates itself on punishment and the determination of culpability through strict definitions of what constitutes truth. Our study indicates that such a process does little but deepen the wounds and scars of the people and communities who are already entangled by the devastation, and perpetuate a public discourse of us versus them, which we found only leads to more harm, more stigma, and more blame.

When Ghomeshi signed a peace bond that subsequently dismissed the final charge of sexual assault, he stated to the court:

I’ve had to come to terms with my own deep regret and embarrassment. I regret my behaviour at work with all of my heart and I hope that I can find forgiveness from those for whom my actions took such a toll. (Perkel and Mehta, 2016)

With the exception of his Facebook post in October 2014, and his plea of not guilty to all of the charges, this was the only other occasion Ghomeshi directly addressed the accusations. Following this hearing, the victim told media that she chose to accept the peace bond because it was the “clearest path to the truth” since a trial meant that Ghomeshi could continue to deny guilt, but in spite of “want[ing] this to be over … it won’t be until he admits to everything he’s done” (Perkel and Mehta, 2016). Her statement, alongside the sentiments expressed by the public, echo that the justice system in its current form does not do enough for the victims of sexual violence, nor ensure that those who are culpable fully appreciate the consequences of their actions. Transformative justice, on the other hand, addresses the root causes of harm, and conceives of justice as a practice of peacemaking and literal transformation of those who have caused harm to the extent they become sincerely regretful of their past behaviours. Like restorative justice, this strategy accepts that this process can take a long time and its success relies heavily on community support.

Composing an apology may be the technical letter of the demand, but writing it to convey sincere contriteness is the true spirit of the demand. This penitence can only be declared once hard work and requisite time have gone into understanding one’s role in the harm of the assault, and once they have gained a sense of empathy for how it affected the survivor(s) and the community. (Kelly, 2011: 56–57)

Doing the right thing is hard to do, and this study finds that what that is cannot be determined through a reactive process that monopolizes the handling of conflicts. Christie (1977: 1) pointed to how modern criminal justice systems have “amplified a process where conflicts have been taken away from the parties involved and thereby have either disappeared or become other people’s property”. The end result is a system where victims of crime (and offenders) lose their right to participate at the expense of problematic and too thinly critiqued court procedures. Strategies for better justice must involve empathy and careful listening to the many competing and powerful views held by the affected parties and communities if we are to uncover truths and heal those affected by sexual and patriarchal violence. Twitter’s response to this case demonstrates that achieving an agreed upon justice is a messy, emotional, and indefinite process, but one that will remain constricted if the justice system remains bent on declaring winners and losers in a game of truth.