{"id":9649,"date":"2017-10-27T07:50:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T11:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=9649"},"modified":"2017-10-27T07:50:22","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T11:50:22","slug":"justice-minister-denounces-judges-comments-teen-sexual-assault-victims-weight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2017\/10\/27\/justice-minister-denounces-judges-comments-teen-sexual-assault-victims-weight\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice minister denounces judge’s comments on teen sexual assault victim’s weight"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Quebec’s justice minister says comments made by a\u00a0Quebec court judge about\u00a0a teenage victim assaulted by her taxi driver are unacceptable, after it came to light that the judge had commented on the girl’s weight and suggested\u00a0she enjoyed getting attention from a handsome older man.<\/p>\n

In May, Judge Jean-Paul Braun found taxi driver Carlo\u00a0Figaro guilty of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old\u00a0passenger in 2015.<\/p>\n

During the trial,\u00a0Braun commented on the victim’s appearance, saying she was “a bit overweight, but she has a pretty face.”<\/p>\n

When asked about Braun’s comments Wednesday morning, Justice Minister St\u00e9phanie Vall\u00e9e\u00a0told reporters they were\u00a0“unacceptable” and that\u00a0she would be filing a complaint with Quebec’s magistrates council.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for that body, which hears complaints against judges, said for now it will\u00a0not be commenting on Braun’s remarks.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Quebec court also declined to comment, referring\u00a0questions back to the\u00a0magistrates council.<\/p>\n

According to the victim’s version of events, outlined in the judgment, on the night of the assault,\u00a0Figaro\u00a0stopped the car not far from her house and\u00a0licked her face. She pushed him away and tried to get out, but in the meantime he\u00a0touched her breasts and genitals over her clothing and unbuttoned her shirt.<\/p>\n

Figaro\u00a0denied that any sexual contact occurred, but said the victim rubbed the back of his head while she was in the car.<\/p>\n

Figaro,\u00a0now 49, has yet to be sentenced.<\/p>\n

His next court date is in November.\u00a0The defence has appealed his conviction.<\/p>\n

‘Not the same consent’<\/h2>\n

Audio recordings of the court proceedings show that\u00a0Braun\u00a0also went\u00a0back and forth with Crown prosecutor\u00a0Am\u00e9lie\u00a0Rivard, suggesting there are degrees of consent and questioning exactly which\u00a0actions required Figaro to get the victim’s consent.<\/p>\n

The judge said it is not the same to consent to kiss someone and to “mettre \u2026 la main au panier,” a French expression that usually refers to touching someone’s rear end.<\/p>\n

Rivard\u00a0replied that she hadn’t come across that\u00a0distinction in the jurisprudence.<\/p>\n

Braun also highlighted the girl’s strict\u00a0religious upbringing\u00a0and suggested\u00a0she enjoyed getting the attention from a man who “looks good” and that she had even flirted with him.<\/p>\n

Rivard said the girl was simply being polite\u00a0and that even if she were flirting, it\u00a0didn’t\u00a0mean that constituted consent.<\/p>\n

Braun also\u00a0commented in his written decision on the appearance of the 49-year-old taxi driver.<\/p>\n

“He looks good and doesn’t seem his age,” the judge stated.<\/p>\n

“We can see from his testimony\u00a0\u2026\u00a0that he has nice manners and that he likes to wear cologne:\u00a0with\u00a0Versace\u00a0when he goes out, and with other less-expensive\u00a0colognes during the week.”<\/p>\n

Figaro\u00a0denied ever noticing the 17-year-old\u00a0in the past, even though he stopped at the coffee shop where she worked regularly.<\/p>\n

The judge, in his ruling, stated that he finds that hard to believe, “taking into consideration the [victim’s] figure, which is quite voluptuous; the court specifies that she is a pretty young girl.”<\/p>\n

Despite his line of questioning regarding the girl’s role in the assault, Braun found Figaro\u00a0guilty.<\/p>\n

In his decision, Braun said that while the victim perhaps didn’t make it clear that she didn’t want to be kissed, through her body language and words, she did make it clear that she didn’t consent to what happened after that.<\/p>\n

‘Completely unacceptable’<\/h2>\n

CALACS West Island, a support group for survivors of sexual assault, said\u00a0the comments were disturbing.<\/p>\n

“He gave messages that were reprehensible \u2026\u00a0giving her the message that even though she was sexually assaulted, maybe in some way, she was flattered by these comments,” Caroline Deslauriers, a counsellor\u00a0with CALACS, told CBC News.<\/p>\n

“These comments are completely unacceptable. They’re unacceptable from anybody, but especially coming from a judge.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source cbc.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quebec’s justice minister says comments made by a\u00a0Quebec court judge about\u00a0a teenage victim assaulted by her taxi driver are unacceptable, after it came to light that the judge had commented on the girl’s weight and […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":9651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2],"tags":[4382,4381],"class_list":{"0":"post-9649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"category-news","9":"tag-judge-jean-paul-braun","10":"tag-quebec-court","11":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9652,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9649\/revisions\/9652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}