Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley is opening up about an alleged sexual encounter with former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi when she was just 16.
The now 43-year-old is set to release a new book of essays titled Run Towards the Danger on March 1, and she told the host of CBC Radio‘s “The Current”, Matt Galloway, that she feels “strong enough” to handle some of the stories now.
Recalling the alleged sexual encounter with Ghomeshi, who was said to have been 28 at the time, when she was a teenager in an essay titled “The Woman Who Stayed Silent”, Polley explained how he had ignored her pleas to stop.
Years later in 2014, the presenter was accused of sexual assault and harassment by multiple women, but he has insisted the incidents were consensual.
After being charged, he was then acquitted on four counts of sexual assault and one count of choking involving three complainants in 2016, CBC reported.
Polley explained how she considered coming forward back then, sharing: “I did struggle with this a lot,” saying how lawyers warned her about the inconsistencies in her story.
Polley recalled how she was told “your case won’t lend credibility to the women who have come forward because you will go through exactly the same evisceration that they are going to get set up for.”
“I had a lot of information about what I was headed in towards,” she shared, adding: “I had two tiny children, and I knew I couldn’t handle it.”
READ MORE: New York Review Of Books Says Jian Ghomeshi Essay Was Only Shown To One Male Editor
Polley went on, “Many people who have come forward with stories like this get subjected to a kind of analysis.
“If you don’t remember every detail perfectly, if you can’t create a snapshot that is unassailable,” then you’ll get questioned, she suggested, insisting that people would also question why she remained in contact with Ghomeshi but said only victims of a similar attack will understand how you do it out of fear.
Polley asked, “Do women need to be destroyed in looking for those shadows and looking for those inconsistencies?” insisting she tried to block out the memories that were too traumatic.
“The brain works hard to protect you from what’s happened and to make what happens after survivable. And that means obliterating a lot… I think it’s really, really messy.”
