Gilbert Rozon’s trial disrupted by exchange of insults, threats

Warning: This story contains allegations of sexual assault.

The civil trial of Gilbert Rozon, who is sued by nine women who allege they were sexually assaulted by the disgraced former comedy mogul, was the scene of chaos on Thursday when actress Danie Frenette, one of the accusers, insulted Rozon during the break.

“What kind of lies does he have? He’s an (expletive) liar. An (expletive),” she said in the middle of the courtroom, after Rozon denied all allegations made against him by either Frenette or her stepdaughter, actress Salomé Corbo, during his testimony.

“No class,” Rozon muttered as he left the courtroom.

Once he left the courtroom, Frenette’s partner and Corbo’s father, Stefano Corbo, allegedly first pulled Rozon’s ear and then grabbed his throat, uttering threats.

Passing by the journalists, Rozon denounced the fact he was “being insulted in open court. I’m giving my testimony, I took an oath, I told the truth. The allegations are unbelievable.”

Returning before Judge Chantal Tremblay, Rozon claimed Stefano Corbo allegedly told him while grabbing his throat: “My (expletive), my (expletive), I will strangle you, I will suffocate you.”

Rozon’s lawyer, Mélanie Morin, who witnessed the incident, expressed her dismay to the judge.

Judge Tremblay immediately called Stefano Corbo to the witness stand, removed him from the courtroom, and asked him to follow the trial electronically for the remainder of the proceedings. She then prematurely adjourned the hearing for the lunch break.

Rozon denies everything

Earlier, Rozon had categorically denied all of Frenette’s allegations. She alleges she was raped twice and that she was subjected to groping by the accused, the first time at his home during a party at the end of the 1988 Just for Laughs Festival. Frenette had been hired to manage the street arts component of the event.

According to her, he took her to a wooded area of ​​his property to remove her windbreaker and lay her on the ground before raping her for the first time. Rozon described as “completely implausible” the possibility that he would have committed such acts in front of guests, adding that “there was never a wooded area on my property” and that he had no memory of even seeing her at that party.

He also denied engaging in any groping on a park bench on Île Sainte-Hélène, saying he never went there with her. He also denied the second alleged rape, an incident in which Frenette claimed he showed up at her house in the middle of the night, demanding she open the door.

“I never went to her house,” he stated. “I never had sexual relations with her,” he said in response to the hearing of a recording in which she claimed to have later had consensual relations with Rozon.

As for Salomé Corbo, who is not a plaintiff in this case but who testified to similar incidents, the actress stated in court that when she was only 13 years old, Rozon had cornered her on a staircase, also during a festival closing party, and sexually assaulted her. As a teenager, she landed her first job in 1989 as a host at a festival booth.

Rozon denied it. He said he wondered why she would have said such a thing, only to conclude that it was “because she’s Danie Frenette’s stepdaughter.”

Corbo also testified in court that approximately 11 years later, in 2001, he called her a “(expletive) annoying woman” during a meeting in a bar after a strap slipped off her shoulder.

“I don’t talk like that,” the accused stated.

The hearing was scheduled to resume Thursday afternoon.

A long legal process

Rozon is being sued for approximately $14 million in a civil lawsuit by nine women who accuse him of sexually assaulting them. The lawsuit, filed by Patricia Tulasne, Lyne Charlebois, Anne-Marie Charrette, Annick Charrette, Sophie Moreau, Frenette, Guylaine Courcelles, Mary Sicari, and Martine Roy, follows a 2017 application for authorization to file a class action against the businessman by a group of women nicknamed Les Courageuses. Initially granted at first instance in 2018, Rozon had this application dismissed by the Court of Appeal in 2020.

At the same time, 14 women filed complaints with the police, but the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions only accepted Charrette’s complaint. Rozon was acquitted in 2020 on the basis of reasonable doubt. Tulasne, who acted as spokesperson for Les Courageuses, was the first to file a civil lawsuit against Rozon in April 2021. The eight other women followed suit, and all the lawsuits were consolidated to lead to the trial that began last December and has been interrupted numerous times due to legal disputes.

So far, 42 witnesses have been heard in the lawsuit, including the nine plaintiffs and seven other women, including Julie Snyder, Salomé Corbo, Pénélope McQuade, and Rozon’s ex-partner, Véronique Moreau, who all claimed to have also suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the defendant.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews