Gilbert Rozon in court for civil lawsuit claiming $14M, victims alleging sexual assault 

Gilbert Rozon will return to court on Monday to defend himself against nine individual lawsuits, which he requested were combined into a single trial. The founder of the Just for Laughs festival is accused of sexual assault and rape.

The total amount claimed by adding together all the individual lawsuits is $13.8 million.

The trial, which is expected to run until March 28, 2025, promises to be of historic importance.

Juripop’s executive director, Sophie Gagnon, notes the “fairly symbolic” nature of the case in Quebec. “These are the women who sparked the @MeToo wave in Quebec and, to date, these allegations have never been proven,” she points out.

She adds that this is the first time that the new law aimed at combating the sharing of intimate images without consent and improving protection and support in civil matters for victims of violence, adopted on Nov. 28, will be applied in court. It also provides for a “presumption of irrelevance of evidence based on myths and prejudices” in matters of sexual violence and domestic violence.

Among these myths is the fact of having stayed in contact after an assault as a sign that it did not take place. “A lot of arguments of [the] defence are based on myths,” says Gagnon.

One of Rozon’s lawyers, Mélanie Morin, told the court in her opening statements that Rozon had consensual relations with three of the women but he denies any wrongdoing.

She noted that the allegations emerged during the #MeToo movement and said they were an attempt to find the “Weinstein of Quebec,” referring to the disgraced American movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Bruce Johnston, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, told Tremblay they intend to prove that Rozon was a “real predator” and asked whether it was reasonable that all nine women made up their claims.

The trials were made possible because in 2015, the limitation period that stipulated that a complaint had to be filed within three years of the act was abolished in 2015. The assaults allegedly took place between the 1980s and the early 2000s.

Gagnon says that Rozon “will challenge the constitutional validity of this amendment,” emphasizing that this will be the first time that the issue will be decided by the Court.

The lawyer is also eager to see how the “similar fact evidence” will be used. Victims other than the nine plaintiffs will be called to testify, in an attempt to show that there was “a modus operandi, a pattern, that Rozon engaged in these behaviors on a frequent basis.”

A long legal saga

On Nov. 27, 2017, the group Les Courageuses – made up of about 20 women who say they were assaulted by Rozon – filed a class action against the producer. Although the application was authorized on May 22, 2018, Rozon was able to appeal on May 16, 2019.

In early 2020, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned the judgment that authorized the Courageuses’ class action, ruling that it was not the appropriate mode of procedure for such a case.

The plaintiffs filed an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, but it was denied.

At the same time, Gilbert Rozon was acquitted in a criminal trial in 2020. Judge Mélanie Hébert ruled that there was reasonable doubt about the version of events reported by the plaintiff Annick Charrette.

While the burden of proof must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal prosecution, in civil proceedings the objective is rather to demonstrate that one version of the facts is more likely than the other.

Gagnon, recalls in this sense that, during the 2020 trial, “the judge was not kind to Mr. Rozon. She found his version quite implausible and, on the contrary, she found that the version of the plaintiff, Ms. Charette, was credible.”

Charrette is one of the nine women who are suing Rozon as of Monday. In addition to the rape charge she brought in her criminal prosecution, she accuses the former comedy mogul of lying under oath to the court when he testified about these events.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews. With files from Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press