Chapter One: The Handbook
Despite the number of witnesses who came forward, and the number of witnesses who participated in the trial, dude’s defence council was able to create a reasonable doubt, ending a very challenging five year journey with a final verdict of not guilty. That was in June of 2019.
It then took me another two very challenging years before I was legally allowed to say:
I came forward, and I lost.
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This is peaches; a series of essays about all the things I learned while dedicating my life to never being raped again. My name is Maarika Freund, and this is:
Chapter One: The Handbook
TRIGGER WARNING: rape, sexual abuse
Me & Peaches, circa 2021 (shot on Polaroid film)
You can watch the stand-up set I speak about in this podcast at the end of this blog!
If you want to stay informed about when the next episode of peaches is released, you can subscribe to my newsletter here:
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Now, this may be a redundant thing to say, but coming forward is really shitty.
Once the publication ban was finally lifted on my name (don’t worry, I’ll explain what that is in a little bit), the most challenging part of getting to use my voice freely again was figuring out where my voice started and the opinions of other began. Was what I was saying influenced by what I had read on social media or heard from the people around me? Or, was what I was saying really, sincerely, one-hundred percent, without an iota of doubt: my opinion? And what I did I actually have to say about what I went through?
Coming out of a forced silence after being on the front lines concerning all things #MeToo for seven+ years was… Well, let’s just say, that finally getting to speak openly, without criminal consequences, especially when it’s about something as sticky as rape culture, isn’t so much like riding a bike. Especially when everyone already has their own, very personal, deeply rooted opinions on the subject matter.
But! Now I can finally say, without an iota of doubt, that these are my opinions, and this is what I have to say, and this is exactly the way that I want to say it.
Once I started learning for myself what my voice actually sounded like, I was faced with another challenge: having too much to say. It was as if I was sitting in the middle of room, surrounded by an endless clump of knotted yarn, and every time I began to untangle one knot, I ended up being lead to another, and then another, and then another. The more I got clear about what I was that I felt, and what it was that I wanted to say, the more difficult it became to say anything that felt like a concise nugget that could be wrapped up in roughly ten pages. It’s been so challenging for me to write about this, too, because once I started speaking with people who actually wanted to listen to my story, I found myself having to stop and explain things constantly. For example, how the legal system in Canada actually works. And I’m not a lawyer! I’m a professionally trained actor with seven+ years of experience in business development. So getting started on peaches has been one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done, because for anyone to actually understand what it is that I went through, they need a handbook. And the problem is, that I had to do the whole thing without one.
At least, this has been my experience, especially when I was trying to lift the publication ban on my name in 2021. For me, everything was so un-Google-able, and so I was really up the creek without a paddle.
Until the publication ban on my name was lifted, my life felt like a prison sentence in which I secretly sought out advice on what felt like the black market for feminism. This was amplified once the trial was finally over because I had to treat the reclaiming of, what I assumed were my basic human rights, as a covert revolution. And it sucked big time. My life would have been so much easier if the information I needed was Google-able, or if I could have even watched a show like HISTORICAL FICTION and been inspired by a character on TV who was going through what I was going through.
The cherry on top of my struggle to get peaches off its feet is that so much of what I went through was so absurd that many parts of my story seem unbelievable. I mean, we’re still coming out of an era spanning many millennia where people didn’t believe the victim of assault, so there’s that level of disbelief that I know we’re still dealing with. But when my life story made even my last therapist’s jaw drop… Well, let’s just say the amount of work involved in helping people who genuinely understand what I went through… I knew that it was going to be a lot.
Because it’s taken me quite some time to launch peaches, a lot of people who know me would probably say that I’m late to my own party, especially since the ban on my name was lifted exactly one year ago today. But, as I mention in one of my earlier posts titled BULLSEYE, I believe we need to be responsible for what it is we’re putting out there and consider how it might affect the people consuming it. I’m bring this up because I don’t think many people know or realized that about seventy-two hours after the ban on my name was lifted, I collapsed like a house of cards. I was not okay. And I didn’t want to create from this place.
What happened to me, once that ban was lifted, was that I didn’t recognise my life. When I looked around at everything I built for myself during those seven+ years from this new position of combined safety and freedom, I questioned every single decision I had made since that fateful night on June 21st, 2014. And that’s because the person I know myself to be, when I’m my best self, would not have made so many decisions based on fear and a deep sense of worthlessness.
But that’s what coming forward does to people.
Before this has any potential to become something dramatic, I do want to say, right off the bat, that choosing to marry my husband was an excellent decision. He really is the best. For example, he supported me while I was living out my last few years within the hell rodeo, and that’s big love.
Another excellent decision was leaving Canada, because it was very good for my mental health to land somewhere where I have zero history. It was fantastic for my mental health with a completely blank slate, I was able to see for myself just what kind of person I really was, without the influence of the people who made me feel like a loser for not being able to handle everything I was forced to live through. I got to see that I really was that person who emerged seventy-two hours after the ban was lifted asking: “what the fuck!?”. And I love her.
Looking back, I can see that a good handful of my decisions during those seven+ years were actually excellent decisions. I had done and accomplished some really wonderful, incredible things, even though that time in my life felt more like a charitable donation to the fight for women’s rights than an empowering exercise dedicated to my personal safety, and I thought coming forward was going to be the latter based on everything that I was reading on social media at the time. But all of that to say, when you’re finally off the battlefield, it takes a hot minute to learn how to breathe and stop living in survival mode. Especially because, after the trial in 2019, there was a good period of time in which I was still living in survival mode even though I fully believed I was above the situation and had moved on. I was working with a life coach and therapist, so I thought I was going to be a-okay once the publication ban was lifted. So, seventy-two hours after the publication ban was lifted, most of my reaction was from shock and awe at the realization of how not okay I was.
And just so that no one is worrying about my mental health for the rest of this blog post, I’m really good now. :)
It took me about a year after the ban was lifted to not just understand how to get this project started, but more so, to understand who I was as a person, and how to really love and trust that person. So, in order to show up the way I wanted to within peaches, I needed some time and space. I’ve been working on and talking about this project for so long, and it’s been iterated on so many times that I think most people in my life were starting to think that I didn’t have it in me to finish this series, or that working on it was my distraction from returning to the real world, and thus, stopped taking peaches seriously.
In defence of the person who I have really come to love and trust, if I had what it took to do what I did within those seven+ years of my prime adult life, and that I did the majority of it without the benefit of Google, then I most certainly had what it takes to complete peaches. I mean, you’re reading this right now, yeah? But, in the defence of my skeptics, I understand that most people have no idea about what it’s actually like to come forward, and I understand why.
If I’m being completely honest with you, while a huge part of me is burgeoning on this humanitarian task of telling my story because I want, with my whole heart, for things to be easier for the next woman, I also want to shift people’s perspective of me. I just had to get to a point where I didn’t feel desperate about it anymore. Being desperate to not be seen as a loser isn’t hot. I wouldn’t even want to listen to me if I was that thirsty to be liked.
More than anything, I want to be a positive force in helping to shift the mainstream perspective on rape culture into something a bit more… whole. I don’t think that the majority of material out there that’s available on the subject matter is entirely accessible. I’ll explain what I mean by accessible in a little bit, but, what I will say about creating material that I believe is accessible, is that I really can’t give a heck about what you think about me. The problem though, is that I do give a heck. Because if you still think I’m a loser for what I went through, that means that you think other women are losers, too. And that doesn’t sit well with me. So, I’m embracing the fact that I feel like a loser and choosing to be really open about it, because maybe it’s this feeling that needs to be more accessible, too. And maybe, within my vain attempt to regain some shreds of respect from… well, anyone back in Canada, really, I’ll be able to help you understand a bit more about what women actually go through after they get raped. And maybe that’ll help other women who have gone through, or are dealing with the hell rodeo that is coming forward, feel more like winners.
But who knows, maybe I’m the only one who feels like the #1 social reject.
Before I even dive into my story or talk about anything I went through specifically, I want to give you a handbook so that you know and understand how the legal system in Canada works. The legal terms and processes I explain are going to come up a bunch of times throughout the following chapters, so it’s important that you understand what they are and what role they play in the process of coming forward if you’re going to stay with me for the entirety of this series.
In Canada, my case went all the way to the Superior Court of Justice (SCJ) in Toronto, Ontario. The SCJ in Toronto is a provincial court that deals with the most serious criminal offences[1]. In Canada, these serious criminal offences are referred to as indictable offences. If the accused is found guilty of an indictable offence, their punishment generally results in imprisonment. The accused, just in case it’s not super crystal clear, is the person who is being held accountable for their actions. In the case that I was a part of, the accused party was the dude who threw me into said hell rodeo that fateful night in June of 2014.
I also want to mention now, that I’m never going to refer to that dude by his real name, and instead, will always be referring to him as “dude”. While I have never experienced respect from him, especially when it comes to boundaries, I don’t believe in “an eye for an eye”. I do believe, however, people are capable of great and beautiful change, and I have witnessed this in men before, so I would like to give him the space and the opportunity to live a life that’s more gentle and kind. Also, this is my story, and not his. He doesn’t need any more attention than he’s already received for those seven+ years in the hell rodeo that is coming forward. Besides, I think it’s a lot more satisfying that he holds no more power within my story. That being said, if I do find out that he has hurt another woman since the trial, I won’t be so chivalrous about his identity. And that’s by no means a threat, it’s just a matter of safety.
The SCJ is not the same as federal court. However, while a SCJ runs on provincial funding and handles indictable offences, the judges who oversee cases within a SCJ are appointed and paid by the federal government. So my case, while tried in a provincial SCJ, was overseen by a federal judge.
Before making it to the SCJ in Toronto, I had to go through a preliminary hearing. A preliminary hearing is like a mini trial that occurs before a criminal trial, in which a judge within a regular provincial court decides if there is enough viable evidence to justify how much money and resources it’s going to cost the government to hold a criminal trial within the SCJ. Preliminary hearings are only held for indictable offences, and the prosecutor, also known as a crown attorney, only presents the most important parts of the evidence at the hearing. Usually, it’s having the Key Witness retell their story. After the crown attorney has the Key Witness tell their story, the Key Witness gets cross-examined by the defence council that represents the accused. So in the preliminary hearing I was a part of, I had to retell the events of June 21st, 2014, and then was cross examined by dude’s lawyer who was attempting to find holes in my story.
As I just mentioned, crown attorneys are the prosecutors within the Canadian legal system, and they represent The Crown in criminal cases within Canada. What this means is that the trial I was a part of wholly belonged to The Crown. (If you don’t know that The Crown is, I’m going to give myself a break and let you Google it for yourself.) What’s important to remember about this, is that it wasn’t me who took dude all the way to the SCJ to be tried in front of a federal judge. It was The Crown who did this. What this means is that there was enough evidence brought forward to the police by multiple different people around the time I initially came forward. This means that the Toronto Police determined for themselves that dude was guilty of what happened that night in 2014. When dude turned himself in after the police completed their investigation, I was asked if I would participate in their case as the Key Witness.
A Key Witness is the main witness, and in rape trials, it’s generally the victim. So, in the trial that was dedicated to my own rape, in a the case belonged to The Crown, and I was actually a volunteer who’s story and experience was crucial evidence. Having the victim act as a Key Witness means that the police and The Crown are the ones wholly responsible for the trial. Taking the responsibility away from the victim is a very good thing, because should the accused be found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, for example, like dude was found within the trial dedicated to what happened to me, the victim is protected from being sued by the now former accused for wrongful accusation, like we so often see in high-profile, American cases.
The Canadian legal system runs on a system called due process, which means that even though the police may decide for themselves that the accused is guilty because of an unquestionable amount of evidence, the accused is actually innocent until proven guilty in a SCJ. In legal systems that operate on the foundations of due process, you cannot imprison an accused person if there is even a sliver of reasonable doubt. What this means is that even if there is only a 1% chance that the accused did not commit the crime they are on trial for, they cannot be found guilty of said crime because there is still a chance, albeit a very small one, that they’re innocent, And putting an innocent person in jail is a very bad thing.
Lastly, a publication ban, boiled down, makes it illegal for anyone to use the Key Witness’s name in association with the trial they’re participating in. It was a tactic that soon became common practice around the 1980’s to encourage women to come forward, as they protect the Key Witness from unwanted public attention or further shaming. The ban gives her the promise of confidentiality and anonymity due to how public knowledge of her rape could, and usually would, cripple her social status and ability to move ahead in life. Unfortunately, even with the birth of the #MeToo movement, rape is still the most underreported crime in Canada, as social stigmas attached to speaking up about rape still very much exist[2].
So, publication bans are a tool designed to protect the victim, and only the victim.
One thing that’s also important to keep in mind, is that trials in Canada are open to the public. This means that journalists are able to write about the happenings within them. An active publication ban stops the Key Witness’s name, and any other piece of information that could identify her, from being printed in the media in the event that a journalist does decide to dedicate an article to the trial she’s the Key Witness in. And, because naming the accused often exposes the Key Witness, the accused’s identity also gets protected by sheer proximity. Because of this, the accused person is free to continue living in the “real world” without facing any socially debilitating consequences of their seedy behaviour. It’s still just us ladies who get to carry that burden.
Quickly, before I go any further, I would like to acknowledge that rape doesn’t only happen to women. However, because this is how I identify (my pronouns are she/her), because my gender has played a huge role in how things have played out for me, and because I want to take responsibility for my own story, I will be speaking from the perspective of the cis-gender female. I would also like to acknowledge that I am very aware of my privilege as a white woman who was employed as a director of business development every time I took the stand or appeared in front of a judge. So, even though what I went through was outrageously horrible, I know that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour), LGBTQ2S+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queen, and two-spirited), and working-class women would, and still do, face even more hurdles and unfair biases than I did. So all of these things considered, I was in a good position …if we can even call it that.
Because publication bans became such common practice in sexual assault trials, many of the women whose cases make it all the way to the SCJ, like me, aren’t told about them until they’ve already been put in motion. This means that having a publication ban placed on our names isn’t always presented to us as a choice, even though it’s supposed to be, as publication bans are issued after making an appeal to a judge.[3] If it had been up to me, I would never have requested one, and this is for two reasons.
The first reason is that I had been told by people in our once shared community that with dude there were other victims, and that I wasn’t the only woman to receive the series of disturbing text messages that resulted in my coming forward in 2017, two years after the initial incident. My hope was that if these other women knew what was going on with me in the courtroom, that they might feel brave enough to come forward too, of course, only if they wanted to, and felt safe enough doing it.
The second reason is that I wanted people to finally know what was going on with me, as I was mentally exhausted from having to stay silent for so long, and tired of people treating me like a loser because of what happened to me.
Even though placing a publication ban on a Key Witness’s name is a genuinely earnest gesture meant to shield us from further harm, in addition to not being asked if we want one or not, very important information about what the ban actually entails often gets omitted in briefings with us. The important information I’m referring to is the fact that it’s not just illegal for journalists to use our names within the media, it’s illegal for everyone to use our names in print, including us. It becomes a crime for a Key Witness to tell her own story, too, if the ban is not lifted once the trial is over.
I cannot actually confirm that the negligence of delivering this important information happened to every single woman who came forward, because on the black market for feminism, I’ve only been in touch with a good handful of other women who have successfully lifted the bans on their names. However, these sisters within the revolution all went through the same thing I did.
Knowing what this handful of us went through with regards to publication bans tells me many things about the Canadian judicial system, but the one thing I would like to home in on at this particular point in time is this: that crown attorneys are not given enough time or resources to properly address each case that lands on their desk.
I don’t believe that the disarray I experienced within the legal system is something that occurred because of deliberate sloppiness, but rather, is a symptom of people who are trying their best to help fix a huge problem with minimal resources while simultaneously drowning in an unsustainable workload. What is most heartbreaking to me about the disarray, however, is that this chaos within the legal system benefits the defence, as it makes it much easier to find or create a reasonable doubt to support a not-guilty plea.
It was on June 3rd, 2019 that dude was found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt on two indictable offences. It wasn’t until October 5th, 2021 that the publication ban on my name was finally lifted, and it stopped being a crime for me to speak about what I went through.
I didn’t actually know that it was a crime for me to tell my story. With the utmost sincerity, I thought that the ban was lifted once the trial was over because of a verbal promise my crown attorney made to me. So when I finally learned about what a publication ban fully entailed, and that there was still one active on my name, I found myself living through the most difficult two years of my existence on this planet. I’m not going to talk about the insane lengths I had to go to in order to lift the ban on my name because that’s the subject matter of Chapter Two. But, what I will say, is that none of the information that I needed to help me lift the ban on my name was available online. Like I said from the get go of this chapter, it was a very un-Google-able subject when I was looking for answers. There were no resources readily available when I went through this, no instructions on what needed to be done, and no helpline that was helpful because every call I made ended with: “I’m so sorry, but I don’t think I can help you.”
Instead, when I needed help, Googling publication bans was basically the same as putting one’s mild-cold symptoms into WebMD. Before COVID, if you haven’t consulted the internet about a light cough and then diagnosed yourself with terminal lung cancer at least once in your life, then I don’t know if you’ve really lived. But because this was my experience while I was trying to lift the ban on my name, for most of those two years while I was trying to have it lifted, I was terrified and convinced that I was going to wind up with a criminal conviction (a.k.a society’s version of terminal cancer) for starting to tell my story through the work I was already engaging in, because everything that was already out there was so inaccessible, and because the people who were supposed to be able to help me, kept telling me that they couldn’t.
Needless to say, it was a really fun time for me to be alive.
Okay, I said I would explain what I meant about creating more accessible material surrounding the topic of rape culture!
When I talk about accessible material, I’m talking about accessible in terms of being able to find information that’s not written in legalese, or so clinically, that it causes anyone else to self-diagnose themselves with society’s version of terminal cancer. The information that’s out there shouldn’t make women who are dealing with a publication ban feel totally fucked. Yes, we definitely need to make the information about this sticky subject easier to find on the internet. But more than that, I want this subject matter to be easier to engage with. I want it to feel like there’s a human element to it. I want it to be relatable, and I don’t want it to feel so heavy.
I mean, it is heavy, but our approach to it doesn’t have to be.
This is for two reasons. The first is that it’s this heaviness that makes people who don’t have to deal with a publication ban not want to engage with the subject matter. The second reason is directly related to the first as well as being steeped in first-hand experience, in that because most people don’t want to engage with the subject matter, this means that people don’t want to engage with me. And this is why I always felt like a worthless loser when I during those seven+ years.
It’s so important to me that there’s room not just for lightness, but for laughter – and I’m talking genuine, belly-ache laughter – when we’re looking at the horrifying subject of rape culture. Not because it’s a funny subject (because it’s not a funny subject), and I’m not saying that we laugh when a woman gets raped – that is, and always will be horrifying. I’m saying that we need to be able to laugh about how insane it is that so much of what I went through after I was raped was completely acceptable. If we’re capable of laughing about that, then it means that we’re comfortable with the subject matter. When we’re comfortable with the subject matter, then it doesn’t hold power over us. And when the subject matter stops holding power over us is when we can start to experience even more meaningful change.
I get it, though. We all have genitals. The majority of us feel sexual feelings. And, sex means something really different to each and every single one of us. Because of this, it’s really tough not to have our own, deeply rooted beliefs when it comes to the subject of rape, and the culture around it. But laughter has the power to unhinge sticky things, and lightness has the power to heal and make us feel safe. And, if anyone has the authority to say “you’re allowed to laugh about this”, it’s me. I’ve really earned it. I invested the time and the money (and it was a lot of money) in order to have the equivalent of what feels like an honourary PhD in the dismantling of rape culture.
But as much as I get it, I also get really upset about people’s disinterest in engaging with the subject matter because while I was dealing with the hell rodeo, I felt like I was expected to treat coming forward like it was an extracurricular activity. Working to make sure that I felt safe shouldn’t have been something I had to treat like a side hobby. Your safety, and the safety of all of our women, should not be treated like it’s a hobby. Making sure that women feel safe on this planet is work, and every single thing we do to help move the needle, even just a millimetre, is really meaningful work.
And all that I want is for someone, anyone to say to me: “thank you for your work”, and then to be able to laugh with them about how fucked up so much of what I went through was. That’s it. And I don’t think it’s a lot to ask for. But I know that it’s not going to happen until we all feel safe enough to engage with the material.
If there’s really only one goal for me in my work with peaches, is that it’s not to make information more accessible, and it’s not so that I can stop feeling like a loser. Those are two huge factors, absolutely. But what’s bigger than that for me is that I want people to feel safe trying to help. I don’t believe in cancel culture because it’s creating a stagnation in our forward movement. We need people to want to try to help, and we also need to understand that a lot of people are going to fuck up while trying. But I would much rather see people feeling safe enough to try and fuck up than experiencing no forward momentum at all.
Lastly, what I want to say as a disclaimer about peaches and my approach to telling my story, is that I’m an artist. peaches is an expression of my Soul after I went through some incredibly difficult years and was legally banned from sharing my story. It’s a series of essays, each written with the intent to help shift the collective mindset when it comes to rape culture so we can work towards more equality for all identifying women. It's also something I created to support HISTORICAL FICTION, the television pilot I wrote about my experience in the real world once the trial was over. I actually call this series peaches after one of the main characters in the show (Peaches is my little puppet buddy in the main image).
I am an avid humanitarian and I would so love to hear from you, but I need you to understand that I’m not going to be able to help you directly if you’re in the muck right now. I hope I inspire you to keep going through my writing! But, I am by no means a certified life coach, a registered therapist, or a practising lawyer, and to be honest, I think it would be very dangerous and irresponsible of me to sell my services as a mentor in that respect. So if you’re currently in the muck, and I’m so sorry if you are because I really know what it is to be in it, I’m not going to be able to personally hold your hand on your journey. Especially because, as an artist, I intend to ruffle some feathers, and in my time off I will likely be venting to my fabulous girlfriends or working with my own team of registered professionals so I can stay grounded enough to keep going.
So thank you in advance for understanding that I’m just another person working her butt off and doing her very best to help move the needle a millimetre. I’m probably going to fuck up sometimes. Actually, I’m probably going to fuck up a lot. I’m also incredibly certain a lot of people are going to think I’m a weirdo, or still think I’m a loser for doing what I’m doing, especially after being a loser in a rape trial. But at least, this time, I’m a loser on my own accord.
There is one more term that I want to cover that I didn’t cover earlier, and that’s rape culture. I didn’t realize it wasn’t an obvious term to everyone until after one of my stand-up sets. Quickly, yes, I tell my story in comedy clubs, and people are still booking me for shows after hearing it. Anyway, a couple from Toronto approached me afterwards and asked me what rape culture meant, because they had no idea what it was and that they had a difficult time following my set because they couldn’t quite grasp the concept. To them, the words rape and culture didn’t seem like they should go together because rape is icky and culture is something to be glorified. While I wholeheartedly agreed with their sentiment around the uncomfortable pairing of words, I explained it to them.
For the sake ease within this chapter, I plugged “rape culture definition” into Google instead of defining it on my own terms like I did for that couple. What comes up immediately is the definition by the Oxford dictionary, which is:
[A] society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse.
The couple thanked me for clarifying rape culture for them, and then thanked me for pursuing my hobby. While I died a little bit inside because I take my comedy seriously, I was grateful to know that they felt safe enough approaching me on the subject matter, and safe enough to admit that they had no idea about what’s actually going on for a lot of women. They were sweet about it, actually.
So, I guess people are already thanking me for my work, in their own awkward kind of way. So I’ll talk about what it’s like to be a loser in a rape trial in the next chapter. For now, I’m just going to take comfort in the fact that some Canadians were interested in what I had to say. It’s a pretty big win for me.
Especially since I’m going at this without a handbook.
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While there is never any expectation, if this piece resonated with you, and if it feels right, please feel free to support the work I am creating here:
