Michel Venne, former director of the New World Institute (INM) and former journalist for Dutywill be heading to prison. The Quebec Court of Appeal has ordered him to surrender to prison authorities after rejecting the appeal of his conviction.
He was found guilty of assault and sexual exploitation in June 2021 and was sentenced to six months in prison. His victim, author and director Léa Clermont-Dion, was only 17 years old at the time of the acts for which he was convicted. The man was then 48 years old.
The victim’s name is exceptionally well-known, since the young woman requested in 2021 the lifting of the order that protected her identity.
Mme Clermont-Dion reported Venne to the police in 2018, 10 years after he allegedly groped her outside the Institut du Nouveau Monde summer school. The assaults she described occurred one evening in a taxi, as well as one evening outside where she was staying in downtown Quebec City.
The man appealed his conviction because he believed that the trial judge had given unequal weight to the testimony heard at trial. According to him, the magistrate had reversed the burden of proof by giving more credence to the complainant’s version than to that of the respondent.
But on Wednesday, the Court of Appeal issued a ruling rejecting those arguments.
The court said the man has until 4 p.m. on September 3 to report to prison to serve his sentence.
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