Media
Wave of Manitoba women come forward on social media about sexual assault
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When Chloe Giesbrecht shared the story of her sexual assault on Twitter, she felt like she was finally closing a dark chapter of her life.
“It was like posting it was hacking the eight year trauma away,” she said.
In the post, Giesbrecht describes being sexually assaulted by a young man in 2012 when she was 16, and how it left her feeling like “a part of me was gone.”
“My whole identity was stripped and it took years to get back,” she wrote.
“I’m not staying silent anymore.”
In a phenomenon resembling the #MeToo movement, Giesbrecht is one of hundreds of Manitoba women to share allegations of sexual violence, sexual assault and domestic abuse through social media in the last month.
The stories led to an Instagram account sharing dozens of anonymous stories from women, where many named the accused publicly. A Reddit thread on the topic attracted nearly 300 comments in June.
Giesbrecht said she decided to publish her story after seeing other women do the same. She said it felt like there was a network of support online.
“It was like a domino effect. It was like everyone was just getting this constant support,” she said.
Writing out what she says happened to her was a way to release it, and to move past it, she said.
Natalya Jones also shared the story of her 2018 sexual assault on Twitter. She, too, said she felt empowered by seeing other women coming forward.
“The bravery is kind of contagious. When you see one woman who shares a similar story to you, you feel like your story is important and it does need to be shared.”
Jones says she has a lot of fear in her life as a result of her sexual assault. Over two years later, she’s still afraid of running into the man she says assaulted her and what might happen if she did.
But she doesn’t have a lot of faith in the police or justice system to hold perpetrators of sexual assault accountable, and feels like women coming forward on social media is another form of justice.
“They don’t even necessarily need to go to jail but just the fact that some consequences are being paid feels good in my opinion,” she said.
“It feels good to know that the victims are not the only ones who had to pay a price for what happened to them.”
Both Jones and Giesbrecht said they didn’t pursue criminal charges against the men they say assaulted them. Giesbrecht said she and her father did go to police, but because it happened to her at such a young age, she didn’t want to be named in an investigation and didn’t pursue it any further. She said she didn’t hear from police after that.
“I didn’t want them to do anything about it because I was so scared to … just have the backlash of it.”
Jones said she didn’t want to go to police at the time of her assault because she felt that even if they laid charges, it would be a long, arduous court process that may not even result in a conviction.
“And let’s say I do win, what’s the most what’s going to happen to him? Like a few months in jail? Like maybe some community service? I just feel like violence toward women is not taken seriously.”
Instagram account shares dozens of stories anonymously
So many stories started emerging online that an Instagram account, Safe Space Winnipeg, was created to allow women to share them anonymously.
That account now appears to be defunct, but by July 8, it had posted close to 100 stories and had more than 2,000 followers.
Its organizer, who CBC is not naming because she expressed concerns for her safety, said she created the account to give women an opportunity to share what had happened to them without fear of attacks or abuse.
“It’s just providing a safe space letting people know that they’re not alone in this, and bringing to light how common this actually is,” she said.
When CBC News spoke with her at the beginning of July, she said she had lost count of how many messages she had received, but said it was at least 200.
The woman did not respond to requests for comment about what happened to the account by deadline.
Black Lives Matter paves way
A similar movement has been happening in Quebec, with women taking to Instagram and other social media sites with public accusations of sexual assault.
Kharoll-Ann Souffrant, a PhD student in social work at the University of Ottawa who has studied the #metoo and #beenrapedneverreported movements, said she thinks the anti-racism and anti-police brutality movement that has swept North America has paved the way for other social injustices to be addressed.
Victims of sexual assault who choose to share their stories publicly do so for a number of reasons, she said, including trying to protect others, and because they want to feel validated and believed. But ultimately, it’s because they want the violence to stop.
“We have to ask ourselves as a society, why are people coming forward like this and what is the message they are trying to tell us by doing this,” she said.
“What I understand … is, there young people are telling us, you’re not protecting us, so we’re going to protect ourselves, by ourselves.”
Giesbrecht, too, said she feels this movement of women coming forward is part of a larger, universal push for societal change inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
“It’s not just women in Winnipeg you know, it’s women all over,” she said.
“It’s crazy, 2020 has just been like one huge movement for changing the way things are.”
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Howard Anglin: The Conservatives are cruising and the media can't hide its disappointment – The Hub
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CAMDEN, N.J. — It took nearly four minutes Monday morning for Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey to say James Harden‘s name. But, after rattling off the names of several other players and speaking confidently about the team’s chances to contend this season, Morey turned to the matter of Harden’s absence from media day.
“I want to address James Harden,” Morey said, sitting on a dais next to coach Nick Nurse, both wearing matching blue blazers to kick off the interviews. “He’s not here today. He continues to seek a trade, and we’re working with his representation to resolve that in the best way for the 76ers and, hopefully, all parties.”
Harden’s decision not to come Monday was the latest push in a summer full of them to fulfill his desire to be dealt to the LA Clippers. But although the two teams have talked recently, there’s been no traction on a deal, sources told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
The Sixers’ asking price remains high, and the Clippers don’t seem inclined to bid against themselves in a marketplace that is cool to unloading significant trade assets for Harden, sources told Wojnarowski.
As a result, Harden is still a member of the 76ers — and the franchise clearly would love for him to return and help in what the 76ers still believe is a group good enough to compete for a championship, even in the wake of the moves the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics made to get Damian Lillard and Jrue Holiday, respectively, over the past few days.
“Who said they surpassed us?” reigning NBA MVP Joel Embiid responded to a reporter. “We still gotta go out there and compete. You can do whatever you want off the court, but you still gotta go out there and put the ball in the hoop.
“I believe that any team that I’m on, we always gonna have a chance. Just need to be a little bit lucky. Just need to stay healthy — be healthy and stay healthy — and, you know, as a team, just come together.”
Harden exercised his $35.6 million contract option for the season in June with hopes of the Sixers trading him before camp, but Morey has shown a willingness to wait out Harden and try to get him reinvested in the team.
To that end, the message over and over again from the 76ers was that they hope they can get Harden to come back and take part alongside them. Harden on Friday was paid the 25% of his contract that he was scheduled to receive by Sunday, sources said, after already having received the 25% payment he was scheduled to receive on July 1.
It remains unclear when, or if, Harden is going to rejoin the team, which is flying to Fort Collins on Monday afternoon before holding training camp at Colorado State University for the next several days.
Morey, when asked if Harden would be fined for missing Monday, said the team would “treat James like every other player on the roster as required by the CBA.”
In August, Harden publicly called Morey a “liar” and suggested he wouldn’t fulfill his contractual services with the Sixers as long as Morey remained president. The league fined Harden $100,000.
In a call with league and union officials during the NBA’s investigation into the comments, Harden insisted he would be fulfilling his contractual obligations with the Sixers should he remain without a trade, sources said.
Morey, who has previously had a close relationship with Harden going back to when he acquired him as the general manage of the Houston Rockets from the Oklahoma City Thunder just before the start of the 2012-13 NBA season, admitted this summer was difficult for him given how it’s all played out in the public sphere.
“I would say it was hard,” Morey said. “I think there are many people who worked with him for some time, but I’ve been right there with anyone else.
“Look, I think he’s a heck of a basketball player. I like him as a person. It was hard, I think, that he felt like that was the right course of action for him at that point. What else can I say? I think he’s a tremendous player that will help us if he chooses to be here. And, right now, that’s not where he wants to be.”
Morey did, however, push back on Harden’s assertion that he is a liar.
“I don’t think I have to interpret it,” Morey said. “He said what he meant. I think that was well reported on.
“I haven’t responded to that because I think it falls flat on its face. In 20 years of working in the league, always followed through on everything. Every top agent knows that. Everyone in the league knows. You can’t operate in this job without that. So, you know, privately I’ve appreciated all the key people in the league reaching out to me and knowing obviously that’s not true. But like I said before, obviously it was disappointing that he chose to handle it that way.”
Now, Philadelphia begins preparations for training camp — its first under Nurse, who replaced Doc Rivers earlier this summer — unsure of when — or if — its star point guard will join them. To that end, Nurse said he and the team will be preparing for both possibilities and will address them as things unfold.
“For me, it’s, it’s obviously we’ve kind of got Plan A, Plan B, right? We’ve gotta get the team ready regardless. We’re expecting him to show up.
“He shows up? We go. If he doesn’t? We go. There’s two ways to look at it. And we proceed and we really get to work in building our foundation of what we want to do, getting all our principles in, all the things that we want to do, and play the style of play we want to play regardless.”
Perhaps the best summation of the situation, however, came from Harden’s longtime friend and teammate P.J. Tucker, who was asked whether he thought Harden would be back anytime soon.
“That ain’t for me to answer,” Tucker said with a laugh and a shake of his head. “I have no idea.
“I hope they figure it out soon. But if not, it’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.”
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