Boy, 13, held after girl attacked

Suspect pleads not guilty to charges including attempted murder, sexual assault

A 13-year-old boy was arraigned in Quebec Youth Court in Joliette on a variety of charges Friday after a bloodied, traumatized girl, also 13, sought refuge in her Repentigny home with a stab wound and cuts and bruises on her throat, face and left thigh.

He has been charged with sexual assault, attempted murder, forcible confinement and using a weapon to commit sexual assault.

The boy pleaded not guilty to all charges. His next court date will be a scheduling hearing Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, Chief Inspector Serge Adam of Repentigny municipal police had stated that the girl was “possibly sexually assaulted,” and the subsequent charges bear that out.

The girl had been held against her will for several hours and violently attacked, having been lured “under false pretences” into the basement of a neighbouring home after her classes had ended, he said. The girl ran into her Gauthier St. home at 8:56 p.m., “half-naked and in bad shape, with visible wounds. The violence was evident,” Adam said.

The girl has a knife wound that perforated her right lung, he said, inflicted through her right breast.

“She also has a possible broken nose” in addition to lacerations on her throat, face and left thigh.

After briefly questioning the girl, police arrested the suspect, who lives several houses away.

“It appears,” Adam said, that “the girl was able to escape when the boy’s parents arrived at that family’s home.”

Sgt. Bruno Marier with the Repentigny police said the boy and the girl were acquainted before Thursday’s violence.

The girl’s parents had reported her missing at 6:20 p.m., Adam said. “She failed to return from school about 4 or 4:30 p.m.

“Her parents had already done a lot of research on their side” before they appealed to local police, Adam said. “They had been calling all her friends, family members, neighbours, before they called us.”

More than a dozen Repentigny officers, all of those immediately available in the municipality of 87,000 northeast of Montreal Island, were deployed to begin an immediate search.

“Something didn’t smell right. This wasn’t normal.” Adam said. The parents, he added, were “very worried. She’s a young girl from a good family.

“There are no antecedents of any kind — no problem with running away or consumption of drugs or alcohol.

“We’d never been to the family home.”

“This is a very sad sequence of events,” Adam reflected.

The boy suspected of the assault had not previously been encountered by police, Adam said. He said he did not know whether the boy was found with any wounds.

The legal protocol for victims of sexual assault — to obtain evidence accepted by the courts — was being followed, Adam specified.

The girl was transferred from Le Gardeur Hospital to the Ste. Justine Hospital in Montreal, where she is considered in serious but stable condition.

“Given her age, it was decided this was the best place for her.

“They have all the specialists,” Adam said, including psychological counselling.