On that Sexual Assault Case

I listened to a CBC call-in show about the London sexual assault trial of five former Hockey Canada players. All the callers were either on one side or another. I think there's a middle path. 

The gist of the case: Back in June 2018, a woman known as "E.M." was drinking at a bar where the hockey team was celebrating a big win. She consented to go back to a hotel room with one of the team members. A little later, he texted others to come up for a three-some, and up to ten guys were in the room at one point. Allegedly, five of the guys, all between 18 and 20, either had sex with her or had sexually assaulted her. Afterwards she called a friend, crying, saying she was upset at herself for what had happened. All men were acquitted because E.M.'s testimony wasn't seen as credible. A possible reason for this is that she filed a civil suit in 2020, and, if any of her testimony was different between then and now, that brings her credibility into question. Typically a criminal case is filed before a civil case, and she had started a criminal case soon after the event, but that was put on pause, at which time she moved to a civil case. That civil case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. 

First of all, how many of us describe an event exactly the same way after five years? Our brain changes our memories slightly whenever we re-remember an event. It's a very high bar to meet to have explain every detail exactly the same way. 

Srinivasan's "The Right to Sex"

"It is absurd to contend that vice, ecstasy, and passion would become impossible if man and woman were concretely peers" (xiii).  ~ Simone de Beauvoir

Amia Srinivasan's book rivals Kate Manne's fantastic Down Girl in the most exciting way. It's an absolute must read for anyone hoping to improve themselves and the world as we're led incrementally through issues around sexual tensions and traumas all with an intersectional lens. This is a collection of five essays that, she explains, "represent my attempt to put into words what many women, and some men, already know. This has already been the way of feminism: women working collectively to articulate the unsaid, the formerly unsayable" (xv). I mainly focus on the first and final essays, with the others laying further evidence for the primary argument.

THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST MEN

She starts by looking at the 8% of sexual assault reports that have been classified as false based on a police officer's personal judgment. 

"Police officers were inclined to consider a report false if there hadn't been a physical struggle, if no weapon had been involved, or if the accuser had had a prior relationship with the accused. [Of the suspected false reports] none resulted in wrongful conviction. . . . Nonetheless, a false rape accusation, like a plane crash, is an objectively unusual event that occupies an outsized place in the public imagination. why then does it carry its cultural charge? . . .  Many, perhaps most, wrongful convictions of rape result from false accusations levied against men by other men: by cops and prosecutors, overwhelmingly male, intent on pinning an actual rape on the wrong suspect. . . . Over half of their cases involved 'official misconduct'" (3-4).

On Cuties, Euphoria, and Promising Young Woman

My social media feed is full of political scandals that I have no ability to affect, so I've immersed myself in movies and shows. Bechdel test for the win for this trio!

Film both reflects and affects society, like all forms of art but even more than most as it's a visual, auditory, and narrative medium. We sometimes see ourselves in the movies more clearly than in novels or paintings or songs. It's this reflection in the film Cuties, I suspect, that got thousands of people riled up enough to cancel their Netflix subscriptions and garner it an embarrassing 3.1/10 on IMDb. But beyond Netflix's many second rate sequels and unwatchable remakes, I'd argue that Cuties is one of the better films on the current marquee. 

Cuties is about an 11-year-old girl, Amy, who's new to town and trying to fit in with the cool kids. She's successful because she takes their competitive dance moves to the next level with sexy additions that she's seen online. Those dance scenes are what's driving the outrage, but it's the most realistic part of the film (which steps into the surreal from time to time). Kids are made to imitate what they see, and this is what's out there for real. 

On Anita Hill

My time at university was split down the middle by the news of the Montréal Massacre, and the subsequent years were plagued with fears of the Scarborough rapist. We proactively organized walking groups to move around on and off campus, started a "No Means No" campaign, and then, at one point, I rejected the sense of preemptive imprisonment created by my own fear, and I walked to a bar alone just to prove that I could. I came home to my boyfriend on my couch with the phone on his lap, white knuckled. These assaults weren't just terrifying to women.

Leslie Mahaffy went missing from a street near her home in broad daylight a couple weeks after I graduated.

It was just a few months later, in the fall of my first year of teaching at my current high school, when Anita Hill was being called to testify about her experiences working with Clarence Thomas, about the repeated sexual harassment she endured from him. A group of strong-willed students in my school, young women and men passionate about gender issues, wanted to start a gender equity club, and I was right on board to facilitate.

Perhaps naively so.

Having spent the previous five years openly debating the most controversial issues in the classroom and writing op eds in the school paper and the local paper regularly, it hadn't occurred to be cautious and to temper my enthusiasm for equity issues for a high school audience. I almost wrote controversial issues, but surely there's nothing controversial about sexual harassment and assault being a problem, right?

Our club paid rapt attention to the hearing that fall and then determined to bring awareness to these issues potentially faced by students in our own school. We decided on an awareness campaign and put up posters around the halls with definitions, legal rights legislation information, and Canadian sexual assault and harassment statistics.

And then I found out that teachers are not supposed to talk about things like that. I didn't respond to the accusations of "assaulting young minds" that came my way during the following staff meeting. I sat stunned silent, baffled that this form of education could possibly be inappropriate in a school setting of young adults, or that the information was "disgusting" as one colleague insisted.

I think a better word for it, one that nobody used, was "upsetting." It was upsetting to people to be confronted with the concerns that hide just beneath the surface of many students. Those students in the club and I believed that the best tactic to deal with it all was to make it overt, make it clear, and make it known that it's wrong. Isn't it more upsetting to know it's a reality yet do nothing?

I didn't recognize that I had crossed a line with my colleagues maybe because I was fresh from a humanities degree, or maybe it was because I was closer in age to my charges than the staff at the time. I was in grade 9 less than a decade previously, and I remember happening on information by pure chance. A friend's mother had given her a pamphlet on sexual assault. I was hungry for tips on dealing with creepy strangers and handsy distant relatives. The only real advice we got was to put your finger down your throat and throw up on perverts, but do we do that if they just brush by us too closely? We needed specifics! Harassment is complicated, and we needed more guidance

Anita Hill brought into focus the unwanted sexual innuendo that plagued our social lives, that made it feel reasonable to complain about the behaviours we encountered far too regularly. Articles and whole books were written about sexual harassment. The headlines in the news felt a little vindicating after being told the topic wasn't allowed in the halls.

Then that spring of my first year, Kristen French went missing.

The Kavanaugh case has opened up all these issues again, and made it painfully clear how little has changed in the past 27 years. Anita Hill recently wrote,

"It’s impossible to miss the parallels between the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing of 2018 and the 1991 confirmation hearing for Justice Clarence Thomas. . . . That the Senate Judiciary Committee still lacks a protocol for vetting sexual harassment and assault claims that surface during a confirmation hearing suggests that the committee has learned little from the Thomas hearing, much less the more recent #MeToo movement. . . . But, as Judge Kavanaugh stands to gain the lifetime privilege of serving on the country’s highest court, he has the burden of persuasion. And that is only fair. In 1991, the phrase “they just don’t get it” became a popular way of describing senators’ reaction to sexual violence. With years of hindsight, mounds of evidence of the prevalence and harm that sexual violence causes individuals and our institutions, as well as a Senate with more women than ever, 'not getting it' isn’t an option for our elected representatives. In 2018, our senators must get it right."

Recently it was suggest to me, by someone I actually admire, unfortunately, that women claim they were assaulted by rich men in order to get some money, and we can't just believe everybody. I can't quite understand how that's still an openly expressed opinion when Christine Blasey Ford is receiving death threats.

As Maureen Dowd wrote,

"It has been almost exactly 27 years since the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, and we are still defensively explaining — including to our troglodyte president — why women do not always tell the authorities about verbal and physical sexual assaults, why they bury episodes or try to maneuver past them. We are still watching a bookish university professor from the West, who tried to anonymously report an alleged blight on the character of a man about to ascend to a lifetime of power, get smeared as a demanding, mixed-up, uptight, loony fantasist. . . . We haven’t forgotten our history. But we still seem doomed to repeat it."

By the end of my second year of teaching, our little club made the attention of the local news, and I found out the article was syndicated when my brother in B.C. called to say I was on the front page of the paper there. I've run similar clubs since, and I've been more seriously chastised for so much less. The fact that I'm afraid to even discuss the specifics speaks volumes. I still have problems with that line, and I've lost my warrior zeal for it all.

(I'm in the middle, with the 80s hair.)

In that first club, we had some conversations, that didn't make the article, about calling it the Gender Equity Club rather than the Equality, a more accurate representation of our concerns. But whatever. Trudeau is starting off the first ever Gender Equality week today. The theme this year (we have themes!), more or less, is that it's better for everyone if we're all treated with respect. Let's hope this week gives us something to celebrate.

On Manne's "Down Girl"

With thorough argumentation and heavily footnoted facts brought to the table, Down Girl, by Kate Manne delineates misogyny from sexism and hopes "to offer a useful toolkit for asking, answering, and debating" (13) issues centred around misogyny.

Contents:
     Misogyny vs Sexism
     Ideological Nuances
     Abortion
     Domestic Violence
     Family Annihilators
     Testimonial Injustice
     Keeping Them Down

Right off the bat, let's clarify that it's not remotely a man-hating thesis. It's about looking at how we all are affected by the beliefs floating around us.

"One need not be a man to be a misogynist either: women can fit the description too, as can non-binary people. . . . many if not most of us at the current historical juncture are likely to be capable of channeling misogynistic social forces on occasion . . . unwittingly policing and enforcing distinctively gendered norms and expectations but also, on my analysis, over-policing and over-enforcing gender-neutral and potentially valid norms, e.g., genuine moral obligations" (77).

A primary issue discussed is that women who compete for typically male-dominated roles: "will tend to be perceived as morally suspect in at least three main ways: insufficiently caring and attentive with respect to those in her orbit deemed vulnerable; illicitly trying to gain power that she is not entitled to; and morally untrustworthy, given the other two kinds of role violations" (xiv). Women have an extra layer of barriers to wade through to get to positions of powers because everyone (men and women) has been socialized to believe women are the caretakers of the world. It's similar to what Neil deGrasse Tyson describes in the world's reactions to his efforts to excel in science - the path of most resistance:

Some Implications of Boycotting Art

And another thing...  Here are two more issues I have with implication surrounding how we're treating the sexual harassment and assault cases further to my concerns previously discussed and further provoked by an article "Now What Do We Do with Their Work?".


ART AS A VITAL COMMODITY

If Alexander Fleming were found out to be horrific man, we wouldn't stop using penicillin. And if Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were nightmares, we'd still buy computers. That goes without saying. It's only in the arts that people valiantly claim to refuse to ever partake in any creation. When it comes to film and television production, that boycott or sudden shut down can punish far more people than just the accused. It harms the entire cast and crew. But more to the point, boycotting art suggests it's a convenience we can take or leave. People will make more and different art. It's a dime a dozen.

Except it's not.

Art provokes and enlightens and sparks further ideas. I have Picassos on my wall, Heidegger in my bookshelf, and Hitchcock online. These were not good men, but these were men capable of creating things that affect me, images and ideas that nobody else could possibly create quite the same way. Artists are one in a million, and destroying their work or denying their ability to create, just denies society access to one more chance to be woken up from our zoned out existence. Art is individual. We're each affected by particular and specific ideas, which are often rare, revealing themselves far too infrequently to toss aside in hopes that they will be taken up later by someone with better behaviour. 


BOYCOTTS AS PUNISHMENT

I wish people would express this same intense moral indignation when it comes to child workers, slavery, sweatshops, and environmental destruction. Imagine if this many people every day refused to ever again buy clothes, chocolate, coffee, or any product that wasn't produced with clear assurance of fair labour practices along the manufacturing and distribution line. Children are stolen from their parents and beaten as they work in cacao plantations, but that hasn't put a dent in the chocolate industry. A massive boycott could actually turn these types of business practices around. But we just don't care as much about those children.

The prospect of sudden job loss means the talented and celebrated cannot so easily get away with abusive behaviours, absolutely. When Weinstein got fired from his own company, that sent a clear message: People don't want to be subjected to sexual abuse and harassment on the job. Who would be so brazen or stupid to try something now, knowing companies will go so far as to pull you from your contract and actually re-film all your scenes with a less lecherous actor! 

But watching older films give the artists no financial benefit. I recently showed the film Inequality for All in my class and noticed it was produced by Weinstein. Whether I show it or not has zero impact on Weinstein's profits. It does, however, maintain his legacy.

It's curious that we didn't have the same reaction when Jian Ghomeshi was fired from the CBC. We didn't care about his job; we wanted him prosecuted in a court of law. Nobody mentioned destroying all their Moxy Fruvous CDs or cassette tapes; we wanted the creep in jail. I think it's partly because he was never big enough to become legendary. The band and the little Canadian show won't outlive him in history. We don't want future generations to ever like these guys again. We don't want them on their deathbeds happy that they will be fondly remembered. But I think we're putting our energy in the wrong direction.

The giant celebrity status of some of these perverts has distracted us from what happens next. The assault and indecent exposure accusation have to go to trial. And we have to make sure the court system will actually prosecute or else we have to be prepared to raise hell. But for other less physical cases, there has to be a mediation process like any other infraction in a workplace. The consequences have to be enough to remind the masses that this type of behaviour will not be tolerated. If mediation is ineffective, then termination is the next step - of the position, not the person.

The goal is to stop this kind of behaviour. The goal is not to deprive specific perpetrators of a livelihood or legacy in perpetuity, to obliterate them from existence. They need a means to be able to atone for wrongdoings. Once someone does their time, once they fulfill their sentence obligations, they have a right to come back into society and get a job. Let them create independently or, if accepted into a production, let them come along sheepishly and with great humility and a constant all-encompassing awareness of their every comment and gesture. Or else.

So NOW What? On Power, Sexual Abuse and the Culture of Celebrity

A little over year ago, when I first heard about Louis CK's abuse of power, I was going to write a post suggesting he might actually be the guy able to fess up, apologize sincerely, and lead the way for other men to admit to their abusive behaviours. I'm a big fan, and he sometimes has just the right tone that he might be able to manage something of that calibre. But I didn't finish anything because how I feel is just all too complicated. At the time I only got this far,

He's right out there about difficult issues, dark issues, presented in a light way. He seems to care enough about ethics to go deep into some harsh topics. He already has bits about pleasing women and sexual boundaries in his act. Just imagine if he came clean and actually talked about it, honestly, and with humour, as only he can. Imagine how quickly he could change everything if he apologized. Live. Imagine if he were brave enough to do the right thing and turned himself in and, after the typical slap on the wrist, or maybe even a brief stint in jail, he actually added that experience to his next special as a cautionary tale about his abuse of power. 

Imagine if he openly acknowledged the childishness of suggesting, because they just laughed when he asked if he could pull his dick out, that it was in any way a consensual act. Imagine if he explored his own power and revealed that he did it because he could, because he's in a place where he's become untouchable, so he is living without restraints on any behaviour. So he can do exactly what he like; and this is what he likes. And how dangerous that place is to be because lots of people like to do some weird stuff that couldn't happen without a power imbalance.

And then I watched in disbelief, for over a year, as he seemed completely unencumbered by the weight of his transgressions. He could have carved a path through it all, one that others could follow, but he maintained his course of denial. It didn't go away; instead it just festered around him. Now, even though Weinstein is so much worse by all accounts, his actions and his company's reactions and the many women who have come forward have been game-changers. The camel's back has finally broken.

A Reasonable Doubt?

A post wherein I get a little grumpy and swear-y about it all.

What does reasonable doubt look like? Is there really, REALLY, a reasonable doubt that Jian attacked the women who had their lives scrutinized on the stand? With sexual abuse cases, it all hinges on the credibility of the victims. But the problem with our system today is that the standards necessary to determine credibility are far too high. In far too many minds, credibility is questioned in a sexual abuse case if a woman continues to hang out with, have sex with, be attracted to, or even love their assailant. The legal system must acknowledge and contend with this insidious nature of abuse that places wounded women back in the arms of their abusers. It just is. There's no easy way to prevent that very human behaviour, so it must not be seen as an admission of prior deceit.

They had inconsistencies in a story about an even that happened over a decade ago, and they can't remember how long his hands were around their necks or the colour of a car. Our memory for details are sketchy over time, but our memory for a major event - not so much. Withholding e-mails can be understood, so plainly, as either forgetting about a note sent so long ago or, if intent to withhold can be proven, then a clear acknowledgement that in our fucked-up system, sex after an attack appears to nullify any claims of damage. That has to change. Immediately.

In a famous experiment, dogs were put in a compartment and trained to jump a barrier when given an electric shock. After one or two tries, the dogs jumped the barrier immediately after being put in the compartment even when no shock was given. BUT some dogs were restrained the first time and not able to jump the barrier. They had to tolerate the shock without being able to escape. When they were unharnessed, they still didn't jump the barrier, but just stayed there, tolerating the pain.

"Seligman found that it took many experiences (up to 200) of being forcibly dragged across from the shock compartment to the safe compartment for them to rediscover that responding could bring relief and thus to break out of the learned helplessness syndrome." 

Up to 200 times after just one inescapable experience! We are hard-wired to stay put, to hunker down and tolerate abuse after just one bad experience. That's how we survive. When dogs are beaten, they often follow their abuser around even if there are kinder family members to hang out with. We align ourselves with the strongest in the pack, and an abuser can fit the bill. These are basic animal behaviours that are difficult to overcome despite our big brains, even for the best and brightest among us.

It's clearly not entirely a matter of victims being too polite, but of a built-in animal nature to cope with pain rather than act on it if there's no clear escape. And there IS no clear escape if calling the cops ruins your own life and reputation and offers little hope for a conviction.

The parliament site, Hill Notes discusses rates of "unfounding":

"Among seven Ontario police forces, 2% to 34% of complaints of sexual assault were considered unfounded. No matter what the percentage, the rates were significantly higher for sexual assaults than for other crimes in the six forces for which comparative data were available. Studies have shown that victims may be seen as less credible in situations that do not reflect the stereotypical image of sexual assault as a violent act perpetrated by a stranger on a “virtuous” woman who vigorously resisted. . . . In some investigative manuals, for example, the criteria to be considered in detecting a false report include a request to speak to a female officer. . . . 

There are various factors at play [in the low conviction rate], including reliance on myths and stereotypes to discourage the complainant from testifying in court and to attack the credibility of the complainant. Such testimony is generally crucial for the prosecution of a sexual assault case, as there may be no witnesses and little other evidence."

Check that out again: just the act of asking to see a female officer is enough for your claims to be discredited in Ontario. That standard is ridiculously high. This is why people are posting signs saying "I believe survivors." I'm bracing myself for slippery slope arguments to the contrary now - that if we lower it a smidge, then women can get men convicted on bogus charges because maybe he didn't call back right away, and women will TAKE OVER THE WORLD.

Hold the phone. We can lower the standards to a REASONABLE place wherein women feel free to admit to a relationship after an assault without fear that it will not be believed WITHOUT lowering credibility standards to a point that women can charge men willy nilly. It is possible, but it will take some work to change the way we understand one another.

What should determine credibility?

Well, it shouldn't include victim's later behaviour, how they dress, or where they live or work (i.e. a prostitute must be believed as much as a nurse), or minor inconsistencies. If you're telling a story of an assault from years ago, and you sometimes say 'slapped' and other times 'hit', it shouldn't follow that you're lying about the entire thing. The standard I'd like to see is: "Did they say 'yes' to the behaviour and to every escalation of the behaviour?" It will always be complicated to convict, but in a case with many women testifying against one man, it seems clear that they're not jilted, spiteful girlfriends out to get a guy for ditching them. That might happen out there somewhere. I admit it's possible for a woman to be so angry that, twelve years later she's still willing to put her own life on trial to falsely accuse a man of a horrific assault, but it's highly unlikely. When there are numbers of women expressing similar fates, then the likelihood of them all fabricating the same story becomes astronomical, and they Must. Be. Believed.

 In a Facebook comment, Antonia Zerbisias had this to say about these women:

"With sexual assault -- and I don't mean a punch but full on penetration -- victims should know not to shower, brush their teeth, even though the compulsion to do so must be overwhelming. If they don't know that, then there should be posters in schools and universities and workplaces, and PSAs on all the channels. There was no DNA in this case. . . . 

As for strangulation marks or bruises, if there were any, I am amazed that nobody photographed them. But let's just say that the complainants were too traumatized to do so, or there were none, why would they have not shared their stories with their girlfriends or sisters? Or, right. Trauma, shame and I am victim-blaming. . . . . 

Now here we have three youngish women, who would have been in their 20s when these events happened and, for whatever reason had stars in their eyes with JG. . . . but, seriously, who could buy one of the stories: One of them claims he committed a violent act one day and then next day, she invites him over for a friendly handjob? . . . . Women must take some responsibility for their safety. . . . . If you have a creepy feeling, say you have a headache and Uber it home. . . .  

I often wondered why he never asked [my friends] out but now I know. They didn't need him or act like they needed him. Sure, they were starstruck but they had resources and spidey-senses and would have walked if he tried anything. Predators always go for the weak, the ones at the back of the herd. Frankly, I don't think these complainants were too bright. I know that's brutal but a smart woman would have shut up and not written things like we'll get the prick." 

Heres's the thing: It makes us feel safer if we can believe that it won't happen to us since we're smart and resourceful. But that's bullshit. Even smart women are sexually assaulted. Even you. There's lots more to unpack in that comment, but there's one thing I'd like to point out. Having DNA evidence of sexual contact AND having pictures of bruises will not further a case if the accused insists it was consensual BDSM. He didn't claim he didn't have sex with them, but that it was all consensual. All the DNA evidence in the world won't help. And even filming it doesn't seem to make a difference as he willingly showed filmed footage of rough sex to his employers earlier on. All the prosecutor has is the victims' statements. It will always come down to a matter of who we believe, and we must believe more survivors.

Teaching girls how to behave after an attack does fuck-all if rapists aren't convicted because the girls' credibility came in to question because they did that one wrong thing.

Antonia praises the almighty Section 11 of the Charter, and I assume she's referring to part d): "to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal." Many are celebrating that the law was impartial because it actually ignored the media and protestors. But I content it wasn't impartial because it did not ignore a very warped, patriarchal idea of what it looks like to be abused. Our current legal system doesn't recognize what's necessary to actually stop this illegal activity, and, as a result, rape continues more openly than I've ever seen before. We can watch teens rape girls at parties in videos shared openly. Some guys are not remotely ashamed of this kind of behaviour, and now they have yet another hero to applaud for proving his innocence. Yes, he's technically "not guilty" rather than innocent, but that's not how it will be seen to some, and how it is seen is what will affect future behaviours.

The effect of this trial is terrifying to me because it means abusers everywhere think they can get a pass even with multiple victims. Too many men feel untouchable, and they are all too often correct.

I flagged about twelve different posts and articles I planned to discuss in this post. I just started with Antonia's with the intention of commenting on others, but this is all so frustrating and exhausting and terribly sad. When people argue dispassionately that we must stand behind our legal system, they don't seem to understand that they're praising a system that will allow my daughters and my students and my friends and myself to be attacked with impunity if we can't guarantee being perfect witnesses on the stand. That's. Just. Fucking. Wrong.

And really scary.

I'll leave you with MP Charlie Angus' concern here:

ETA - And these words, dammit:  

"[People celebrating the verdict] are so fucking far from understanding the collective fire engulfing women at the moment, that your point is a moon of pluto. My point is the sun. My point is that since those 21 brave women came forward, our insides have been burning, we swallow nails every day, we question our existence. . . . We’re having a mass breakdown under the weight of a system that so evidently hates us, and you have no fucking idea of the reality of our lives."

We must find our collective way back from this. But it has to be the other side that sees the light on this one. It just has to. We can't live together comfortably if some people believe justice was served.  

ETA also interesting is that Canadian news focused on the problems with the victims, but the rest of the world focused on the problems with the judge and judgment. Curious. 

The Terrifying Ramifications of the Verdict

I can just barely read about Jian's acquittal on all charges. The Guardian has a telling interview with Lucy DeCoutere today. And of course some people, like Aaron Harnett, see it all as a "win" for Canadians because it safeguards us from accusations from anyone who has a remotely shaky memory of a traumatic event.

It was only 1983 that it became possible to charge a spouse with rape. That change to the law 33 years ago marked the courts finally understanding that sex isn't a duty of marriage, but also that it's possible for someone who loves us to harm us - that it can be very complicated. That nuanced understanding seems to have been lost in recent years, so, for our own safety, there are things women must do to ensure a sexual assault is convicted. Here are the important take-away lessons from this trial.

If you've been sexually assaulted...

• Recover quickly enough to not allow any defence mechanisms to downplay the seriousness of the assault; don't be in denial of the events for even a moment; just don't.
• Don't apologize or think it's your fault in a moment of baffled confusion regardless societal conditioning to the contrary.
• Do not write or say anything remotely positive to the attacker or about the attacker ever, even if your life depends on playing the game of "Everything's actually okay," or your mental health depends on briefly pretending "It wasn't really that bad, was it?".
• Keep the possibility of charging the person in the front of your mind forever, even if it's someone you love or someone who could help or harm your career significantly. If you ever need to come forward, your every thought, deed, and action - from the day of the assault onwards - must be consistently frightened and upset. There must be a clearly marked difference in tone in all correspondence before and after the event. Don't recover.
• Do not soldier on, but overtly crumble until the day of the trial.
• The words you use to describe the event must be identical every single time you describe it. Any wavering in the description means you're obviously lying about the whole thing. This is true even if the even happened many years ago. Your memory must be flawless. 
• Don't wait to call the police or your testimony will be in question - even if calling the police makes it all too real to manage; even if calling the police puts a loved one's life in upheaval, and if nothing sticks this could put you in much greater danger in future. 
• If the event is filmed, make sure your grimaces can't be confused with smiles.
• Don't ever have a normal conversation or correspondence with the accused at any time after the event because it proves the event wasn't traumatic. 
• Don't ever say or write that you like or appreciate anything about the accused at any time after the event because it proves you loved the abuse. Generally, don't treat the accused as a three-dimensional person with horrible bits yet also some lovely bits worthy of admiration. It's not enough to provide evidence that the accused assaulted you; the accused must be consistently seen in your eyes as pure evil. 
• And, for god's sake, photocopy and save any correspondence you send - just in case it comes back at you later to prove how much you love to be abused.

Really, in order to convict, you must be manipulatively planning to convict from the event forward, ever monitoring every single word and action. If you're just a normal person trying to cope with a trauma, you'll never make it. Don't even bother.

This is a complex situation requiring a nuanced understanding of the way people cope. As a woman who was assaulted decades ago, I knew better than to even think of calling the cops. My assailant acted like nothing unusual had happened, and I got swept up in that version of the story for a while (because it was comforting to believe it) until it seemed like it was too late to do anything about it. Telling the authorities wouldn't have done anything but cause more problems for me for making waves. It's not that it was so traumatic that I've repressed it; but the contrary - it just seems like it's so commonplace that it's not worth a mention. Like Amy Schumer put out there, hasn't everyone been a little bit raped?




But it's not going to stop until we bring all the manifestations of this illegal behaviour to light. You'd think with many woman testifying against one man, and with many of that man's own friends commenting on his hurtful behaviour, that the reality of the heinousness of his behaviour would be far too clear for anything but a conviction.

But it was not nearly enough. And if that's not enough, what possibly could be? How can anyone possibly be convicted of sexual assault under our current legal system?

Be careful out there, kids. The law is not there to serve and protect. And now it's crystal clear that sexual assault can't really be convicted regardless the mountains of evidence that the assault occurred. You also need mountains of evidence that it was painful and traumatic from that moment forward. Saying so doesn't count for shit; there can't be a moment of questioning it or feeling like you deserved it, and don't even think of being remotely forgiving or understanding for a second. That will totally screw you over later.

It's also very clear to the courts that women want heaps and heaps of attention, and we will go so far as to make up degrading stories about ourselves to get it. We want our tales of sexual abuse in all the papers so people will notice us. We are that starved for attention.

Maybe our only solution is to band together on these events outside the law. Banging pots outside the abuser's home to bring attention to it. Our only compensation here is that Jian's life won't entirely go back to normal after this. I'm not hopeful that his June trial will be any different. But even though he's not been convicted, he's not entirely free either - not like he was.

ETA: The same tactics were used with the same judge to get a previous acquittal.