The first witness at the sexual assault trial of a former Canadian Broadcast Corp (CBC) radio host on Monday testified that he was charming before he suddenly went into a rage, pulling her hair and punching her, 13 years ago.
Jian Ghomeshi has pleaded not guilty to four counts of sexual assault and one count of choking.
He has said he had consensual “rough sex” with women.
Ghomeshi is the former host of Q, a popular radio show on culture that was heard across Canada and on many public stations in the US.
Police launched an investigation in 2014 after nine women contacted a number of media sources to report incidents of assault and sexual assault involving Ghomeshi. The allegations rocked Canada’s vaunted public broadcaster.
The trial began on Monday, and the name of the first witness is subject to a publication ban. She said she met Ghomeshi in late 2002 while she was a server at a CBC party and then went to a taping of his then-TV show Play. After going for a drink, she said he took her to his yellow Volkswagen Beetle where, after kissing her, he pulled her hair violently for two to three seconds.
Despite that, she went to two more tapings of his show and accepted an invitation to his home, she said. She said that after kissing him, he pulled her hair again, yanked her to her knees and punched her on the side of the head. She said her ears were ringing and she was terrified.
“He didn’t apologize, he didn’t ask if I was OK,” she said. “He threw me out like trash.”
She said she did not go to the police at the time, because she did not know that she could and did not think anyone would listen.
She said she went to the police more than a decade later, after police encouraged women to come forward.
In her cross-examination, Ghomeshi’s lawyer, Marie Henein, questioned why the witness did not go to the police right away and went over media interviews, police interviews and testimony and raised inconsistent details.
Henein said Ghomeshi did not own a Volkswagen Beetle at the time.
“What I saw was what I saw,” the woman said. “It looked like that to me.”
The woman, then a 41-year-old mother who worked part-time jobs as a server and makeup artist, said she never saw Ghomeshi again after the second incident.
Ghomeshi, who first gained fame as a member of the 1990s satirical pop band Moxy Fruvous, previously defended his actions in a 1,500-word statement on Facebook, saying women consented to having “rough sex” and that he is the victim of a disgruntled ex-girlfriend.
The CBC fired him.
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