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Video killed the radio star

What do Robert Packwood, Paul Bernardo and Jian Ghomeshi have in common? They were all undone by their need to document their abusive – most of the time criminal – sexual behaviour.

United States senator Packwood’s political career began to unravel in 1995 after 10 women claimed he had sexually harassed them on the job. He was able to keep the accusations at bay until investigators asked to see his diary, which he withheld for as long as he could – for good reason. Not only had he recorded encounters with the women, but he’d also record-ed his abuse of other women who hadn’t come forward.

Paul Bernardo might never have been convicted had police not recovered the infamous videos he’d taken of his crimes from a ceiling duct. 

At the trial, when Bernardo was trying to pin the murder of Kristen French on Karla Homolka (he claimed he was getting takeout from McDonald’s when French was killed), the angle of light coming through the window in the video helped convince jurors that Bernardo was lying.

Now along comes Jian Ghomeshi, who thought if he just showed his CBC bosses video of his bedroom activities, they’d see what an innocent, sex-positive guy he was. That didn’t work out the way he wanted.

I don’t know what’s in his videos that made those CBC execs realize maybe Ghomeshi wasn’t the radio host for them. I only know that whether it’s Packwood, Bernardo or Ghomeshi, the urge to record and chronicle damning sexual behaviour has taken (alleged) abusers down. 

It’s something of a mystery why men who know they’re doing something terribly wrong would themselves manufacture evidence that could be used against them. Richard Nixon did the same thing with his famous White House audio tapes, recording every conversation that took place in the oval office and paying the price. But when sexual abusers do it, it constitutes narcissism at its most bizarre.

And I’m willing to bet that, whether they consented to the sex or not, the women in Ghomeshi’s trophy vids were not consulted before he decided to use them – the videos and the women – to make his case to CBC brass. To protect his ass, he had no problem exposing theirs.

It would be a relief to learn that that’s one of things that distressed the CBC reps who looked at the material. But given the way pornography – and that is what the videos are, in an extreme form – renders the women in it invisible as actual people, I fear that’s not the case.

Sharing sexually explicit images of women as if they have no human rights is itself a form of abuse. It goes on way too often, mostly online – see also Rehtaeh Parsons. The practice may bring down the perpetrators, but not without re-victimizing women. 

susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole

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