By turning to literature, Léa Clermont-Dion finds in File a complaint the means to reclaim his story, scrutinized from all angles during a highly publicized trial. It also materializes, in its own way, a prophecy one day decreed by Lise Payette. Explanations.
“When you’re a little older, you’ll write a book about it,” Lise Payette said to Léa Clermont-Dion one day, trying to convince her that she was right to sign, at his invitation, a document denying that she was, at the age of 17, the victim of sexual assault at the hands of her former mentor and boss, Michel Venne.
Léa Clermont-Dion is now a little older – 32 years old – and has finally written her book on this, although without ever naming, either between the pages or during our interview, the man in question. “This story is mine, not hers,” she announces straight away in File a complaintthe story of the legal process in which she engaged on October 26, 2017 and which ended with a conviction on June 23, 2021, almost four years and two children later.
“The work of writing has become a form of empowerment. I especially didn’t want it to be a sensationalist book,” explains the woman who, moreover, published this story in Le Cheval d’August, a purely literary publishing house under whose banner the work of Fanny Britt is published. , Sophie Bienvenu and Mikella Nicol.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Léa Clermont-Dion
File a complaint thus responds first and foremost to real work on language, to the construction of a story which chronicles not only the public part of a trial, but also its intimate side and the luminous daily life of what the complainant strives for – feeding her children, calling her mother – in order not to be swallowed up by her anxieties.
Its author also weighs, implicitly, the legacy of the #metoo movement, while questioning this society which allowed Harvey Weinstein or Dominique Strauss-Kahn to expand their sordid empire with impunity.
The writing process will inevitably have been saving for the researcher and director (You just have to file a complaint, I salute you bitch), after years of having to measure each of her words to ensure that none of them turned against her.
Testifying in a trial means being immersed in a vocabulary that is extremely bureaucratic, indigestible, jargonous, dehumanizing. This is one of the great paradoxes of the justice system: you tell your worst story, but you have to do it as if you were filling out a grant application.
Léa Clermont-Dion
“While, as literature is one of the last places of freedom in our society,” continues the reader of Annie Ernaux and Maggie Nelson, “I was able to write what I wanted to write, in the way I wanted. »
Lose faith
File a complaint is also the story of a loss of faith in our society and in those who hold the power to bring about a new world. Galvanized by the speeches of René Lévesque presented to her by her mother when she was still a teenager, Léa Clermont-Dion very early became a fervent sovereignist and feminist.
She was 14 years old when she collaborated in 2006 in the organization of a conference at UQAM called Equality, achieved?, a title whose naive optimism amuses him a lot today. His participation in the event even earned him an invitation to the show Point. “It aroused a certain curiosity, that a 14-year-old girl called herself a feminist, because it was not at all a golden age for feminism,” she remembers. Let’s measure how far we’ve come.
Her aggression will then extinguish in her any desire to invest in public life, a dream for one who was more the type to devote her weekends to parliamentary simulations than to hanging out at the shopping center.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Léa Clermont-Dion
Overnight, I lost my desire for commitment, because this person everyone admired fundamentally betrayed me. It deeply sickened me. It had the same effect on me as reading Animal Farm : suddenly I saw how power corrupts.
Léa Clermont-Dion
“But I like to say that it’s a sad story that ends well,” she hastens to add, evoking the verdict, but more broadly the straitjacket from which this trial will have allowed her to free herself, thanks to to those who supported her. Endearingly righteous characters, including investigator Daniel Raymond, who cuddled Léa’s baby in the corridors of the courthouse.
“Daniel restored my faith in humanity,” she confides about the man who died last July of cancer. He was 49 years old.
And forgiveness?
Léa Clermont-Dion is not, however, blindly optimistic and her stomach sinks every time when visiting a secondary school, where she regularly gives lectures, a young man talks to her about his admiration for Andrew Tate and others. proud detractors of feminism.
But the new generations also captivate me with their strength, their openness, their rebelliousness. And having children of my own keeps me from resigning myself to despair. It’s funny to say, but changing diapers gave me hope.
Léa Clermont-Dion
And although progress, including the advent of the specialized court for sexual violence and domestic violence, rejoices her, the author is still saddened that each of the gestures of a victim is scrutinized, from all angles, like this happened again last month in the Court of Appeal, where Michel Venne is trying to overturn the verdict. “The defense lawyer emphasized in her closing argument that I had given the boss a kiss. But why is this relevant? »
The myth of the perfect victim clearly dies hard, but Léa Clermont-Dion no longer considers herself a victim. “It must be repeated: we can call ourselves a victim at a given moment and no longer recognize ourselves in that word afterwards. I was a victim, I am no longer a victim and it was very much the writing of the book that allowed me to move on. »
Leah thought out loud. “I believe in forgiveness. But in my case, I’m talking less about forgiving a person than about forgiving a situation. Is it possible to forgive a situation? »
In bookstore Tuesday.
File a complaint
The Horse of August
224 pages