Florent Francœur, ex-CEO of the Order of Chartered Human Resources Advisors, was acquitted on Friday of sexually assaulting an extremely vulnerable resident of a CHSLD during the pandemic. Considering his version “plausible”, the judge gave him the benefit of a reasonable doubt.
The 64-year-old man was accused of having touched the genitals of an aphasic patient suffering from severe cognitive impairment on August 2, 2020. Florent Francœur had been hired as a “service aide” at the CHSLD Notre-Dame-de- la-Merci, in the north of Montreal, after responding to the call of the Legault government.
Florent Francœur firmly denied at trial having committed such acts. According to his version, he had entered the room to pick up the patient’s panties, taking care to put on gloves. He was pulling on the diaper, since the Velcro was stuck under the patient’s back, when a colleague came into the room and began to accuse him.
“Mr. Francœur answers all the questions put to him without hesitation. He testifies in a precise and detailed way. The explanations he provides are reasonable and deconstruct perceptions that are at first sight suspicious or incriminating, “analyzes Judge Martin Chalifour, qualifying the accused’s explanations as” sensible and reasonable “.
The Prosecution’s evidence was essentially based on the testimony of Lucretia Rosean, an experienced auxiliary nurse at the CHSLD who claimed to have seen Florent Francœur in the act. According to her account, she had observed the accused enter this room several times and without apparent reason during the day, since the call bell was not activated.
Lucretia Rosean claimed to have seen Florent Francœur enter the room again at noon. In her eyes, this was not part of the duties of a service assistant for Mr. Francœur – a colleague whom she did not know. As her heart struggled, she went to see for herself.
Lucretia Rosean is an “independent, sincere and credible” witness, argues Judge Martin Chalifour. However, her view of the situation “leaves room for the possibility of a biased impression, not by bad faith, quite the contrary, but by the information that was in her knowledge”, affirms the judge.
It is that in the eyes of Ms. Rosean, the accused should not be in this part of the CHSLD. “She seems to expect to see something abnormal, even before pushing the door, her heart is already struggling”, maintains the judge. Thus, a witness “sincere and in good faith can be wrong”, continues the judge.
“The scene unfolded quickly: she enters, she sees him, she screams, the accused immediately withdraws his hands. Obviously, she hadn’t had the opportunity to observe it for long. She indicates that she saw her hands between [the resident’s] thighs, touching her genitals, the accused claims that her hands were practically at the same height, but on the outside of the right thigh, pulling on the panties stuck, ”analyzes the judge.
On the other hand, the judge “cannot conceive” that Florent Francœur entered the patient rooms without a call bell, if he had been prohibited from doing so. It should be noted that the accused had just worked in the hot zone of the CHSLD, where he had to make rounds of the rooms every twenty minutes. He claimed to have maintained this habit in the wing where he was assigned on the day of the events.
To conclude, Judge Chalifour returned to an argument put forward by Florent Francœur during the trial. In cross-examination, the accused had stated that the alleged victim “could have screamed” if there had been an assault.
“To claim that his lack of reaction confirms that there was nothing wrong is to maintain myths and prejudices about how a victim is expected to react in such circumstances. However, a victim may very well be paralyzed by the situation and not react, all the more so a person as vulnerable as [the resident], “concluded the judge.
Big boss for two decades of the Order of Chartered Human Resources Advisors, Florent Francœur was removed for life from his order in 2018 for having had intimate relationships with several employees under his supervision. He sometimes had sex with women in his workplace.
Lucie Joncas represented the accused at trial.
