On June 21, Judge Matthieu Poliquin pardoned Simon Houle, accused of sexual assault and voyeurism, a conditional discharge. Since the reading of the judgment, impossible to get angry.
In 2019, Simon Houle, then a student, sexually assaulted a woman and took photos of her private parts. He will plead guilty only two years later.
Because it is unjustifiable, organizations for the defense of victims of sexual violence decry this aberrant decision.
Judge Poliquin, appointed last year to the Court of Quebec by the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, pays much more detailed and empathetic attention to the situation of the accused than to that of his victim, whose sequelae are nevertheless serious.
Faced with Simon Houle’s admission of having committed another sexual assault on another victim in 2015, the judge, instead of seeing it as repeat offender behavior, even sees it as a sign of “transparency”.
Despite having had at least two victims, the judge also allows himself to describe Houle as a man of “good character” from a “functional and adequate” family.
He claims his crimes are only “contextual and ad hoc” in his life. As trivialization of the sequelae that his victim will carry all his life, difficult to do better. It feels like being catapulted back to 1922.
With infinite mercy
With infinite leniency towards Houle, the judge also considers his advanced state of intoxication at the time of the attack as a possible explanation for his crime.
The irony: Judge Poliquin also justifies his conditional discharge of Houle by the need, he writes, to preserve his career as an engineer and his ability to travel for it. Mind-blowing.
The Crown, meanwhile, demanded 18 months in prison. Remember that voyeurism is punishable by a maximum prison sentence of 5 years and sexual assault, 10 years.
In short, this judgment is appalling. Because it absolves a self-confessed repeat offender. Because it outrageously trivializes the consequences and the dramatic sequelae of aggression for its victim.
Our jaw drops to the floor.
You have to go on appeal
Would Judge Poliquin have been so empathetic to an assailant less wealthy than Houle, from a dysfunctional family and he too, drunk and a repeat offender? How not to ask the question?
What does Minister Jolin-Barrette really think? Himself who, last November, when he confirmed the announcement of a court specializing in sexual and domestic violence, rightly shed tears of emotion?
And what does such a retrograde judgment say about the meticulous, avant-garde and cross-partisan work of MPs Véronique Hivon, Sonia LeBel, Hélène David and Christine Labrie for the creation of this same specialized tribunal? Judge Poliquin’s decision powerfully demonstrates the urgency of this.
For the flagrant denial of justice to which he subjected the victim of Simon Houle, the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions had to appeal this decision. What he did.
It is about the already fragile trust of victims of sexual violence in the justice system. That Simon Houle’s current employer dumped him yesterday is just one detail in this deeply shocking story.