The trial, which is to last to March 28, 2025, promises to have historical significance as the allegations unleashed the #MeToo wave in Quebec.
Gilbert Rozon returns to court on Monday in Montreal to defend himself against nine individual lawsuits that have, at his request, been combined into a single trial. The founder of the Just for Laughs festival is accused of sexual assault and rape.
The total amount being demanded in all the individual lawsuits is $13.8 million. The trial, which is to last to March 28, 2025, promises to have historical significance.
Sophie Gagnon, executive director of Juripop, a Montreal-based organization that provides legal assistance to Quebecers, described the “quite symbolic” nature of the case here in Quebec. “It is these women who unleashed the #MeToo wave in Quebec and, to date, these allegations have yet to be proven.”
She said it is the first time a new law intended stop the sharing of intimate images without consent and to improve the protection and support in civil matters of people who are victims of violence, adopted Nov. 28, will be applied before the courts.
The case also provides for a “presumption of irrelevance of evidence based on myths and prejudices” when it comes to sexual violence and intimate partner violence.
Among these myths is the idea remaining in contact after an assault is a sign an assault did not take place, Gagnon said. “Many defence arguments are based on myths,” she said.
Lawyers for Rozon did not respond to the Presse Canadienne.
These trials are taking place because the statute of limitations stipulating a complaint must be filed within three years following the act was abolished in 2015. The alleged events began in the early 1980s.
Gagnon said Rozon “plans to contest the constitutional validity of this amendment” and said this is the first time the court will address this issue.
Gagnon said she is also eager to see how the notion of “similar fact evidence” will be used. Alleged victims aside from the nine will be called to testify to try to show there was “a modus operandi, a trend, that Rozon demonstrated these behaviours frequently.”
The judicial saga has been long: On Nov. 27, 2017, a group of 20 women, who called themselves Les Courageuses (the Courageous Ones) and said they had been assaulted by Rozon, sought leave to sue him in civil court in a class action seeking $10 million. They allege Rozon abused his power and influence in Quebec’s entertainment industry to sexually assault and harass at least 20 women between 1982 and 2016. The lawsuit was authorized on May 22, 2018, and Rozon appealed on May 16, 2019.
In a split decision delivered in January 2020, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled the judge who authorized the class-action suit had erred in his assessment of the commonality of the issues among the women in the group and a class-action suit was not the right procedural vehicle to prosecute the defendant.
In a criminal trial, the burden of proof must be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt; in a civil case, the the goal is, rather, to demonstrate one version of the facts is more likely than the other.
Gagnon recalled in the 2020 trial, “the judge was not kind to Mr. Rozon. She found his version rather implausible and, on the contrary, found that the version of the defendant, Madame Charette, was credible.”
Charette is one of the nine women whose case against Rozon starts Monday. In addition to the accusation of rape she presented during her criminal trial, she accused the former Just for Laughs boss of having lied under oath to the court in his testimony.