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Woman accusing fellow York University PhD student of raping her gets grilled on the stand.
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Richard Lautens / Toronto Star Order this photo
Mandi Gray, a PhD student in sociology at York University, says she was raped last year by another doctoral student whom she had been dating.
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Up on the third floor of Old City Hall, one floor above where the Jian Ghomeshi case is being heard, another sexual assault trial began last week.
There was a lineup outside this courtroom, too — not of journalists, though. Most of the crowd in the small domestic violence court were young feminists, here to support their friend, Mandi Gray.
Gray is a 27-year-old PhD student at York University who says she was raped by a fellow York doctoral student, Mustafa Ururyar, a year ago, almost to the day. The two had been casually dating for two weeks.
Gray — who has waived her right to a publication ban — testified the assault happened in the morning of Jan. 31, 2015, after the two had closed down a Bloor St. bar with fellow York students. Gray was “a little tipsy,” after consuming about seven beers. Earlier in the evening, before he arrived, she texted Ururyar to “come drink and then we can have hot sex.” He responded that he was tired and sick, but later decided to come.
Around 2 a.m., the two said goodbye to one of Gray’s friends, and suddenly, Ururyar’s demeanour changed, Gray testified.
On the way back to his apartment, Ururyar insulted her repeatedly, calling her “needy,” “an embarrassment,” “a slut” and a “drunk.” Along the way, her self-esteem crumbled, she said.
Then, when they got into his room, she said he stuffed his penis into her mouth and then raped her. She was frozen in confusion and fear, she said.
“I kind of checked out of my physical being,” she said from the stand.
“I was so scared, I didn’t know what else to do. I just went along with it.”
Ururyar has not yet had a chance to give his version of events in court. But his lawyer Lisa Bristow’s cross-examination hinted at his story: Gray flirted with and groped him at the bar, and the two walked home to his apartment hand in hand. Once inside his room, he broke up with her. Then, he consoled her when she cried, and they had consensual sex — as Bristow put it, to “fulfil your text message.”
He has pleaded not guilty.
There was a strange déjà vu in the courtroom, as tweets from the Ghomeshi case floated upstairs. The women were in the early stages of dating the men they accused. The alleged assaults happened in private. There were no witnesses, besides the victims.
This could describe the vast majority of sexual assault cases.
The glaring difference was that Gray woke up later that morning, left the apartment and the next day went to the hospital for a rape kit. Then she phoned her employer, York University, looking for advice and support. (She later filed a human rights complaint against the university for failing to have clear policies and protocols for students who are sexually assaulted by classmates or staff. The case is currently in mediation.)
Two days after the incident, she went to the police.
She did everything we as a society tell rape victims they should do, if they want justice and want us to believe them.
So far, that doesn’t seem to have helped her.
Gray took the stand three days last week, under cross-examination for half of that time.
Here are some of the questions and statements Bristow made:
“You could have phoned someone. Instead, you chose to go home with someone who was angry, berating you and yelling at you.”
“You know a rape kit should be done as soon as possible ... After Mr. Ururyar raped you, you did not go straight to the hospital. You went home, correct?”
“Your career was more important than getting a violent rapist off the streets?”
“You didn’t fight back in any way?”
“You lay in bed all night next to the person who violently raped you?”
“You could have called 911, but you didn’t.”
At the base of this case, as with most rape cases, is consent. And as with most rape cases, the defence’s main tactic is to jam enough holes in the victim’s credibility to let reasonable doubt filter through.
But the second tactic is to haul out the musty bag of rape myths, which blame the victim. Most of us were raised on them like Cheerios. We might not believe them consciously, but they trigger us.
They hold that rapists are strangers, not lovers, waiting in an alley with a knife. They hold that women who drink and go to someone’s house were looking for sex. They hold that the appropriate response to rape is screaming and fighting, versus freezing with fear. And they hold that women cry rape, for fame or revenge.
Bristow employed all of them.
“I’m going to suggest the reason why you waited almost three days before reporting the incident is you wanted to have time to think about your story, correct?” she said.
“You were trying to time how you could assert revenge on Mr. Ururyar for breaking up with you.”
Like the women on the stand downstairs, Gray is a tough cookie. She’s educated on sexual assault — she worked with women in prison for the Elizabeth Fry Society before picking up her graduate degree.
She speaks slowly and softly, measuring the questions before answering them. Many are familiar territory, for most rape victims ask themselves why they didn’t see the warning signs, and why they didn’t react differently. She told the courtroom she’s been going to counselling for a year, not to craft her version of events but to work through “my own self-blame.”
To the claim of revenge, she responded: “I would never destroy my life and someone else’s life ... for someone I’d known for two weeks.”
There was another eerie parallel between the courtrooms. As in the Ghomeshi case, there was an electronic message sent after the incident in question. But in Ururyar’s case, his accuser didn’t send it. It was he who texted Gray, five days after she left his apartment.
Gray said she saw it for the first time on the stand, since she had erased all messages from Ururyar and blocked his number on her phone. It said:
“I am sorry things went as they did. I shouldn’t have said and done some of the things I did. I was upset and felt wronged by you but that does not excuse my own mistakes.”
She returns to the stand April 11, when the trial continues. I plan to be there, to cover Ururyar’s defence and the verdict.
Catherine Porter’s column usually appears on Fridays. She can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca .
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