The second administrator of Dis son Nom will have to reveal her identity. In a decision handed down on Tuesday, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the Superior Court, which had refused to grant anonymity to the creator of the whistleblowing page and which obliged Dis son nom to provide Jean-François Marquis the redacted list of denunciations received until August 2020.
Delphine Bergeron, the other administrator of the page, had chosen to reveal her identity to the To have to in September 2020. But the second administrator wished to preserve her anonymity since she says she has been the victim of sexual assault and that she fears “the stigma and the consequences linked to such an experience”.
Since the beginning of the legal proceedings undertaken by Jean-François Marquis, this second administrator has been designated by the initials AA The man is suing Say his name and his administrators for defamation and is claiming $50,000 from them in moral and punitive damages after his name was lost. was found in August 2020 on the list of alleged abusers.
This public list — once hosted on Facebook, then now on a website — was launched in the summer of 2020, just as a new wave of public denunciations of sexual misconduct were gaining momentum. This “official list of alleged abusers of Quebec” contains the names of hundreds of people targeted by allegations ranging from inappropriate words to rape recognized by the courts. These names were added to the list following denunciations made by alleged victims to Dis son nom.
Anonymity not automatic
In the decision of the Court of Appeal, Judge Geneviève Marcotte mentions that the mere fact of being the victim of sexual assault does not give “an automatic right to anonymity”. She recalls that it was AA who decided to reveal in court the stories of the sexual assaults that she says she suffered and that these “are not essential to the main argument of [Dis son nom]which consists in pleading the public interest to denounce the aggressions experienced by others”.
In short, it would be “unfair for the appellant AA to be able to take refuge behind anonymity when she is accused of having set up a process of public denunciation of alleged abusers without due diligence and in defiance of their reputation,” continued Judge Marcotte. Chief Judge Manon Savard and Judge Suzanne Gagné agree with their colleague’s decision.
In court, CBC/Radio-Canada and The Press had acted as intervenors in pleading for AA to reveal its identity. The two media had recalled “the primordial nature of publicizing the proceedings and the important role of the media as a ‘transmission belt’ to inform the public of the legal proceedings”, writes Judge Marcotte.
In an interview, the lawyer for Jean-François Marquis, Me Pierre-Hugues Miller, said he was satisfied with the judgment. “It’s a bit special to say: ‘I’m going to do it anonymously, but the person I’m going to denounce, I’m going to denounce them publicly,'” he argues.
“The problem in this file is that people are accused [ceux qui sont nommés sur la liste] without ever knowing who accuses them or what they are accused of, he continues. It’s hard to defend yourself [dans ce contexte]. »
Say his name’s lawyer, Ms.e Virginie Dufresne-Lemire, did not want to comment on the file immediately.
Communications destroyed?
In addition, the Court of Appeal confirms that Say his name will have to hand over to Jean-François Marquis all the denunciations received until August 2020, after having redacted the names of the alleged victims. This one wishes to demonstrate that the administrators of Say his name did not set up a rigorous verification process before adding a name to the list.
“If there is a public interest in denouncing the aggressors [comme le clame Dis son nom]its demonstration inevitably involves bringing to light a fair treatment of sufficiently credible and reliable denunciations”, writes Judge Marcotte, specifying that the trial judge will have to consider this question.
The judges of the Court of Appeal mention, however, that they were informed by Ms.e Miller, the lawyer for Jean-François Marquis, that the administrators of Say his name “would have destroyed the evidence concerned by the order”. An allegation that the Court of Appeal could not confirm or deny.