Hot on his heels by the lawyer for the SQ police officers who are suing her for defamation for nearly $3 million, a Radio-Canada journalist admitted that at times she was content to assess the credibility of the alleged victims herself. , without further verification.
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“It is the multiplication of testimonies which means that we have moved forward with this investigation, this is what makes the difference between a police and journalistic investigation,” said Josée Dupuis, this Thursday, at the Palais de justice of Montreal.
Bombarded with questions by Me Marco Gaggino, who represents 42 Val-d’Or police officers, the now retired reporter continued to defend the report broadcast in 2015 by the state corporation. Titled Abuse of the SQ: women break the silence, he gave voice to indigenous women from Val-d’Or, in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, who said they had been victims of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Sûreté du Québec patrol officers. The report had a considerable impact, leading, among other things, to the creation of the Viens commission on relations between Aboriginal people and public services.
Passed through with a fine comb
However, an investigation by the Montreal police did not lead to charges due to lack of sufficient evidence. Then, 42 police officers who worked in Val-d’Or responded with a defamation suit worth nearly $3 million, accusing the state-owned company of having disseminated “grotesque” information that spoiled their working climate.
And to try to prove the merits of their civil suit, their lawyer Me Marco Gaggino bombarded the journalist with questions, combing through every detail of the testimonies collected as part of his work.
“What, if anything, did you do to verify the credibility [d’une des sources du reportage]?,” said the lawyer, for example, regarding the testimony of a woman saying she had been mistreated by a police officer who had “taken” her into his car.
Mme Dupuis responded that the woman “appeared credible” to him, given that she had been identified by a person who would have received her confidences. Except that the lawyer did not stop there, asking the journalist among other things if she had asked for a physical description of this police officer.
“It was very difficult for her to speak when it involved police officers, she did not want to go further than what she said, she was in shock, that satisfied me,” retorted the journalist.
Not a police investigation
Regarding other testimonies, Mme Dupuis said the women’s spontaneity made them credible, which she said was “enough.”
“The only verification I made was that I listened to them about other confidences received. Their testimonies are not similar. The women didn’t all say the same thing. They told me what they had experienced.
Just afterwards, she recalled that one of the difficulties in her journalistic investigation lay in the fact that she did not have access to the police.
“It was not a police investigation, but a journalistic one that I was carrying out,” she said. For me, it was to collect enough testimonies to say that reprehensible things were happening.”
Later, she recalled that she was not a police officer, but rather a journalist, recalling that the work was very different.
The civil trial, before Judge Babak Barin, is expected to continue for several more weeks.