Starting Monday, the Superior Court will hear the dispute which for years has pitted the mayor of Anjou, Luis Miranda, against a former volunteer of his party, Sandra Boursiquot. The elected official is suing this woman for defamation because of the accusations of sexual assault that she made against him publicly. In response, she is demanding $750,000 from the mayor for the attacks she claims to have suffered.
In the fall of 2018, Sandra Boursiquot began to publicly denounce the mayor of Anjou, accusing him of having sexually assaulted her. Initially, she sent denouncing emails to organizations and associations in the borough. Then, she appeared at several meetings of the borough council and the municipal council to reiterate her criticisms.
Luis Miranda went to court in 2019 to get Sandra Boursiquot to stop making comments he considers defamatory. In the application initiating proceedings, the elected official acknowledges having met Mme Boursiquot in the early 2000s. She became a volunteer for her party, Équipe Anjou. Around 2011, they maintained an intimate relationship, which “always took place with respect for each other”, underlines the request.
According to the elected official, Sandra Boursiquot’s accusations are unfounded and he attributes them to his frustration linked to the permit requests which were refused to him by the district of Anjou. “Repeated allegations of sexual assault, corruption, intimidation within the municipal sector, but also allegations of intimidation targeted at other so-called victims can only have the sole result of tarnishing the reputation of the applicant, which which will have irreparable consequences on the rest of his career and on his political legacy,” it is underlined in the suit.
Considering that these accusations harm his honor, his dignity and his reputation, the Miranda party asks the court to order Sandra Boursiquot to stop conveying defamatory remarks and he claims an amount of $75,000 for the damages suffered. .
Allegations
In response, Sandra Boursiquot in turn claims the sum of $750,000 for the damages she says she suffered. In her counterclaim, she alleges that Luis Miranda sexually assaulted her, abused his powers as mayor to intimidate and harass her over a period of 17 years, keeping her in a “regime of terror.”
She says that in the early 2000s, she began volunteering for Mr. Miranda’s party and once accompanied him on a door-to-door activity. It was from this moment, she alleges, that the elected official began to touch her without her consent.
Other events allegedly occurred after she filed with the borough, in 2009, a request for an exemption from municipal regulations in order to increase the number of places in the daycare she managed in a building in Anjou. She maintains that Luis Miranda himself came to carry out on-site checks to ensure that the plans were respected. He would have returned to her house several times and would have abused her, she claims.
Sandra Boursiquot also claims to have received several fines from the borough, but claims to have contested them all without ever having been summoned to the Municipal Court. “This state of affairs demonstrates that the plaintiff used his power to have these tickets issued, all in order to put pressure on the defendant to give in to his demands,” we can read in the court document.
She claims to have gone to Luis Miranda’s office to try to obtain explanations concerning her multiple problems with the district. During this meeting, the elected official allegedly sexually assaulted her in his office, she maintains. Subsequently, she claims, he subjected her to “sexual slavery”.
Complaint to the SPVM
In 2018, Sandra Boursiquot indicated that she filed a complaint with the Montreal City Police Service (SPVM), but her complaint was not upheld. In 2019, she also tried to obtain the intervention of the City of Montreal in the matter, believing that responsibility for the damage suffered should be shared between Mr. Miranda and the City. She then criticized the SPVM for having entrusted the investigation into her complaint to the Municipal Integrity Protection Squad (EPIM) and not to the major crimes section, which, she argued, did not respect the standards in force.
This request was finally rejected by the Superior Court in March 2021 and the City is no longer involved in the dispute between Luis Miranda and his accuser.
Luis Miranda, for his part, maintains that he has never been contacted or questioned by anyone in connection with the complaint filed by M.me Boursiquot to the police.
The case will be heard starting Monday, and five days of hearings are scheduled.
Mayor of Anjou since 1997, Luis Miranda made a lot of talk about him last October, when he lost his temper with a 15-year-old teenager, Hocine Ouendi, who came to ask him questions during a council meeting. district of Anjou. Last August, the Quebec Municipal Commission (CMQ), however, rejected the complaint filed by the teenager’s mother.
Need help ?
If you are a victim of sexual violence, you can contact a Sexual Assault Support Center (CALACS) near you, or call Sexual Violence Help at 1 888 933-9007. Click here to see the list.