The Quebec Judicial Council reprimands Judge Joëlle Roy for making comments that seem to minimize the “trauma experienced by the victims.” In reaction to a column by Yves Boisvert, the judge portrayed herself as a woman victim of “violence” and “vicious” beatings.
“There is no doubt that the judge’s statement regarding the article had no place in the courtroom. […] [Ce] is also not the forum for delivering messages or denouncing criticism, however scathing it may be,” concludes the Inquiry Committee of the Judicial Council in a decision rendered on September 25.
According to the Committee, Court of Quebec judge Joëlle Roy failed in her “duty of reserve” and contravened her Code of ethics. Even if her ethical breaches are “serious”, the appropriate sanction is a “reprimand”, according to the Committee, since Judge Roy admits to having learned a “big lesson” from the events and would behave “differently” if she had to do it again.
The case dates back to October 2023. Judge Joëlle Roy acquits a therapist accused of sexual assault on a patient. In her judgment, the magistrate in some way reproaches the complainant for not having put her clothes back on and not having opened her eyes during the incident.
The chronicler of The Press Yves Boisvert wrote a column, on October 12, in which he questions the judgment of Judge Roy, whose decisions have often been overturned by the appeal courts. According to Yves Boisvert, the judge essentially perpetuated the myth of the “good victim”.
“At this level of correction, one can really question his competence. In short, it is not only this complainant who could open her eyes,” wrote Yves Boisvert.
The morning the column was published, Judge Roy sat on the bench at the Montreal courthouse. She must preside over an incest trial. She starts crying in the courtroom. She calls the column a “personal attack […] very vicious.” She even said she wanted to “go and join” the complainant who was then with the workers from the Crime Victim Assistance Center.
A senior boss of the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) had filed a complaint against the judge, saying she was concerned by such comments.
According to the Inquiry Committee, Judge Roy “obviously lost her serenity” that morning. His “clumsy” comment was “thoughtless and inappropriate”, analyzes the Committee. However, it is not serious enough to constitute an ethical breach, we conclude.
A chronicle of “great violence”, according to the judge
The next morning, October 13, Judge Roy returned to the bench to read a written statement. Before the Inquiry Committee, Joëlle Roy’s lawyers indicated that this statement had been the “fruit of careful consideration”. However, Judge Roy instead explained to the Council that she had written it 15 minutes before sitting.
The judge then affirmed that the column published in The Press was “greatly violent” towards him. “Violence of the kind that we see, unfortunately, in the courts every day. It is no longer the judge who is being attacked, but the woman. A woman who, moreover, cannot defend herself, because her profession obliges her to do so, confines her to it,” she declares.
The judge continues her diatribe by saying she chose to denounce this “violence”. “I had just received the blows […] It is no longer journalism, but the abuse of opinion, the abuse of the power of words,” she concluded.
A statement which did not pass before the Investigative Committee.
“The comparison made by the judge of words to blows and the implicit parallel between the violence she suffers and that which finds herself before the courts on a daily basis raise fears of a minimization of the trauma experienced by the victims, even if the judge expressed that this was not her intention”, concludes the Committee.
There are two possible sanctions when a judge is sanctioned for ethics: reprimand and dismissal. On the Judicial Council website, it is indicated that reprimands are reserved for “serious cases”. “You might think that a reprimand is not a harsh corrective measure. But the judges generally take it very seriously,” we can read.
Read “If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t act the same way,” says the judge