Court overturns sex-assault conviction
Judge criticized for ruling based on prejudice
MONTREAL • The Quebec Court of Appeal has annulled the sexual-assault conviction of a man after determining the guilty verdict was based on a judge’s prejudices toward young men.
Trial judge Manon Ouimet rejected testimony by Timothy Robbins that he walked away when he encountered a couple engaged in sexual activity.
“The Court does not believe that he quickly left the bathroom when (Josh Deschamps) was having sex with (the victim). For any normal young man, it is an exciting scene to look at,” Ouimet noted in her decision.
But the panel of three appeal judges were unanimous in their decision that Ouimet based this opinion on prejudice.
“The comments … are unfortunate. They call up prejudices and stereotypes, which constitute an error in law,” the appellate court ruled in its decision to order that Robbins, now 31, have a new trial on a charge alleging he sexually assaulted a woman in Montreal in 2008.
“For sure, the judge could have not believed (Robbins) based on other reasons arising from the evidence. (The accused) always benefits from the presumption of innocence, which cannot be rejected on the basis of prejudices,” the judges wrote. “In reading (Ouimet’s) motives for her decision, we don’t know if she found (Robbins) guilty based on the persuasive force of the evidence or that because of his young age, he had no choice but to assist or participate in a sexual act in progress.”
Robbins was released from a detention centre in June 2016, six days after Ouimet sentenced him to a 15-month prison term. The appellate court agreed back then that he should be freed while his appeal was pending.
On Oct. 5, 2015, Ouimet convicted Robbins and his friend at the time, Deschamps, now 28, of having sexually assaulted the 18-year-old woman while both men were visiting Montreal on a break from training at the military base in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu.
The victim waited several months before she reported what happened to police and, as the Quebec Court of Appeal noted in its decision, the key evidence in Robbins’s case involved her version of what happened versus his.
The woman said she met Robbins while they partied in a Montreal bar with mutual friends. She said Robbins’s friends urged him to return to his hotel room because he was very drunk and she decided to accompany him. The pair had consensual sex inside the room and the victim decided to leave when other men who were staying in the same room, including Deschamps, showed up later.
The woman was unfamiliar with Montreal and Robbins and Deschamps agreed to help her locate the hotel where she was staying. When they arrived at her hotel room, the victim’s friend asked her to sleep somewhere else because she had a guest in the room.
The victim asked Robbins and Deschamps if she could return to their room and sleep there. The victim testified that, during the trips between the two hotels, Deschamps groped her several times even though she asked him to stop.
She also alleged that when they returned to Robbins and Deschamps’s room, all three ended up in the bathroom where both men raped her. She testified that she clearly stated that she did not want to have sex with either man when they entered the bathroom.
Robbins testified that when he, Deschamps and the victim returned to his hotel, the woman and his friend were kissing “furiously.” He said he decided to take the stairs because he didn’t want to be “the third guy in the elevator.” As part of her testimony, the woman, who had consumed several drinks that night, conceded that she let Deschamps kiss her at that point because she “felt like I couldn’t make him stop.”
Robbins’ version of what happened in the bathroom differed significantly from the victim’s. He said he merely walked in to brush his teeth, noticed that the victim was about to perform fellatio on Deschamps and headed to his bed to sleep.
Deschamps was also sentenced to a 15-month prison term, but did not appeal.
THEY CALL UP PREJUDICES AND STEREOTYPES, WHICH CONSTITUTE AN ERROR IN LAW.