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 Ms. Fournier, who was a PQ member at the time, was lifted 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 order, this April 18, coincides with the release of a documentary on his history and his judicial journey. A press screening is also organized in the afternoon in Longueuil, after which the mayor should offer interviews.
In an Instagram post on Tuesday, Fournier explained her decision. “If I choose to speak from now on, it’s to share my experience, to help other people benefit from what I’ve learned by helping to demystify this unknown person represented by the journey of a victim. of sexual assault through the legal system. […] To do useful work,” she said.
“All courses are valid. Each victim is the sole master of their choices and decisions with regard to what they have experienced,” added the elected official, thanking the “extraordinary humans” who accompanied her throughout the process, to the Sûreté du Québec, the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) and the Bas-Saint-Laurent Crime Victims Assistance Center (CAVAC).
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 carefully considered, weighed, and made with voluntarily”.
“After the experience that I lived, 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 order was therefore necessary, even foreseeable, to proceed with the possible broadcast of this documentary.
Ms. 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.
During the trial, Catherine Fournier 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 house while on 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. Ms. Fournier told the court that he then undid her bra and then spent the night touching her while she lay 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 the penitentiary 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 ex-journalist Michel Venne. She was finally out of the shadows after the verdict.
