QUEBEC CITY -- Harold LeBel will testify Monday at his sexual assault trial. His lawyer, Maxime Roy, waited until the fourth day of the trial to make the announcement.
LeBel, who is 60 years old, is a former Parti Québécois MNA. He was arrested on Dec. 15, 2020, and charged with sexual assault. The identity of the plaintiff is protected by a publication ban.
Since the beginning of the proceedings, which are being held at the Rimouski courthouse, only two people have testified for the Crown: a Sûreté du Québec police officer and the alleged victim.
The latter stated that on October 2017, LeBel kissed her and unhooked her bra. He insisted on entering the room where she had taken refuge and fondled her all night, she said.
Believing he had detected incongruities in the plaintiff's testimony, Roy suggested during cross-examination that these events had not occurred at all.
"The only thing that really happened was that Mr. LeBel fell asleep and the next day you woke up stuck," the defence lawyer told the jury.
Earlier in the day, the plaintiff had revealed that she had written a long email to Harold LeBel in February 2020, in which she told him she remembered every minute of the assault.
She read out LeBel's reply in court, that he had "no memory" of the evening, as he had been drinking too much.
"That was an evening of drinking I wish I had never experienced," he wrote to the plaintiff.
A long-time sovereigntist activist, Harold LeBel had been elected under the PQ banner in 2014 and re-elected in 2018.
After he was excluded from the PQ he sat as an independent MNA between December 2020 and October 2022.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Nov. 10, 2022
