Gilbert Rozon trial: Julie Snyder details alleged 1991 sexual assault

Host and producer Julie Snyder laboriously recounted Thursday, her voice cracking with emotion and taking numerous pauses, the assault she alleges she suffered at the hands of disgraced producer Gilbert Rozon in 1991 in Paris.

Snyder is testifying in the civil lawsuit for sexual assault filed by nine other women against the former comedy mogul.

Snyder, who was 23 and hosting the show “Sortir” at the time, was in Paris to cover Michel Courtemanche’s performances and, wanting to extend her stay to go skiing with friends, she had been invited to stay in the Just for Laughs company apartment since her stay at the hotel was coming to an end.

On the third day, Gilbert Rozon also showed up at the apartment and, after talking to him, she went to bed. She was sleeping soundly when she was awakened by pressure behind her.

“I opened my eyes and I had a hand on my chest and there was like a blow being given to my back. … I felt something inside me. I felt that my pajamas had gone inside me. I felt the push that continued,” she said.

At first, she said she thought that someone had broken in “and then I was afraid of being stabbed.”

“When I turned around, I felt a sense of relief because I saw that it wasn’t a criminal with a knife, I saw Gilbert Rozon’s face.”

Initially believing that he had simply gone to the wrong room, she quickly understood that this was not the case when the man was naked in front of her and erect, according to her testimony.

‘He had a crazy look’

“He was like in a trance. It was not the same person. His eyes were bulging, his look was crazy and he didn’t speak. He made sounds, but he didn’t speak. He was in a state of orgasm,” she described.

“I said to myself: I won’t get killed, but I will get raped.”

She then asked to go to the bathroom where she developed an escape plan and, on leaving, told Rozon that she was going to make herself a coffee. Instead, she took her bag and shoes and ran away.

“When I got to the street, I ran for my life, I ran like I’ve never run in my life,” she said. When he wasn’t following her, “I said to myself, ‘you’re out, you’re safe, you’re out, no need to run, you’re safe.’ He attacked me, but I ran away from the rest.”

She went to a friend’s house and then returned to the apartment to pick up her luggage later that day, but didn’t say a word to anyone. “I didn’t even tell my mother. I didn’t confide in my mother,” she said, adding she “closed a drawer in my head.”

She didn’t want to denounce Rozon, “one of the most powerful people in Quebec, regardless of gender,” fearing that she would be judged and harm her career.

She rarely opened that famous drawer in her head in the years that followed. In 1998, she confided in her colleague Louis Noël, a friend she trusted completely, for the first time.

Then, after Rozon pleaded guilty to sexual assault on a 19-year-old woman at the Manoir Rouville-Campbell in Montérégie and received an absolute absolution in 1998, she ate with him, again in Paris.

“I didn’t confront him directly, but I told him, ‘Gilbert, you know you’re sick,’” inviting him to go to therapy. Rozon reportedly thanked her for the advice.

In 2017, when the allegations of several people against him became public in the media, she finally decided to file a complaint with Montreal police (SPVM).

‘Shut your mouth!

When she saw him, on the news say: “I have never made love to someone if a person says no to me. Never!”, she says she shouted: “Shut your mouth. I could never say no, I was sleeping. How extremely indecent after all the indecencies you have committed to say that. The least you can do is just keep quiet.”

The producer carries a certain weight of guilt, stating that her motivation for finally filing a complaint went back to the events at Manoir Rouville-Campbell. An article by the legal columnist Yves Boisvert, in which he wondered at the time what would have happened if the young croupier of the Manoir had not been the only one to file a complaint, had shaken her.

“If I had raised my hand in 1998, maybe it would have stopped. … I said to myself: ‘I didn’t raise my hand in 98, but now I’m going to do it.’

“The law that best protects attackers is the law of silence,” she argued at the end of her testimony.

Snyder’s complaint never made it to court. The Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP), after meeting with 14 alleged victims, had only retained one of the complaints for which Rozon was to be acquitted in December 2020.

WATCH: Montreal court: 9 women sue Gilbert Rozon $14M, allege sexual assault

A group of alleged victims, who called themselves “Les Courageuses,” had attempted to launch a class action against the comedy magnate, but the appeal, after being accepted by the Superior Court, was rejected by the Court of Appeal. The latter had instead invited the plaintiffs to file individual lawsuits. Nine of them went ahead.

Snyder is not part of this group of nine plaintiffs and her testimony is part of an attempt by their lawyers to establish so-called similar fact evidence, which consists of demonstrating that Rozon has a heavy history of similar acts.

In return, she and host Pénélope McQuade are being sued for defamation by Rozon, who is claiming $450,000 from them in connection with comments they made about him during the show La semaine des 4 Julie in September 2020.

Snyder was to be cross-examined in the afternoon.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews