MONTREAL -- This year, the slogan "la justice, c’est d’la marde" ("Justice is shit!") celebrates its 50th anniversary. At the time, women did not have the right to serve on juries.

To denounce this injustice, seven women, all members of cell X of the Women's Liberation Front (FLF), stormed the jury bench during Lise Balcer's appearance at the trial of FLQ leader Paul Rose, shouting "discrimination!" and "justice is shit! "

When police tried to remove them, Nicole Dostie, Francine Aubin, Nicole Therrien, Arlette Rouleau, Micheline Vézina, Louise Toupin and Marjolaine Péloquin chanted in chorus: "We are raped again!"

The demonstration calling for women jurors drew the ire of several media outlets and shicked the public. They were immediately sentenced to one and two months in prison for contempt of court, but that didn't prevent them from fighting the system and creating an opening in favour of the presence of women on juries.

THE PERFECT VICTIM DOESN'T EXIST

This page in history is important in order to understand the full significance of the waves of denunciations on social media. Despite all those that have shaken Quebec in recent years, from the point of view of the justice system, we are in the same place we were, as illustrated by the documentary film The Perfect Victim, by Monic Néron and Émilie Perreault.

It’s a difficult, disturbing, but essential truth to hear: we are stuck in an archaic system and unable to adapt to the experiences of the vast majority of victims/survivors of sexual assault.

If nothing concrete is put in place because we prefer to continue to demonize denunciation movements, we will still be at the same point in 50 years.

In a society that calls itself democratic, access to justice should not be the same as winning the lottery or dependent on our postal code. There's too little knowledge of the real risks of denouncing because no matter what our decision is, we always lose.

This system does not need to be perfected, because it was never the right mechanism to deal with this issue. So we need to start thinking about concrete and bold alternatives. We can no longer talk about rebuilding trust because the status quo and omerta are no longer an option. This confidence needs to be redefined.

A TRUNCATED VISION OF EXPERTISE

On Feb. 8, we learned that the working group tasked with laying the foundations for a tribunal specializing in sexual assault and domestic violence will be made up of representatives from the Ministries of Justice and Public Security, the Director criminal and penal prosecutions (DPCP), the Commission des services juridiques and the Court of Quebec.

However, the gap has become too great between us and the structures that are unable to meet our real needs.

We must aim further and much higher than a committee composed exclusively of actors in the current legal environment to reflect on the future of access to justice for victims/survivors.

Without social movements and speaking out, there would never have been a wave of denunciations or even an expert committee. It is therefore the minimum to plan and create decision-making spaces by and for the main stakeholders.

But if we're talking about a real committee of experts on access to justice for survivors, it should be made up mainly of those who have experienced this crime and who really reflect the plurality of experiences and diversity of Quebec society. Their subjectivity should be seen as sufficient, or even as an essential asset, to reduce the gap between de jure and de facto equality.

ADVOCACY FOR INNOVATIVE IDEAS

Beyond the specialized tribunal which will meet the needs of the 5 per cent of victims/survivors who have the option to report to police, it would be interesting to innovate and to address the needs of 95 per cent of victims/survivors that do not go through the criminal justice system -- those that the system completely lets fall under an illusion of democracy.

An interesting avenue to explore would be the idea of ​​creating a new area of ​​law specializing in gender-based violence so that it can recognize the historical, social and above all systemic nature of this problem with too many ramifications.

By creating a new area of ​​gender-based law, the idea would be that it can ensure that we genuinely advance our interests as survivors and ensure our safety, in addition to potentially compensating us. We will not be able to find solutions with a real impact on the lives of people/survivors if we maintain our blind spots because we fail to recognize the expertise of people who have had to live and survive in the face of this system hostile to their own existence and subjectivity.

We cannot persist in the same way and hope for a different result, because in Canadian criminal law, the hierarchical view of the seriousness of what sexual assault is, is very problematic and unsuited to the complexity of the trauma represented by sexual violence.

We have a date with history, let's try not to make it another missed opportunity.

- Mélanie Lemay is an art therapist and co-founder of Quebec Against Sexual Violence (QCVS). Her master's thesis focused on the feeling of justice of victims/survivors in the era of #MeToo

- Kharoll-Ann Souffrant is a docitoral student in social service at the University of Ottawa, a Vanier Fellow and author of the forthcoming book The Privilege of Denouncing.