You hardly know him but now he thinks he knows you:he has taken down your worst momenton a machine and filed it in a file.He knows, or thinks he knows, how much you imagined;he knows, or thinks he knows, what you secretly wanted.—Adrienne Rich, “Rape”
In mid October, a Los Angeles–based screenwriter named Kathryn Borel, widely known as the former CBC employee who came forward with a sexual-assault charge against disgraced Q host Jian Ghomeshi, published a post on her Facebook page. “I want to join the chorus of women sharing their experiences with sexual assault,” she wrote, proceeding to note, with harrowing matter-of-factness, that she had been “raped and sodomized” by a stranger four years earlier. Borel had alluded to the incident in an interview with Maclean’s magazine after Ghomeshi publicly apologized to her as part of his court-ordered peace bond. But in the post, which referenced
Sarah Liss is the senior editor of Reader’s Digest. Her work has appeared in The Walrus, Maclean’s, Toronto Life, The Globe and Mail, Hazlitt, the Hairpin and CBC.ca. Her book, Army of Lovers: A Community History of Will Munro, was published by Coach House books in 2013. She lives in Toronto.
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