Insults and threats disrupt Gilbert Rozon trial

Montreal Gazette

3 days ago

By La Presse Canadienne
This story includes details that some readers might find disturbing.
Gilbert Rozon's civil trial for sexual assault was disrupted Thursday by a rare display that saw one of his nine accusers take him on during a recess.
'But what is he made of to lie like that?' Danie Frenette asked, calling him an 'a--hole,' in the middle of the court, after Rozon had denied the allegations from both Frenette and her daughter-in-law, comedian Salomé Corbo.
'No class,' Rozon mumbled as he left the room.
Having left the room, Frenette's husband and Salomé Corbo's father, Stefano Corbo, allegedly pulled on Rozon's ear before grabbing his throat to threaten him. Passing by reporters, Rozon said he had been 'insulted in plain court. I made my testimony. I took the oath. I said the truth. The allegations are implausible.'
Back in front of Judge Chantal Tremblau, Rozon said Corbo had held his throat and sworn at him, threatening to strangle and suffocate him. His lawyer, Mélanie Morin, said she witnessed the incident, which she told the judge concerned her.
Tremblay then called Stefano Corbo to the witness box to bar him from the chamber, telling him he could follow the rest of the procedures virtually. She then suspended the hearing early for lunch.
Rozon had previously denied Frenette's allegations that he had raped her twice and groped her, first in his home during a party marking the end of the 1988 edition of the Just For Laughs festival. Frenette had been hired to manage the street arts component of the event.
According to Frenette's testimony, Rozon took her to a wooded area of his property before removing her windbreaker, lying her on the ground and raping her. Rozon called it 'completely unrealistic,' that he would have commited the act in front of guests, adding that 'there were never woods on my property,' and that he didn't even remember having seen her that evening.
He also denied having groped her on a park bench on Île-Ste-Hélène, testifying he had never been there with her. He also denied the second alleged rape, in which Frenette said he'd arrived at her door in the night, telling her to open it.
'I never went to her home,' Rozon said. 'I never had sexual relations with her,' he said, responding to a recording in which she said she'd had consensual relations with Rozon in later years.
Salomé Corbo, who isn't a plantiff in the case, but testified, told the court that she had been only 13 when Rozon trapped her in a staircase, also during an end-of-festival party, and inserted his finger in her vagina. As a teenager, she'd obtained her first job in 1989 as a host of one of the festival's kiosks.
'Put my finger in her vagina? That's unbelievably vulgar,' Rozon said, denying the accusation. He accused her of making up the testimony 'because she's Danie Frenette's daughter-in-law.'
Corbo had also affirmed before the court that around 11 years later, in 2001, he'd called her an 'ostie d'agace' (colloquially, a f--king tease) during a meeting in a bar after a strap had slipped off her shoulder. 'I don't talk like that,' Rozon said.
The trial was set to resume in the afternoon.
A long legal process
The nine women are suing Rozon for around $14 million for alleged sexual assaults.
The lawsuit brought by Patricia Tulasne, Lyne Charlebois, Anne-Marie Charrette, Annick Charrette, Sophie Moreau, Frenette, Guylaine Courcelles, Mary Sicari and Martine Roy follows a 2017 class-action suit from a group of women calling themselves Les Courageuses ('the Courageous'). First allowed in 2018, Rozon succeeded in asking the Court of Appeal to reject the authorization in 2020.
At the same time, 14 women had complained to police, but the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions only retained Annick Charette's complaint. Rozon was aquitted in 2020 on the basis of reasonable doubt.
Tulasne, who had been the spokesperson for Les Courageuses, was the first to launch a civil suit against Rozon in April 2021. The eight other women followed and the lawsuits were grouped together into a trial that began in December and has been interrupted many times as a result of legal debates.
So far, 42 witnesses have testified, including nine plantiffs and seven other women who include Julie Snyder, Salomé Corbo, Pénélope McQuade and Gilbert Rozon's ex-wife, Véronique Moreau, who all say Rozon sexually abused them.