The Crown considers that a paratransit driver accused of sexual assault on an intellectually disabled passenger cannot be relieved of the guilty plea recorded because the victim, of a mental age “between 8 and 10 years”, did not never been able to consent to the 65-year-old man’s touches.
• Read also: He wants to overturn his guilty plea to a charge of sexual assault on an autistic woman living with a mild intellectual disability
For mee Louis-Philippe Desjardins, the motion to withdraw the guilty plea filed by Yves Lachance on the basis of the fact that he inquired about the consent of his victim is unfounded.
“It’s obvious to everyone that she is extremely vulnerable, this woman,” insisted the Crown prosecutor about the autistic woman living with a mild intellectual disability. It was the latter who verbalized the sexual touching made to her by her paratransit driver during a workshop on friendly and romantic relationships.
According to the report of a psychiatrist who evaluated the victim and presented by the crown, the woman, who was between 37 and 39 years old at the time of the events, would have a mental age “between 8 and 10 years old”.
“She has no concept of sexuality. She didn’t even know what a penis was. […] or the fact that it’s sexual. He says he asked her if he could touch her breasts, but she has no idea that it is sexual,” raised the prosecutor, insisting that she simply could not understand the notion of consent .
Eight events
Yves Lachance insisted, as during the opening of his testimony on Tuesday, on the fact that he never believed that his behavior could be criminal.
Photo Pierre-Paul Biron
Regarding the woman’s state, her capacity to consent and to understand the sexual nature of the gestures, the accused himself claimed “to have assumed [présumé] that she understood”, then “having stopped because there was no reciprocity”.
“But it still took eight times. It was obviously not clear, clear, for you,” judge René de la Sablonnière pointed out to him, recalling the eight episodes of recognized sexual contact.
The latter also asked the accused to explain in his own words what he had pleaded guilty to in July 2023. It is on this precise decision that the accused wants to go back.
“I pleaded guilty to what I was accused of. Touching by a person in a position of authority towards a person with an intellectual disability,” replied Yves Lachance, specifying however that for him “it was not criminal.”
The sixty-year-old also added that he initially lied to the police because he no longer had confidence in the judicial system. According to him, the system would “do everything” to indict certain people, citing in passing names known to followers of conspiracy theories such as the lawyer disbarred from the Bar Gloriane Blais.
“Groupie”
His lawyer, Me Jean-Marc Tremblay, for his part, argued that the guilty plea should be canceled since the notion of consent had never been discussed at the time, while his client represented himself alone.
Photo Pierre-Paul Biron
“If reference had been made to the complainant’s affirmation of consent at the time of the guilty plea, I am fairly convinced that you would not have accepted the plea,” said Mr.e Tremblay to the judge, describing the case as riddled with “ambiguities”.
Yves Lachance admitted his responsibility in the attack on the morning of the opening of his trial to “avoid the victim and his father having to go through all that”. His lawyer now maintains that everything was done “in five minutes” without checking “little essential things” such as the possible consent of the complainant, who connected with the accused through their common passion for music.
“She had a groupie attitude towards her. Him, [il] lacked judgment in attempting a rapprochement,” argued the defense lawyer.
The case will return to court at the end of May.