‘He had a crazy look in his eyes’: Testimony continues in Gilbert Rozon trial

Patricia Tulasne recounted on Thursday the events that occurred on the night of Aug. 27 to 28, 1994, the night she alleges she was raped by disgraced producer Gilbert Rozon.

When it came time to discuss the aftermath of the event, her voice broke several times and tears accompanied her story.

The circumstances of the alleged assault are known. Tulasne had agreed to have Rozon take her home after a dinner to mark the end of the performances of Le Dîner de cons. When she got home, she refused to let him come up to her place, saying she wanted to walk her dog, but he insisted on accompanying her.

After a walk that she stretched out for “an hour, an hour and a half” in the hope that he would get tired, she wanted to go in and he allegedly followed her, despite a second refusal.

‘His eyes were crazy eyes’

He allegedly first pinned her against the wall, undoing the buttons of her dress. “I met his gaze and his eyes were crazy eyes. His eyes were bulging. He had a crazy look and I was very scared. I said to myself: he’s going to hit me. I was afraid that it would end badly and I said to myself: it’s better that I let him do it, I’m going to let him do it, it’s going to be over and he’s going to leave.

“I was in a state of total confusion and total shock because it was surreal, when I met his gaze I said to myself: he is going to hit me. I was afraid of dying.”

The rape allegedly took place in her bedroom afterwards.

Tulasne says she lived in a black hole in the days that followed, having no memory of the next day, or the day after, or the days that followed. The next four years were extremely difficult, according to her testimony.

‘I buried myself alive’

She said that after performing in a summer theatre in Sainte-Adèle in 1995, “the prospect of having to return to Montreal and finding myself in that apartment was too much for me, so I bought a house in Morin-Heights and then I buried myself alive in that house for four years.

“The person I was before 1994 disappeared. I had ambition, I had a taste for life, I was well, I was happy, I had a bright personality and then afterwards, I started to fade away. I had trouble seeing people. I blamed myself because I hadn’t stood up for myself. I had this feeling of having been lousy.

“I stopped seeing people, I stopped making arrangements for my job. I started watching TV all night. I would get up at noon the next day.”

Hurt by his words

She said she saw Rozon again for the first time in 2002, when she was taking part in a sketch at a Just for Laughs festival gala, a gala in which the producer was not involved, but he showed up during the fitting session when she had been dressed in a flamboyant pink suit. The producer allegedly exclaimed: “What kind of suit is that? You look like a big pink whore.”

“It really hurt me because I thought: he raped me and here he is calling me a big pink whore,” she said, crying.

Although she resumed some activities in the early 2000s, emerging from a deep depression with the help of a friend, she began a relationship at that time with a man, “a toxic person, a wife beater,” with whom she broke up after three years.

Alone and isolated

Since then, she said, “I’ve completely isolated myself. I live alone, I live with animals, I’m afraid of humans, especially men. Now, leaving my house is a challenge, really. I wish I never left my house.”

Her self-esteem also plummeted as a result of the events. “I realized that I had started to hate myself because I thought it was my behavior, my appearance, all that, that had made me go through what I had gone through.”

In 2017, she initially refused to give an interview to a Radio-Canada journalist who had contacted her to tell her that her name had come up in a journalistic investigation into Rozon. However, the next morning, when she heard on the radio that eight or nine women were denouncing the Just for Laughs producer, she said she felt “a duty of solidarity,” after which she contacted a lawyer from the Union des artistes. 

‘I want him to apologize‘

It was from this moment that she became involved in the case, even becoming a spokesperson for the group called “Les Courageuses”.

“I want Rozon to know what he did to us. I want him to acknowledge that he did those things. I want him to apologize and I want him to know that he stole our lives. When I think back to that 35-year-old woman that I was, with all those ambitions, that zest for life and the woman that I have become today who has nothing to do with it anymore, I consider that he stole my life,” she declared at the end of her testimony. The cross-examination was to follow in the afternoon.

Tulasne is the third of Rozon’s nine alleged victims to testify before Superior Court Judge Chantal Tremblay in the case that consolidates the nine civil lawsuits filed against him Tulasne is seeking $1.6 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews