Posted at 5:00 a.m.
When she was called last June to inform her that the one who had been her pimp for years, Josué Jean, would be eligible for parole in March, Marie-Michelle Desmeules had the impression that heaven had just fallen on his head.
“Honestly, it’s like I’ve been stabbed 40 times. »
A few months before the hearing of the Parole Board, where she also intends to appear to oppose the release of Jean, Ms.me Desmeules granted a very first interview to The Press face uncovered.
PHOTO ANDRÉ PICHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Josué Jean was sentenced in 2019 to eight years in prison
She wishes to denounce the heaviness and the injustices that she considers to have suffered during the legal process, which, in her case, lasted more than five years. “The legal process traumatized me,” she says. I felt like I was on the highway and being run over. »
During the four years spent alongside Jean, Marie-Michelle Desmeules was forced into prostitution and regularly beaten. During these years with him, the control exercised over her by her pimp was so total that she was not even allowed to have her health insurance card.
In a particularly violent assault, the pimp broke her ribs and she lost the child she was carrying. In 2009, six months after this savage attack, she found the courage to leave Jean. “I literally ran away from my apartment. In 2014, “on a whim”, she decided to file a complaint against Jean. She then realizes that the police have already been investigating him for quite a while.
However, it will be nearly six years before Jean has his trial and is condemned. In 2019, Josué Jean was finally found guilty of 14 charges and sentenced to an eight-year prison term by Judge André Perreault, of the Court of Quebec. An exemplary sentence, for a procurer whom the magistrate deemed particularly violent, and without remorse.
During these six years, requests from Jean’s lawyers caused delays, and he presented, without success, a motion to have the process stopped under the Jordan decision, to the chagrin of his victims.
relive the pain
Meanwhile, Marie-Michelle Desmeules saw her request for compensation refused by the compensation program for victims of criminal acts (IVAC). The Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ) also rejected her request to remove the oversized breast implants that Josué Jean pushed her to have, and which are causing her major back problems.
She ended up getting psychological support from the Crime Victims Assistance Center (CAVAC), an organization that “saved her life,” she says. The Concertation des Luttes contre l’Exploitation Sexual (CLES) organization also supported her throughout the legal process.
Because during these years when justice was taking its course, her life was practically at a standstill, she testifies with emotion. She suffered from severe post-traumatic shock and generalized anxiety disorder. She was therefore unable to hold a job, to have a social or romantic life.
“I was extremely unwell. Completely unfit. As soon as I smelled the smell of cigarettes or pot, as soon as I saw a black man or heard rap music, it immediately brought me back to those years with him,” she says.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Marie-Michelle Desmeules
I wasn’t even able to get out of our house, I felt like the word “whore” was flashing in my forehead.
Marie-Michelle Desmeules
One of the worst memories that Mr.me The wheels of this judicial process are the cross-examinations conducted by the defendant’s lawyer, Isabelle Larouche, in particular during her first testimony during the preliminary inquiry. She says she was very unprepared for this testimony, and when the day came she asked for a screen to avoid seeing Josué Jean. A request that the court refused. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack because I hadn’t seen him in years. »
Two years after the conviction of her ex-pimp, Marie-Michelle Desmeules still lives with the consequences of what Jean did to her. And that is why she will go, in March, to read a long letter before the Parole Board to tell the commissioners what she has experienced. Even if it means undergoing the ordeal of seeing his executioner again.
“I do not believe in his rehabilitation: he has been a pimp since the age of 16! »
At the mere thought that Josué Jean could get out of prison, she is terrified. “I’m still very afraid of it,” she said. It is a completely irrational fear. I’m still under its influence: I can’t get rid of it.
“I still live with him every day. »