OTTAWA — Until a month ago, Jian Ghomeshi was a celebrity with few peers at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His weekday arts and entertainment radio program, “Q,” had brought younger listeners to the public broadcaster and raised its profile in the United States through syndication. Separately, he hosted both the network’s annual competition to select a book for all Canadians to read and Canada’s most valuable literary award, theScotiabank Giller Prize.
Now, Mr. Ghomeshi’s stardom has taken on a bizarre and sordid twist.
On Wednesday, a wedge of police officers was needed to push Mr. Ghomeshi, 47, and his lawyers through a crush of journalists packed into the Art Deco lobby of a Toronto courthouse. After a turbulent month during which he wasfired by the CBC after managers said they saw “graphic evidence” that he had assaulted one woman followed by a string of allegations from others, Mr. Ghomeshi (pronounced ZHEE-ahn go-MESH-ee) was charged by the Toronto police with four counts of sexual assault and one count of choking.
After promising the court to live with his mother and not leave Ontario, Mr. Ghomeshi, his carefully maintained stubble shaved off and his trendy clothing exchanged for a sober suit and tie, was released on $89,000 bail. His lawyer, her voice barely audible over the din of the crowd and the clicking of shutters, said that Mr. Ghomeshi would plead not guilty but otherwise declined to comment.
Mr. Ghomeshi’s downfall seemed to have developed out of his preference for sexual practices that he described in a since-deleted Facebook post as “a mild form of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.’ ”
“Let me be the first to say that my tastes in the bedroom may not be palatable to some folks,” Mr. Ghomeshi wrote, adding that he never acted without consent. “They may be strange, enticing, weird, normal, or outright offensive to others.”
But over the past few months, several women have come forward to newspapers and broadcasters with accounts of what they called attacks. Several said they were struck in the head and elsewhere without warning or were choked. Two of the women told The Toronto Star that before being assaulted by Mr. Ghomeshi at his home, he turned a blue stuffed animal named Big Ears Teddy to face a wall and said that it “shouldn’t see this.”
Their allegations quickly set off a wider debate in Canada, particularly on social media, about the unwillingness of many women to report sexual assaults to the police.
The case came at a difficult time for the CBC, which is owned by the government and is in the midst of staff cutbacks. People inside and outside the network have raised questions about whether its managers were unwilling or unable to rein in celebrity hosts — questions that echoed the case of the British television personalityJimmy Savile and the BBC.
Mr. Ghomeshi, who was born in England to Iranian parents, had an atypical career path at the CBC. He first rose to prominence as a drummer and singer in a Canadian band and eventually wound up hosting an obscure pop culture program on the CBC’s all-news cable channel. But he rose to prominence with “Q” on the broadcaster’s popular main radio network.
In a country that promotes multicultural diversity, Mr. Ghomeshi seemed an ideal host.
Unlike other CBC programs, which tend to be directed and devised by producers, “Q,” which started seven years ago, had Mr. Ghomeshi as the driving force. Mr. Ghomeshi broke with the CBC’s practice of primarily promoting Canadian talent by actively courting Hollywood stars and best-selling American authors and musicians as guests.
The midmorning program occasionally broadcast from United States cities, most recently Los Angeles, and was sold to 57 public radio stations in the United States.
Mr. Ghomeshi’s sometimes demanding ways with his staff were widely known within Canadian media circles. Earlier this year, however, Jesse Brown, a freelance journalist and podcaster, began working with a Toronto Star reporter on an article about allegations that Mr. Ghomeshi engaged in nonconsensual, violent sex with women.
It was their inquiries to the CBC that led network executives to confront Mr. Ghomeshi. In an attempt to exonerate himself, Mr. Ghomeshi, who is not married, handed over texts, emails and photographs related to his sexual encounters, according to a CBC account of the inquiry. Instead, disturbed by what they saw, the executives fired him.
A giant portrait of Mr. Ghomeshi was swiftly taken down at the network’s English language broadcast headquarters in Toronto, and all references to him were purged with similar speed from its website. The future of “Q” is under review as it continues with guest hosts and a new executive producer. And at the Scotiabank Giller Prize awards this month, a comedian from the CBC’s television network stepped in as host. He avoided any jokes about Mr. Ghomeshi.
