Jian Ghomeshi did not ask for consent, accusers say

The women making abuse allegations against Jian Ghomeshi — there are now 15 — say he never raised the topic of BDSM or asked for consent.

New allegations include a woman, a student at the time, who said the former host of the CBC Radio program Q tried to smother her by covering her nose and mouth with his hands, and others who describe how, with no warning, Ghomeshi made guttural snarling noises, hit, slapped, bit, choked them and in some cases pulled their hair so hard they were yanked down to the floor or onto a bed.

In one case, a woman said Ghomeshi did ask at one point if “I was into choking” and told me “that it would heighten the experience” of sex. When the woman said she was not (this was in 2011) she said Ghomeshi became “sulky and distant.” At another point she recalls how he struck her across the face and “called me a slut.”

In the incident where the woman alleges a suffocation attempt (in 2012), the former student said she had a tumultuous five-month relationship that included numerous assaults. She left him after one particularly traumatic incident in his house where she alleges he was suffocating her.

“I could die here tonight and no one would know what happened,” said the woman, who said she used her phone to contact a girlfriend from Ghomeshi’s bathroom. Her friend told her to “get out of there.”

This woman, and the others the Star have interviewed, said Ghomeshi never used the term “BDSM,” which refers to bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism. In his Facebook posting where he defended his actions, Ghomeshi said he was part of a BDSM community where these activities are all consensual and condoned. People in Toronto who are part of that community have contacted the Star and said that Ghomeshi’s alleged activities do not fit their lifestyle.

The Star’s original stories, published a month ago, detailed accounts of six women who say they were assaulted by Ghomeshi, and two women (both CBC employees) who said they were sexually harassed. Toronto author and lawyer Reva Seth added her allegation in a posting on Huffington Post. That brought the total to seven women making abuse allegations and two making harassment allegations.

Since that time, the Star has received information from seven more women making abuse allegations. One other woman, who has not spoken to the media, made a complaint to police and her complaint forms part of the police investigation that led to four charges of sexual assault and one of overcome resistance — choking, this week.

To the Star’s knowledge, there are now 15 women making abuse allegations and two making harassment allegations. Two men the Star has spoken to describe incidents where Ghomeshi fondled their genitals in a public place without consent. The Star has also interviewed two women who, when they were as young as 16, felt that Ghomeshi inappropriately contacted, touched and flirted with them. Neither of them alleges physical or sexual assault, but found his advances unsettling. In one case, the person he made advances on was 16. Ghomeshi was 40 at the time.

None of the allegations against Ghomeshi has been tested in court.

The women the Star interviewed, recently and over the summer, provide a very similar picture of Ghomeshi and how he methodically selects women, brings them to his home and allegedly assaults them. In some cases there are allegations of assault in public. One of these comes from a woman who says that when she and Ghomeshi were on their way to a concert in 2011, outside the Sony Centre Ghomeshi grabbed her rear end and “pushed his finger between my legs and as far into me as possible with pants on.”

Ghomeshi, 47, is under court order to live with his mother (an address was not specified) pending the outcome of the criminal case. His lawyer, Marie Henein, said Ghomeshi intends to plead not guilty. She said she does not try her cases in the media and there will be no comment from Ghomeshi or his lawyers outside a courtroom. The Star told Ghomeshi’s lawyers of new, more serious allegations but has not yet received a response.

During the time of these alleged assaults, from 2001 to the early part of this year, Ghomeshi’s star was rising higher at the CBC, first as a television host and since 2007 as host of Q, the morning culture and entertainment show that featured A-list guests.

Most nights, particularly in recent years, Ghomeshi was out on the town at one cultural event after another, often hosting an important event like the Gillers or as an honoured celebrity guest.

Young women say they were attracted by the stardom. Some who sought a career in broadcasting wanted a job at Q and applied. Others who were not interested in media careers say Ghomeshi selected them out of a crowd — at a music festival in one case, a book signing in other instances. Many said that at some point Ghomeshi looked them in the eyes and told them, “You’re the one.”

None of the women the Star has interviewed knew each other. They tell remarkably similar stories regarding how they were chosen. One woman was watching him sign autographs in 2012 at a Western Canada book event to promote 1982, his first book.

“It was like he was selecting me. His eyes found me and it was like having a laser focus on me,” said one woman. She met him at 11 p.m. By midnight he had discovered her telephone number with an Internet search and phoned her for a date.

Another woman was walking into the CBC building to meet a friend, recognized Ghomeshi, and they struck up a conversation. He came away with her cellphone number, invited her on a few dates and then back to his home where, she says, he sexually assaulted her multiple times.

In 2003, a woman in her early 20s who described herself as a “brand-new independent artist” sent her new CD to Ghomeshi with a letter asking if he would consider managing her career. (Ghomeshi is a former musician who over the years has managed artists, including Lights.) She said Ghomeshi called her and told her that he had to see a movie for work purposes and he “told me” I was going.

“I was so entirely confused about what was happening and what I should do,” the woman recalled. “I was young and brand new to the music business and genuinely concerned about offending or rejecting him.”

he did not “hit, punch, choke or beat me.” However, she said Ghomeshi “groped” her, attempted “aggressively to kiss me” and “relentlessly tried to put his hands on and near my inner thighs, crotch and rear, both inside and out of my pants.”

“All of it was incredibly shocking and difficult to process. I was a naive small-town girl who had very limited experience with men. I thought I was going to a midday meeting about career management.”

Another woman (from Eastern Canada) who longed to be a writer moved to Toronto in 2011 with one suitcase, a few months’ rent and a desire to start a career “within the city’s cultural landscape.” She was 23. A friend told her Jian Ghomeshi of Q was looking for an assistant. She applied and was invited to Ghomeshi’s Cabbagetown home for an interview. Ghomeshi’s main assistant, a woman, was present. The job, she was told, would be making “smoothies and salads” for Ghomeshi while he prepared for Q shows. That assistant has not responded to an interview request from the Star.

The interview with the woman from Eastern Canada lasted 15 minutes. She left hopeful and Ghomeshi called her that night and left a message asking her for coffee and a second interview in the morning.

Ghomeshi was a different person at the coffee meeting. “I am a pretty anxious person and I was taken aback. He asked a lot of personal questions. Did I have a roommate? Where was I last night when he called? Did I know people here?”

She said he criticized her for mispronouncing his name and calling his show “The Q” instead of “Q.” He accused her of wearing clothes that were “too granola.”

“He gave the impression I had sincerely offended him and I genuinely felt so bad about it at the time. I look back on this now as the tactic of a manipulator with a mandate,” she told the Star.

She left the interview upset and anxious. She wrote him and took herself out of the running for the job. He thanked her for her “candour” and invited her to a live broadcastof Q. After the broadcast, he began sending texts, including one many other women report receiving: “Happy Monday!”

They began dating. On a visit to his house, she said the following happened:

“We were standing in the kitchen overlooking his laptop when out of nowhere he pushed me into the fridge and snarled, “I want to ravage your little body.” (Other women report hearing Ghomeshi make a similar snarling sound.)

During one of several intimate encounters they had she said he took her into the washroom at her home and slapped her hard across the face. He asked if she liked choking. She said she had never done that. He tried to convince her but she said no. She and other women the Star talked to said BDSM was never mentioned.

“One time he hit me really hard, on my head and face, with an open hand. I pushed him back once and he grabbed my wrists and said he did not like that,” she recalls.

According to her account, she broke the relationship off after Ghomeshi pushed his finger between her legs as they entered the Sony Centre to see an Adele concert. “Then he put on his Jian Ghomeshi face to everyone and I felt like a piece of arm candy.

“I was not with him very long. This is not a story of strength or one I am very proud of,” said the woman, who is still seeing a therapist. “I still struggle with self-blame on this since I still ... went back. I still wanted him to think something of me.”

Some of the women say that while in his home they saw Ghomeshi’s stuffed blue comfort bear, Big Ears Teddy, a toy he said publicly has helped him with anxiety. Two women have said Ghomeshi purposely turned the bear away so it could not “watch” his activities in the bedroom.

One woman, a young person in the media in Ontario who met him when she was a student, said that on one occasion when Ghomeshi abused her the bear was sitting on a “wooden child’s chair” facing them. (Ghomeshi has told people in the past year that the bear was lost in his luggage by Air Canada.)

In this case, the woman, in her 20s, was interested in a broadcasting career. She had met Ghomeshi during a visit to CBC in 2012. They saw each other for five months, something the woman says she regrets.

“I was in awe of him and wanted so much for him to like me,” she recalls. “Everyone adored him. And he had shone his light on me.”

She said that during the time they saw each other he was often violent with her, progressively more so each time, but then would be nice and charming, asking for her to “cuddle” in bed. She stayed.

On what was their last evening together she describes being led to the bedroom of his Sackville Ave. home. He pushed her down to a seating position on the hardwood floors. “He put his hands around my neck and started to press, increasing pressure, choking me. He had done this before. This time was worse. He was looking into my eyes. I couldn’t breathe and I started to panic.” She said she put her hands up to stop him and he did stop, then he put his hands over her nose and mouth. She felt herself starting to lose consciousness and wondered if she died whether anybody would know “what happened.”

Her eyes watered. She tried to move his hands but couldn’t. Then, she said, he struck her four times, “pounding the heels of his hands into my temples.”

She was upset, confused. She said he wanted to have sex and when they went to the bed he got on top of her and pushed her down. (She weighs just under 100 pounds.) When she resisted and got on top “he lost his erection.” The woman went to the bathroom and texted her friend, who told her to leave. She did, and has not seen him since that time.

Like all but three women who have raised allegations, she said she has no intention of going to police.

The women interviewed by the Star tell similar stories of how Ghomeshi obsessed about his public persona. Given the number of big-name guests Ghomeshi had on his show, the Star asked if he talked about things he had learned from the likes of astronaut Chris Hadfield, rocker Joni Mitchell or Canadian singer Leonard Cohen.

“He never talked about these interviews or things he learned,” said one woman. “He did ask all the time if I had listened to one of his interviews and what I thought of how he did on the interview.”

While on a visit in 2012 to England, where he was born, Ghomeshi met a Toronto woman in a hotel elevator. Ghomeshi asked her, “Do you know who I am?”

She told him her mother liked his show. Ghomeshi did something then that four other women said he did. He remembered her full name, and found her email address online. He emailed her later in the day and said he was meeting a friend from Google and would she like to come for a drink. Ghomeshi showed up alone. She recalls how disappointed he was that “nobody knows me in London.”

“After a few drinks we went back to his room where he proceeded to literally throw me on his bed, no buildup, no conversation, and started biting, pulling my hair and biting me all over.”

The woman told him to slow down.

“He said I was being weird and making him feel embarrassed. I immediately felt bad,” the woman recalls. Ghomeshi, whose book was about to be published, pulled out a copy of his manuscript and began reading it in this really weird baby voice and I started falling asleep because it was so boring.”

She said she was awakened by Ghomeshi biting her and pulling off her clothes. “It started to hurt so much that I pushed him away,” said the woman, who was upset to see “marks” on her body from the bites. “I ran out of the hotel room.”

The woman, who works in the communications business, received a friend request on Facebook from Ghomeshi the next day, asking her if she wanted a “proper date” when she was in Toronto next. “I agreed, thinking I didn’t want to tarnish my reputation given how small the industry is.”

At the dinner they had in Kensington Market, she said Ghomeshi talked about his house (it had just been featured in a magazine) and was “offended” that she would not go back home with him.

The evening ended, she said, with Ghomeshi going on a tirade. “He told me I was a sellout for working in the corporate world and that he was better than me because he followed his dreams and look how successful he was and what he’s done for minorities everywhere.”

While some of the women had multiple dates with Ghomeshi before cutting it off, others reacted immediately to his aggression and ended the relationship quickly.

In 2006, a 22-year-old woman who worked at the CBC met Ghomeshi at a Christmas party. She recalls that he invited her downtown for a drink. She told him no, she lived with her parents in North York, and that if he wanted a drink he could come up to her area. They had a drink at a pub.

“On the way back to his car, with no warning, he put his hands around my throat and pushed me against the car. He was choking me.”

“I said, ‘What the f---.’ I told him I have three brothers.”

“Your loss,” she recalls Ghomeshi saying. He drove off quickly and then called her, saying, “I am driving really fast on the highway and I am under a lot of stress right now and if I crash it will be your fault.”

The woman told him to calm down and drive safely.

This week, a woman contacted the Star to say that she was to meet up with Ghomeshi for a taping of his show in early October. They had met two years ago when she was a journalism student in Toronto. He had a photo taken of the two of them and Ghomeshi told the young woman “you could be my secret Christmas girlfriend.” They never got together but kept in touch. This fall he emailed her to say “we should get together and take more pictures.” Ghomeshi cancelled the planned meeting because his father, who later passed away, was ill.

“When the story came out I was shaking, just shaking. I keep wondering. Was I the next one?”

Kevin Donovan can be reached at (416) 312-3503 or kdonovan@thestar.ca