For Catherine Fournier, it was an “endless night”. But at the end of the night, after a long legal process, there was, very fortunately, light.
The Mayor of Longueuil came out of the shadows on Tuesday by revealing that she was indeed the one that former MP Harold LeBel had sexually assaulted during this interminable night of October 20, 2017. The entire political class hailed her courage. And for good reason.
Courage was needed, a lot, to denounce this big size PQ. Catherine Fournier apparently had everything to lose.
He was “everyone’s friend”, a pillar of the Parti Québécois for more than 30 years. She was the new 25-year-old, elected under the PQ banner a few months earlier.
For three years, Catherine Fournier was therefore cloistered in silence. “I didn’t want any trouble. I didn’t want to cause a stir,” she explained at the trial. She found it “easier to act as if it hadn’t happened”.
How many women today recognize themselves in these words? How many have had the same reflex, by professional survival instinct?
Catherine Fournier, one of the most brilliant politicians of her generation, wanted to pursue her career unaffected by this affair. She didn’t want to wear a label. Don’t want to be seen as a victim. We understand it.
She kept silent so as not to harm the Parti Québécois. To the sovereignist cause. And to his own career.
The good news is that she eventually realized that her fears were unfounded.
Nor were they irrational fears. Far from there.
Certainly, Harold LeBel was found guilty. But for the same crime, not so long ago, the court would probably have cleared him. One can very well imagine that the case would not even have been brought before a judge.
Not so long ago, we would have found that a woman who agrees to lie down next to a man would necessarily have looked for it a little.
You wouldn’t have believed that this woman could have remained frozen for hours while her attacker touched her. One would have wondered why she hadn’t run away at full speed, in the heart of the Rimouski night.
We wouldn’t have understood the paralyzing fear.
The system, in any case, would not have believed her. He would have found the evidence insufficient. It would have been the word of the good old deputy against that of the fragile, imperfect victim.
But things have changed. Criminal justice, in matters of sexual assault, has evolved. Catherine Fournier had the courage to denounce – and we believed her. The system believed her. Better: he supported her throughout the legal process.
And his attacker found himself in the shade.
If Catherine Fournier has decided to break the silence, it is because she hopes to encourage other victims to file a complaint.
Victims who are reluctant to embark on a cumbersome and tortuous legal process. Perhaps they rather consider turning to the people’s court of social networks, with all the risks of slippage that entails…
Catherine Fournier wants it to be known: she does not regret having taken the official channels of justice.
There were a few hiccups – including the chaotic handling of her identity publication ban – but, overall, she says she is “proud to have been there” and comes out of the experience “ heads held high, well beyond the verdict”.
She now wants to “do useful work” by telling her story. And thank in passing the “extraordinary human beings” who supported her: the police, the prosecutors, the workers at the Center for assistance to victims of criminal acts.
Not a word of gratitude, however, for his former colleagues in the National Assembly.
In an interview at The Press, the mayoress of Longueuil, on the contrary, deplores the “lack of solidarity” of elected officials towards her. “Nobody said anything, nobody really asked a question,” she regrets.
When Harold LeBel was formally charged with sexual assault on December 15, 2020, the National Assembly could have suspended him, believes the young woman. Instead, she let him sit as an independent.
Catherine Fournier, however, has nothing to reproach the PQ and its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, who chased Harold LeBel from the caucus less than an hour after his arrest.
The PQ leader then ordered his troops not to contact Catherine Fournier. Its objective was not to isolate the politician – who was then sitting as an independent – but not to harm the ongoing legal process. A cautious position, which defends itself perfectly.
No one at the PQ had been made aware of this affair before the arrest of Harold LeBel. Catherine Fournier had not dared to complain to the higher authorities of the party. She feared being “perceived as the one who had come to stir up trouble in the caucus”.
But it wasn’t her who had caused the trouble.
It was that good old member from Rimouski.
Shame has changed sides.
In the next few days, you will hear a lot from Catherine Fournier. In a documentary about his legal journey. In multiple media interviews. “I have so much to say that I don’t know where to start,” she said on Tuesday.
She has the courage to speak up. You have to listen to it. So that one day, perhaps, it will no longer be courageous to denounce. So that it becomes, simply, the thing to do.