(Quebec) Did Léa Clermont-Dion commit an honest mistake by giving the police an incomplete recording of an explosive conversation with feminist Lise Payette, or did she modify evidence to “control the message » ?
This question occupied a good part of the debates Thursday at the Quebec courthouse before the Court of Appeal. Former journalist Michel Venne, found guilty of sexual assault and sexual exploitation of the woman who was then his intern, is contesting the judgment before the highest court in Quebec.
“Everything indicates that the evidence was intentionally modified on numerous occasions in order to control a message,” Venne’s lawyer, Nicholas St-Jacques, told the three magistrates.
Me St-Jacques argued that the trial judge should have explained more in his judgment on this essential aspect, which according to him affects the credibility of the complainant.
Michel Venne’s lawyers raised around ten grounds of appeal on Thursday, which the Crown prosecutor did not fail to note. “If we need to pull in all directions, it is perhaps because the judgment is unassailable,” remarked Me Olivier T. Raymond.
Remember that the documentary filmmaker and author Léa Clermont-Dion recounted having been touched one evening in August 2008. She was 17 years old and was an intern at the Institut du Nouveau Monde (INM), then directed by Michel Venne who had, in the words of the complainant, “the age of [son] father “.
Years later, in 2015, Lise Payette intervened with the young woman. The First Minister of State for the Status of Women asked him to sign a letter to exonerate Michel Venne. Mr. Venne then coveted the position of director of the newspaper The duty. Rumors of the attack compromised his chances.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Documentary filmmaker Léa Clermont-Dion.
Two years later, Léa Clermont-Dion called Lise Payette back. In the recording of the call, we hear the former minister, who has since died, say that she had made him sign the letter to preserve the young woman’s career and protect Mr. Venne’s family.
The recording of this 22-minute call had taken up many hours of the first trial. It is that the first version given to the police by Mme Clermont-Dion lasted 11 minutes. The complainant found the full version during the preliminary investigation, then finally gave it to the lawyers.
Mme Clermont-Dion explained that she had edited the recording for her archives. She was then preparing to make an outing on Facebook in the wake of the #metoo movement. She wanted to preserve proof of the role of Mme Payette in the case, she explained.
She assured the court that she had forgotten that she had edited the recording almost three years later, when she handed the file over to the police after filing a complaint.
The trial judge believed in this honest error. But according to Venne’s lawyers, he did not sufficiently explain his position in a trial which essentially rested on the credibility of the two protagonists.
“The question of recording affected the credibility of the complainant in a very significant way,” argued Michel Venne’s lawyer on Thursday.
In the first version given to the police, a passage where Mme Payette assured that Michel Venne was not his friend had been cut, as was an extract where we hear Mme Payette said that it was the young woman who had written the letter and that she had not retouched it.
“All of this was significant in assessing the credibility of the complainant,” noted M.e St Jacques. “The judge excuses that. »
But the trial judge concluded that “when we listen to the shortened version we do not find ourselves faced with a message that is changed. The content corresponds to the entirety,” replied the Crown prosecutor.
Judge Marie-France Bich, of the Court of Appeal, wondered if the magistrate “was right to say this”.
“We cut from the original version the passage where her interlocutor recalls that it was she who wrote the letter, that she did not dictate it to the complainant,” said Judge Bich. It was cut. I’m not saying that in the end it was a determining factor, but isn’t that something to consider? »
“If we saw an error, I think it is harmless, without impact, we are really very far away,” replied Crown prosecutor Olivier T. Raymond. We are no longer at all in the gestures of aggression. »
The Court of Appeal took the matter under advisement. Michel Venne, 63, was sentenced to six months in prison for his actions in 2008. The former columnist is, however, at liberty during his appeal.