The Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) has decided to appeal the acquittal rendered at first instance last January in a case of gang rape that occurred in 2020 in Joliette.
In April 2020, during a drunken evening in a residence in Joliette, two young girls, aged 15 and 17 respectively at the time of the events, were allegedly sexually assaulted several times by four men, including a minor who was tried in the Youth Chamber.
According to the prosecution, the accused forced fellatio and “complete non-consensual sexual relations” on the alleged victims, without them being able to resist, “given their intoxication”.
On January 15, Judge Bruno Leclerc completely exonerated two accused, in addition to exonerating the third from the most serious charge of assault he faced — sexual assault — even though their testimonies seemed less than credible.
At the time of rendering his judgment, the magistrate considered that, even if “the actions probably occurred as the victims claim”, the testimonies given by the accused “raise a reasonable doubt in the eyes of the court” and that the version of the victims was subject to bail, “due to their state of intoxication”.
Previously, the judge had described the testimonies of two accused as “astonishing”. The court even considered that one of the two “was ready to say anything and everything” to justify himself.
“Errors of law”
“After analyzing the reasons supporting the decision rendered on January 15, the DPCP decided to appeal to the Court of Appeal due to legal errors allegedly made by the district judge,” indicated by email the spokesperson for the DPCP, Me Audrey Roy-Cloutier.
The DPCP targeted two reasons for appealing the case.
Judge Leclerc would have first “erred in law by not motivating his decision in such a way as to satisfy the functional criterion”, then would have made “an error in the evaluation of the consent of the complainants to sexual activities”.
With Sébastien Tanguay