If This Isn't Sexual Assault, What Is?

It was curious to see Toronto Star reporter Rosie DiManno arguing in a column yesterday that the sexual assault case involving former Saskatchewan Roughriders general manager Eric Tillman was "patronizing to women." Tillman, who resigned his position last week, received an absolute discharge last week - escaping even the stigma of a criminal record in the process - after admitting he was guilty of fondling a 16-year babysitter.

DiManno reports the agreed statement of facts in the case as follows: Tillman, apparently made woozy by medication, sidled up behind the young woman, grabbed her by the hips and pulled her back end up against his front end. Dimanno then, despite admitting she couldn't quite buy Tillman's claim that he didn't remember these events, nevertheless dismisses the encounter as a trivial lapse in judgement that couldn't possibly have been damaging to the victim.

I share her skepticism about Tillman's memory loss - and about the notion that sleeping pills and pain relievers combine to create a Viagra-like arousal response - but the rest of her argument doesn't hold water. DiManno laments that a justice system based on zero-tolerance when it comes to sex offences condescends to women by placing even sufferers of relatively mild offences into aggrieved victim status. "Where's the sex or the assault in the sexual assault charge to which Eric Tillman pleaded guilty," DiManno wonders. Later, she suggests that calling Tillman's offence sexual assault diminishes the trauma felt by victims of more severe crimes such as rape.

DiManno might have a point that the law should do a better job of distiniguishing between different grades of sexual assault. She might even be right that victims of "minor" sex offences are often not be as traumatized as some believe - although I'll leave that one to the psychiatric experts.

But if she can't see that Tillman's actions were clearly of a sexual nature and could very reasonably have been upsetting to a young woman who, it bears repeating, was working for him at the time, I'm not sure what definition of sexual assault she would accept short of the stereotypical "rapist jumping out of the bushes" scenario.

Tillman's actions constituted a crime and his clean-slate escape from the legal system is a farce. DiManno, always eager to uphold her tough-as-nails image, may believe that prosecuting offences like Tillman's is patronizing to women, but columns like hers do a far greater disservice.

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