Underdog (6 page)

Mine was a textbook case of incompetence and apathy by all parties involved. In the seventy-two hours following my assault, I found myself repeating my story eight times to the first responders and then to the investigating police officers located in the division representing my Toronto neighbourhood – as if I was being tested to see if my story would stand up under repeated scrutiny. In the first week after the assault, I came into the police station and recorded my statement, only to be told the camera hadn't worked, forcing me to repeat it a second time.

Although my assailant was arrested the day after the assault, right in the store employing him—Structube – his manager denied all culpability, claiming the incident had taken place outside the store and after working hours. She even refused to do the bare minimum and apologize for what had happened. To further rub my nose in it, my assailant retained his employment, and at that location instead of being transferred to another store or put on leave until the court case was settled.

The real culprit was the police. Given the circumstances – the store was right down the street from my condo – they could have made it a condition of my assailant's bail that he was not allowed within a safe distance of my residence. Instead, and without my knowledge until it was too late, he was merely ordered not to come within one hundred metres of my home, which is nothing – forcing me for the next nine months to live in fear that I'd run into him. And I did, three times.

When I told the investigating officer that it was difficult to walk by the store, he chided me, saying that if it were him and it bothered him as much as it bothered me, he would walk out of his way, even if it meant adding thirty extra minutes to his route to work, to avoid such an encounter. Disgusted with his lack of empathy, his victim-shaming and poor follow-up, I blew up at him, and he blew up at me. We eventually calmed down and reached a truce, and to his credit, from that day forward, he was much gentler and more helpful in his approach to my case. Just before Christmas (and nearly four months after the assault) he contacted me to say the Crown was considering dropping the charges but he'd be recommending against that. I made it clear I would not allow that to happen and thanked him for his vote of confidence.

The system set up to provide counselling support to victims in crisis wasn't much better. Aside from the Toronto Police Victim Services, which was only a stopgap measure, I found myself repeatedly pouring out my story to various counselling agencies, only to find out they either had a long waiting list or to not hear back from them again. I never once told any of them I was a journalist, although some probably recognized my name. Throughout, I wondered – if I'd presented as more vulnerable (and perhaps less affluent), would they have found me an opening much faster? I will never know.

The Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic, about which I'd heard wonderful things, contacted me after three months – long after I started counselling with Dr. Abrams – to tell me a spot had opened up. That was not the only agency to leave me hanging. About two weeks after the assault, I met with the assistant coordinator with the provincial Victim/Witness Assistance Program who was charged with acting as an
advocate as my case proceeded to a plea or to trial. I poured my heart out to her that day, never to hear from her again. It was only when I tried to reach her three months later that I found out she'd been assigned to a new job a few weeks after we met. No one new had been put on my case. I was left to fend for myself over the Christmas holidays, as I wrote my victim impact statement in preparation for a January pre-trial conference on the case.

The Victim/Witness Assistance Program reluctantly agreed to set up a meeting with the Crown attorney, Chris Punter, in early January after I insisted on it. And I did hear from a new case worker with the provincial courts in March, but it was long after I'd written my own victim impact statement, built up a wonderful support network, and taken significant steps on my journey of self-discovery with Dr. Abrams. By 2005, after seven years as a columnist at City Hall, I was well enough known to police and the courts for my scrappy approach to political reporting. Yet I never asked for, or expected, special treatment. I only wanted to be treated fairly and with respect. But when that didn't happen, I was more than dogged about getting my day in court. I wanted to be the voice for others in my predicament who did not have a voice, or who felt battered even more by the system. Still, it was only after I met with Mr. Punter and two officers from the Victim/Witness Assistance Program that I started to feel they were taking my case seriously. Although I never indicated who I was, Mr. Punter made reference to my column in the
Toronto Sun,
suggesting to me that it was partly my profile that had helped attach more of a seriousness to the case. I could only imagine how others without a column were treated. He told me my assailant wanted to plead guilty to
common assault, but given the brazenness of the attack, the Crown would only accept a guilty plea to the original charge of sexual assault. That would get him listed on the national sex offender registry, but it was unlikely he'd get jail time because it was a first offence. Mr. Punter also offered little hope that any judge would include an order in the sentencing subsequently causing my assailant to lose his job. I insisted that I would deliver my victim impact statement in person to try to make whichever judge heard the case understand what it was like to walk regularly by Structube and see my assailant waiting on other women as if nothing had happened. The Crown agreed that would have far better impact, if I could handle doing it.

The court date to hear my assailant's guilty plea was originally set for March 9. I was still dreadfully ill from a version of Lyme disease I'd caught during a trek in South Africa the month before and from a severe allergic reaction to the drug given to me to treat it. But I dragged myself to court anyway with my uncle Jeff, only to be told the case was being put over because the judge scheduled to hear the plea was off sick.

Two months later, on May 3, I was back in court with my uncle. As I entered the appointed courtroom at 2 p.m., I was handed a typed apology from my assailant. Again the scheduled judge was not available to hear the guilty plea, but the Crown and the trial scheduling office refused to put the matter over as suggested by the defence attorney. Justice John Moore was found to be free and we were sent to another courtroom. Within minutes of hearing the guilty plea, he instructed me to come forward to give my victim impact statement. It was difficult not to break down as I provided an insight into the impact of the assault on my life and how
it had felt to encounter my assailant more than once over the nine months I waited for my court date.

I pleaded with Justice Moore that any punishment meted out to my assailant should include forcing him to leave his job at Structube, especially since the store was not prepared to do the right thing. I told the court that day that I should not have to change my life for fear of running into him. “I should be able to go on feeling comfortable and at ease in my own neighbourhood,” I told the judge. You could hear a pin drop in the courtroom when I finished my statement. I looked over and saw my uncle wiping tears from his eyes. Mr. Punter got up and argued vociferously for both the prohibition order and a suspended sentence, which would have left my assailant with a criminal record.

The defence attorney, who produced a psychiatric assessment that said my assailant would be unlikely to reoffend, informed the court, without a trace of irony in his voice given my just-delivered statement, that Structube would be happy to keep him on. To add insult to injury, unless the judge ruled otherwise, the store said it would resume sending him out on “house calls.” Bear in mind this was the very store that had denied any and all responsibility for my assault even though it had been perpetrated by one of its employees, claiming my “house call” had happened after store hours.

Justice Moore reserved judgment, asking us to come back the next day at 2 p.m. for his decision. It was a difficult night for me, but I also took the delay as a sign he'd be giving my request serious consideration. Returning to court the next afternoon with my next-door neighbour – the very same one I first went to after the assault – my heart at first sank when the Justice ruled my assailant should get a conditional
discharge, meaning no criminal record. I waited for the other shoe to drop. But it didn't. Justice Moore agreed with my sentiments, declaring that my attacker would be restricted from being within one kilometre of my home during an eighteen-month probation period.

He also went so far as to take direct aim at Structube for the way it had handled the matter. “Just as an aside, I really, really agree with Ms. Levy. I can't believe that he [the assailant] is still working there; that the store would keep him on,” the judge said. “It is just incredible that they would want to keep him on, despite all the good qualities he might have.”

It was a shock – although a welcome one – to all in the courtroom that day, including the investigating officer and the Crown attorney. I felt vindicated. Outside the courtroom – while her son was taken away to give a DNA sample for the Canadian sex-offender registry – the assailant's mother came up to me and apologized, through tears, for the trauma I'd been through. She suggested that she knew something was not right with her son. I thanked her for her graciousness.

My neighbour and I went home and cracked open a chilled bottle of wine to celebrate this small but important victory. The Crown attorney and investigating officer later suggested to me that it was a good thing I insisted on seeing the court case through. They felt this probably wasn't the first time my assailant had done what he had, and I'd probably stopped him from escalating behaviour that likely would have ended in rape.

A close friend was so incensed with the store's negligence, she urged me a few months later to use the judgment as a basis for pursuing legal action against Structube. I opted not to, for more than one reason. After twenty-seven long,
painful years, I'd finally gotten my day in court. I did not want to relive the agony with a civil action. Discussing it with my editor-in-chief at the time, Lou Clancy, I decided I could do something far more positive by writing a two-part series for the
Toronto Sun
about how the judicial system had treated me. I felt strongly that if I could educate others while trying to effect changes, that would be more rewarding for me in the end. The series ran in July 2005. After it appeared, I was inundated with e-mails from readers who'd had their own experiences with the system. Half of the comments were from men who had known or were close to a sexual assault victim.

Although I feel like a ten-ton weight has been lifted from my shoulders, the trauma never ever goes completely away. How could it? While watching the stories unfold in the fall of 2015 of disgraced CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi – who was awaiting trial on five counts of sexual assault and one of choking – and of the disturbing double life of entertainer Bill Cosby, my immediate reaction was to empathize with the victims of both men. I know from my own experience it takes strength and persistence to pursue a sexual assault charge and to deal with judicial systems that are still far too quick to either write off or blame the victim. In my mind, there is very little wiggle room for questioning the veracity of their claims. After all, how many women would want to put themselves through the ordeal of reliving an assault, over and over again, if it did not happen? Sadly, it became abundantly clear with both of these recent cases that the blame-the-victim culture is still very much alive and well. When Mr. Ghomeshi was acquitted of three charges of sexual assault and one of choking in late March 2016, I couldn't help but think the police and the Crown had failed in their job to
build a respectable case and that not much had changed since 2005. I am not so naive as to fail to recognize that one's celebrity status – applicable of course to Ghomeshi and Cosby – is a powerful aphrodisiac and that made the women in both cases particularly vulnerable before and after the alleged assaults. What really incensed me, but what I certainly did not find surprising, was that officials with the CBC – the great bastion of political correctness, tolerance, empathy, yada, yada – sat on their hands and did nothing when the tales of how Mr. Ghomeshi abused his position with his female co-workers started to come to light.

I was delighted to see that their mishandling of this entire affair did indeed tarnish the CBC brand. The penalty was well deserved. I have no trouble saying that, after living my own nightmare and emerging, proudly, with nothing to hide. After many years of working through the pain and denial with Dr. Abrams, I am finally no longer ashamed to concede that lightning has indeed struck twice in my life. I am literal proof of that well-known adage that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

For twenty years, I lived in a closeted relationship afraid to tell the truth about myself, convinced I would not be accepted by my family and that being out would severely limit my career ambitions. I lived that lie with one foot firmly planted in the heterosexual world and the other in the gay world, trying to make as “normal” a life as one could with a partner who was quite happy to keep our relationship secret, even long after I decided to come out. Heaven knows I am not the only gay person who lived a lie for a long time, but looking back now, I am amazed I did. Today, my past seems like a whole other life, lived by someone other than myself. Sometimes I wish I could get those years back, if only because living a lie as I did meant I gave up any and all chance of having children of my own.

My wife, Denise, is fond of teasing me that I have the memory of an elephant. I had to. I grew adept at talking about a straight life that didn't exist and remembering what I'd told
to whom. Now I can't even fathom engaging in the kind of mental gymnastics or keeping all the stories straight that I was forced to then. Anybody who chooses to be closeted knows this routine. To the world beyond my front door, I was a single woman who happened to be very picky and was just waiting for the right man to come along. I survived in a kind of holding pattern, always deluding myself that one day down the road, this sexual diversion would end and I'd have a traditional marriage and children. Had I met Denise sooner, I suspect we would have had children of our own and been as regular a family as is possible as a same-sex Jewish couple. Regrettably, we met too late to consider having children; we do have a traditional Jewish home and are very tied to our faith and its traditions.

Whenever a family member or friend tried to fix me up, I'd reluctantly agree if only to throw them off the scent. It didn't hurt either that it provided me with enough stories I could tell to make them think I really was looking for a man to marry – and to divert attention away from my real life with my partner of twenty years. Still, I was able to live that lie for so long because I didn't present as a “typical lesbian.” I'm what is referred to as a “lipstick lesbian,” if only because I love to wear…lipstick – and designer clothes, jewellery, and other makeup. Still, back then I would always wince when I heard the word
lesbian.
It is only in the last decade that I've even been able to refer to myself as a lesbian. Fairly early into our relationship, my ex, a former journalist, decided to live outside Toronto in the summer to pursue a second career in real estate. For nearly eight months of the year, I saw her only on weekends, also making it easy to fool people into thinking I was really living alone.

Our dance of deceit started almost from the moment we met at a club playing tennis just as I was about to turn twenty-nine and she forty. There were three of us who became fast friends that summer, one very clearly heterosexual. But when my ex and I started spending as much time off the court sharing our innermost secrets, we discovered an emotional spark. We never really talked about who we were to each other or what our connection meant; we just kind of fell into it. With our significant age difference, I guess I also looked up to her as a mentor, both professionally and emotionally. After a few months together keeping separate apartments, we decided to rent a duplex apartment, but we agreed it had to have two bedrooms. The bed in the spare room would get a kind of fake roughing up before people came to visit. Before her parents grew too old to come to the family cottage, I'd sleep in a separate bedroom as if I was just a friend or roommate coming along for the weekend. We found out to our horror many years later that not even my ex's young niece and nephew were fooled by our fake bed or other living arrangements. To satisfy my nurturing instinct, my ex encouraged me to get my first long-haired dachshund, Shopsy. Although she wasn't really keen on dogs, she grew to love Shopsy and was heartbroken when we had to put her down. We travelled the world together extensively, but for years I even had a convenient excuse for that as well. My ex introduced me to the world of travel writing, and very soon after I joined the
Toronto Sun,
I found a niche writing ski stories for the paper on a freelance basis. We'd simply visit different resorts in western Canada and the U.S. as two friends and journalists on travel assignments. Later, when my travel writing portfolio expanded and I started to pursue assignments in southern destinations
and exotic locales like Ecuador, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji – the latter three countries were visited during a fabulous six-week trip we took together for my first sabbatical from the
Toronto Sun
in 1999 – she became my photographer and travelling companion. While on assignment, no one questioned what we were to each other and we certainly didn't offer any explanation. Years later, when I confessed our couple status to skiing legend and Tory senator Nancy Greene – whom we dined and skied with during more than one visit to her resort at Sun Peaks, B.C. – she was not at all surprised. I still remember telling her about my longheld secret over drinks at Toronto's Canoe restaurant. We discussed how difficult the relationship could become with one partner refusing to come out of the closet. That conversation proved to be prophetic, even though it took me a year to realize that myself.

In 1989, at the age of thirty-two, after leaving twelve years in corporate and government public relations for a newspaper career and before I started working at the
Sun,
my ex encouraged me to seek the job in Muskoka so we could live together. We continued our little charade, telling everyone the arrangement was in the interest of saving money. When I started at the
Toronto Sun
seven months later, I didn't dare speak about my circumstances. As much as I'd found my home with a feisty paper, I suspected that a tabloid featuring Sunshine Girls wouldn't be too kindly disposed toward having a lesbian on staff. Sexism in the newspaper business was still prevalent in the early nineties. Anyone who denies it either doesn't know what they're talking about or is a liar. But editors who made chauvinistic comments to me on the city desk then wouldn't dream of acting that way now.

At thirty-six, having watched my younger brother get married, and afraid that I'd never be in the position to have children if I remained in a closeted relationship, I left my ex for several months. I purchased a condo with the idea of trying to date men and find a husband. But within months, we were back together. I plunged even deeper into the closet and threw myself into my journalism career, trying to convince everyone, particularly myself, that I was career-minded and not really meant to have children anyway. From that point onward, I was careful only to invite my family to my condo after my ex had left for Muskoka. Their trips to Florida in the winter months, when she lived with me, made it easy to continue living a lie. In many ways, I felt very ashamed that I'd let my family and myself down by not following the route of having a traditional Jewish home and marriage. It would take me a long, long time to realize that I had absolutely no reason to feel guilty. Now that I'm out, I am grateful that I did not end up marrying a man. But I did end up getting married to a kind and generous Jewish woman. I do not mean to insult the many gay women of my generation who did marry men, only to leave them and come out, perhaps because it became more acceptable in the eyes of family and society in general, or because they grew fed up with living a lie. But I'm glad I didn't put a husband and children through the emotional wringer as well. I have seen the toll it can take on those who had no option but to deal with the breakdown of their families.

The next thing I knew, I was forty-something and had found a strong voice at the
Toronto Sun.
Still afraid to come out, I nevertheless endeavoured to put my toe in the water by writing about LGBT issues. When I first got to City Hall, I covered Mayor Mel Lastman's decision to march in the Pride Parade as
leader of the newly amalgamated city, despite his discomfort with the spectacle. I understand how he felt, considering my discomfort and absolute fear of admitting who I really was. To this day, my wife and I aren't comfortable with the public nudity at the parade, and believe it takes away from the true message of Pride Day. Each and every time I wrote about the Pride Parade or gay marriage – and I did so every year during my early days as the
Toronto Sun
's City Hall columnist – I kept hoping I'd have the courage to come out myself. At least, I thought, in some small way I was serving as a voice for LGBT issues, even if I hadn't come to grips with my own sexuality at that point. Still, as the years went on, it became tremendously exhausting to live a double life. The more I carried on with the charade, the more I experienced extreme anxiety, insomnia, and depression.

It was New Year's Eve 2004 – and it happened quite innocuously. I was celebrating with my ex and some friends at her brother's cottage as we did every year. We'd have hors d'oeuvres and dinner, and then if it was cold enough, skate on a rink made by my ex's brother. Fuelled by a few glasses of wine, one friend, a woman older than me with grown children of her own, got into an intense conversation with me about my family. When I suggested that the relationship with my family had its share of troubled moments, she asked if that was because I was a lesbian. My heart started pounding at the idea that I'd been “busted,” but that's where the conversation ended. A few days later, I thanked her for her forthrightness and for having the courage to say what I'd been so afraid to say for years. On New Year's Day, I woke up and told my ex, through tears and perhaps a tad dramatically (as I have a habit of doing), that I couldn't live in secret anymore and that
if I did anything that year, I'd come out. I suspect at the time she was horrified but didn't think I would follow through on my vow to come out. She said repeatedly – both that day and in the months that followed – that she was quite content to remain closeted; that it had worked for nineteen years and things did not need to change. And for months I didn't follow through on my promise – until I was assaulted in the summer of that same year.

That assault, coupled with the loss of our beloved dachshund Shopsy quite suddenly from cancer two months before, proved to be the impetus I needed. I had made up my mind before I walked into Dr. Abrams's office that if we were to pursue a therapeutic relationship together, I'd come out, regardless of the consequences. I still remember the day I first came out to the doctor herself. I left a City Hall committee meeting for my forty-five-minute session – only my third meeting with her – more nervous at the thought of talking about my same-sex relationship than about my two assaults or my family dynamics. When she got to the point of asking me if I was in a relationship with a man, I shook my head and started to sob. I think I sputtered that I was with a woman and that no one knew, that she was the first. I was so beside myself I don't recall my exact words. It's kind of funny now. Dr. Abrams recently admitted to me that I even caught her by surprise seeing as I didn't present as a butch lesbian loaded with tattoos and body piercings. After crying my eyes out for most of those forty-five minutes, I had to return to City Hall that very same afternoon to write a column. That pattern would continue for at least a year – an emotional session followed by a day at City Hall feeling completely drained and looking a little worse for wear, but pushing myself to do
my job and produce a column. I forever hoped no one would know what was tearing me up emotionally. But I know I had my days. A lovely woman who worked for the NDP caucus at Queen's Park confided in me years later that she called me during that year to ask if I wanted to speak to one of her caucus members on the City of Toronto Act. In a fit of pique, I told her I'd already had quite enough with all the damn socialists given my attempts to deal with the lunacy at City Hall under Mayor David Miller and that I was definitely not interested. Of course I can laugh about it now. But it was certainly an indication of how fragile I was as I worked to undo twenty years of closeted living.

With Dr. Abrams's support, I approached my coming out very strategically. I first told my closest friends, whom I could trust not to spill the beans to others, and then finally, after nearly a year, my family. Some knew long before my confession and were just waiting to hear it from me. My dear friend Rosemary Euringer, with whom I'd grown up in Hamilton, told me she'd wished I'd confided in her sooner – that she'd always suspected. I fooled former
Toronto Sun
reporter and another good friend, Moira MacDonald, so well that she surprised me with a male stripper for my fortieth birthday party. He came dressed as a police officer and handcuffed me for being mean to school trustees (I was on the education beat at the time). I enjoyed every minute of it and was touched that she and her dear late dad, Bob, went to such lengths for my birthday. When I did finally come out to her, it was over dinner in Toronto. She says she was not at all surprised that I struggled to get it out – except that throughout she was figuratively slapping herself upside the head with questions of how she missed it.
She recently told me she was sorry that I had to go through the “whole masquerade” of hiding my real life from friends.

I was the consummate actress. As the months went by and I began feeling more comfortable with my decision to come out, I reached out to some of my closer colleagues at the
Toronto Sun
and City Hall. The day I told my colleague and friend Zen Ruryk, alongside whom I worked for many years at City Hall, I closed the door and started crying with pent-up emotion because I'd lied to him so many times about my personal life. Zen, living up to his name, told me he'd always suspected something was up because I was too attractive not to be hooked up with a man if I'd wanted to. That's all he needed to say. We hugged and have been as close as brother and sister ever since. Support came from many places at the
Toronto Sun
. My Queen's Park colleague Chris Blizzard, upon hearing about my coming-out process, phoned me out of the blue one day to say she'd found a Jewish lesbian working in the Ontario government who'd be willing to talk to me and offer support. Chris did not need to do that but went out of her way to help. Nevertheless, it was still early in my journey and I never did call the woman for fear that my secret would get out in political circles. Now it seems silly to me, but I feared that I would not be able to cope with the potential fallout. At City Hall, I decided Conservative councillor Doug Holyday and his lovely assistants, Bev McVeigh and Judy Ambrose, would be the first to be told. I had built up such a relationship of trust with all three of them that I expected they would neither judge nor gossip. I was absolutely right. Four years later, when I married Denise, I insisted on inviting all of the members of the
Toronto Sun
and political families who had given me support
and comfort during my year-long journey – including Chris; Zen and his wife, Jackie; auditor general Jeff Griffiths; and Doug, Bev, and Judy.