We now know who is the young woman sexually assaulted by former Parti Québécois MP Harold LeBel in her Rimouski apartment in 2017. The identity of Longueuil Mayor Catherine Fournier was made public on Tuesday, at her request, in order to “transform these events into something positive”.
The publication ban which prohibited the media from broadcasting the name of Mme Fournier, who was a PQ member at the time, was dismissed Tuesday morning around 9 a.m., by order of a judge.
It was the main interested party who had herself requested that her identity be made public, saying she wanted to take a new step in her journey.
The lifting of the ordinance, this April 18, coincides with the release of a documentary on its history and its legal course. A press screening is also organized in the afternoon in Longueuil, after which the mayor should offer interviews.
“Something positive”
At the end of March, before the Superior Court, Catherine Fournier – who was not yet formally identified at the time – had spoken of her choice to make her identity public as a “decision that was carefully considered, weighed, and made with voluntarily”.
“After the experience I had, I want to transform these events into something positive and to be able to contribute to society, to do useful work by demonstrating the different stages of the judicial process”, she had added.
The mayoress of Longueuil was called back to the bar in extremis last November after the defense lawyer learned that the young woman was participating in a Quebecor documentary in which she intended to reveal her identity. A lifting of the ordinance was therefore necessary, even foreseeable, to proceed with the possible broadcasting of this documentary.
Mme Fournier then explained that this documentary, beyond its content, was part of her personal journey, and that after having sought at all costs to protect her identity from the public, she now felt ready to reveal it.
An “endless night”
During the trial, Catherine Fournier had recounted having lived an “endless night” in the Rimouski apartment of the ex-politician, some 30 years her senior. She had slept with a colleague, still unidentified, at Mr. LeBel’s as part of a business trip.
The evening was going off without a hitch and her friend had gone to bed in a bedroom when the man suddenly and without warning attempted to kiss the victim. Mme Fournier explained to the court that he then undid her bra, then spent the night touching her while she remained motionless, unable to sleep.
The 60-year-old ex-politician has claimed his innocence. He instead told the court that their kiss was consensual. According to him, he simply lay down in the same bed as the complainant, then woke up with his arms on her randomly from sleep. The jury ultimately didn’t believe him.
Sentenced to eight months in prison, Mr. LeBel was finally released from prison after a quarter of his sentence, in order to finish it in a halfway house. The Quebec Parole Board indeed approved Harold LeBel’s release from prison a few weeks ago despite the “objective seriousness” of his crime, judging that the former elected official now shows “empathy for the victim”. .
In recent history, the young mayor is not the first complainant in a case of sexual assault to reveal her identity at the end of the trial. Recently, documentary filmmaker Léa Clermont-Dion also chose to remain anonymous throughout the sexual assault trial of former journalist Michel Venne. She was finally out of the shadows after the verdict.
With Gabriel Béland and Vincent Larin