When the radio personality Jian Ghomeshi suddenly announced on Friday that he was taking a leave of absence from his popular show, many Canadians assumed it was related to the recent death of his father. Now, his departure is the sex scandal du jour.
In a brief statement on Sunday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) announced that it had simply cut ties with Ghomeshi.
He quickly followed up that evening with a 1,500-word Facebook post, detailing his side of the story.
In the post, Ghomeshi said that CBC had fired him over the concerns that consensual sexual acts, which he described as “a mild form of Fifty Shades of Grey,” were about to become public.
Later on Sunday, the Toronto Star reported that three young women had said Ghomeshi had been “physically violent to them without their consent during sexual encounters or in the lead-up to sexual encounters.”
The newspaper quoted the women as saying the radio host “struck them with a closed fist or open hand; bit them; choked them until they almost passed out; covered their nose and mouth so that they had difficulty breathing; and that they were verbally abused during and after sex.”
On Monday, lawyers for Ghomeshi filed a lawsuit against the government-owned CBC claiming breach of confidence, bad faith and defamation, and seeking C$55 million (US$49 million). CBC said it would “vigorously” defend itself against litigation.
In a country where CBC’s radio stations still command big audiences, Ghomeshi loomed large. His daily two-hour cultural program, Q, which heavily featured interviews with international film stars and musicians, was an important source of younger listeners. Broadcast weekdays at midmorning, Q had an average audience of 282,000, not counting a repeat broadcast at night.
Ghomeshi, 47, helped create Q, which was named for the broadcast center studio where it is recorded in Toronto and has run for about seven years. He was entwined with the show’s identity, and the network often used Ghomeshi to host corporate events.
He said in the Facebook post that his firing stemmed from a relationship he had with “a woman in her late 20s.”
Ghomeshi said that, after he broke up with her, the woman “set out to try to find corroborators to build a case to defame me.”
He said a freelance writer was among the people she sought out.
The CBC quickly distanced itself from Ghomeshi. By Monday, it had stripped all traces of him from its Web site and stations, including an oversize portrait in the lobby of its main English-language broadcasting center in Toronto.
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