Faceless, nameless no more

For a long time, she was nameless, known only as “the Ottawa woman.” In courtroom sketches, she was faceless, a vacant mask framed by blond hair.

But now, Jessica Baker, the woman who was violently raped by former Hedley frontman and Canadian Idol contestant Jacob Hoggard in 2016, is sharing — and reclaiming — her identity in Breaking Idol, a powerful new CBC documentary from Emmy-nominated writer and director Tiffany Hsiung.

Produced by Winnipeg’s Frantic Films, Breaking Idol, which premièred on The Passionate Eye last month, takes a survivor-centred approach to the story of one of Canada’s most high-profile sexual assault cases. In June 2022, Hoggard was found guilty of sexual assault causing bodily harm against Baker and sentenced to five years in prison. Last year, his appeal was dismissed.

Hsiung, who is based in Toronto, suspects she was invited by CBC and Frantic Films to direct this project on the strength of her 2016 documentary The Apology, which follows the stories of three surviving “comfort women” who were among 200,000 others kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War. The Apology won a Peabody Award in 2019.

“A lot of what I focus on — and want to highlight — is more of the aftermath of sexual assault that rarely gets this kind of light in both media and in films,” Hsiung says. “I think there’s often the focus around the act itself, but really, to truly understand the impact, you really need to understand the aftermath and how a survivor essentially lives a life sentence.”

The documentary is based, in part, on the Canadian True Crime podcast series The Trial of Hedley’s Jacob Hoggard, hosted by Kristi Lee. Frantic Films had optioned the podcast, and Lee had been in contact with Baker about doing an interview for the show.

“One thing led to another and I reached out to (Baker) to ask her what she felt about a documentary being made about this, and whether or not she’d be interested in it,” Hsiung says. “Because, at the end of the day, I feel like that’s where it really matters, whether or not it’s a story she wants to be told. And if it wasn’t, I think it would have been a whole different perspective.

“I think it would have focused solely on the industry and the fandom particularly, and to not sensationalize a rise and fall piece of him, but really focus on the complexity of fandom and complicity of the nature of that.”

But Baker did decide to speak to both Lee and Hsiung, and share her story — with her name and face — for the first time.

“She wanted people to know who she was, to really reclaim her identity, but also flip that shame narrative of perpetrator versus survivor, which often happens,” says Hsiung, adding that one of Baker’s inspirations was Gisèle Pelicot, the sexual assault survivor in France who went public about being drugged by her husband and raped by multiple men for years.

“And I’m really proud (Baker) did, that she saw trust in me to tell that story.”

Establishing and maintaining trust throughout the process was paramount to Hsiung, who keenly understands that a survivor takes a big risk by placing their story into someone else’s hands. Too often, she says, that process can be revictimizing if it’s handled insensitively, or reduced to sensationalism and clickbait.

“I asked myself, How would I want my story to be shared? How would I want the trust to be built? And I think it really helps that we had care at the forefront of this production.”

That looked, in part, like providing on-set training to everyone working behind the camera, and giving anyone in front of the camera access to a registered therapist who was part of the team throughout the production.

“On top of being an all female-led production crew, which you rarely do see, I think that all of those things added and contributed to the trust built throughout production, as well as in post, as well as in the release,” she says. “I think that you can’t go into making a film like this and think that, well, we’re doing her a service by telling her story and so she just needs to give us everything.”

Breaking Idol does explore the role fandom plays in this story. Many diehard Hedley fans refused to accept the allegations against Hoggard when they first broke in 2018, and directed their ire towards the survivors on social media — including “the Ottawa woman.”

Several Hedley fans are interviewed in the documentary about their response, first to the allegations, then to the trial and aftermath, and the reckoning they went through as fans betrayed by someone they thought they knew.

“It was such a fine balance,” Hsiung says. “We definitely wanted to make sure that, again, they are also human. They are also people who went into this believing that their idol, the person that they looked up to and admired, could never do something like that.

“This was very much centered on a survivor’s experience, but we wanted to make sure that fans had a platform to share what that was like for them … from getting to know them and hearing their stories, I think they’re still grappling with it.”

The doc also offers a harrowing look at the experience of going through a sexual assault trial in Canada, during which survivors are put on the stand and cross-examined. Baker describes going to court as “a second assault, and worse.”

As a survivor herself who has been through trial, Hsiung has been where Baker was, although the perpetrator in her case was not a celebrity.

“But I remember going through trial, and I remember how — there was myself and someone else — and they got the guilty conviction, and my case didn’t. When it comes down to trial, it’s all processes and systems that feel very dehumanizing. I know that feeling. It was 20 years ago, but those things don’t shake off, they don’t go away. They live with you.

“And how you live with it, how it informs and reshapes your life, that’s the choice we get to make.”

Baker has chosen to help others. In addition to sharing her story in the doc, she, along with Lee and fellow survivor Kelly Favro, the British Columbia woman who became the first to represent herself in the B.C. Supreme Court and successfully had a publication ban on her identity, as the complainant in her own case, lifted, has started an advocacy group called Beyond the Verdict to offer support to survivors.

Breaking Idol is streaming now on CBC Gem.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca