STRENGTH AND SUPPORT
Rally organizers targeted by hate messages online
Camila Vasquez, right, hugs her sister Mariana Vasquez in front of the Montreal courthouse on Sunday after they spoke of sexual abuse. More than 1,000 people marched to the courthouse to demand justice and show their support for the victims of sexual assault.
Over 1,000 people marched from Parc La Fontaine to the Montreal courthouse on Sunday to demand justice and show support for sexual assault victims following a wave of allegations on Instagram in Quebec since the beginning of the month.
The demonstration began at noon with speeches and a concert in the park before the peaceful march on a scorching day.
“I’m here to denounce all the injustice and to support the victims,” said Marie-laurence Carrière, a Montrealer who said she was sexually assaulted while riding in a taxi last year. She watched the concert holding a sign reading “Je vous crois.”
Naïla Rabel, who was one of the speakers invited to address the crowd after event organizers saw her posts on Instagram about her own experience, said she wanted to raise awareness of the high proportion of Black women like herself, and Indigenous women, who are victims of sexual abuse.
While a recent Statistics Canada report found that one in three women in the country is the victim of sexual assault at least once in their lifetime, the estimate is three out of four among Indigenous women and Black women, she said.
“So I am here to say, ‘We exist,’” Rabel said.
The Laval resident said she was sexually assaulted four years ago during an evening out with friends. After going out for drinks, she said, she fell asleep at the home of a friend where the group had ended up. She awoke to two men on top of her, assaulting her, Rabel said.
A judge later issued a protection order, or peace bond, that prohibited her aggressors from communicating with her for a year, she said, adding that it wasn’t the justice she was seeking. The peace bond, known as an “810 order” because it falls under Section 810 of the Criminal Code of Canada, has now expired, she said. The 810 order was issued on her birthday, and it ended on her birthday a year later, she said.
Organizers of the protest said last week they were targeted by online hate messages that contained their names, photos and IP addresses, causing them to briefly consider postponing Sunday’s event.
As with any public protest, Montreal police were on hand in large numbers to escort the marchers as they left the park and wended their way to the courthouse.
The march was organized after a page was created on Instagram in early July offering a dedicated “safe place” for survivors of sexual assault to share their stories. The allegations initially focused on several prominent Quebec artists. Other Instagram accounts — including victims.voices.quebec, which had 12,600 followers as of Sunday — have since been created.
“It’s real, it’s happening to people you know and it’s happening everywhere,” Avery Albert, who participated in Sunday’s march with her younger sister, said of sexual aggressions.
Albert said her cousin, a trans nonbinary person, recently told family about being the target of violence while working in the restaurant industry in Montreal.
She said her sister, Madison Albert, now 18, quit her job in a restaurant after a month last year when she was the victim of sexual misconduct and found little support from co-workers.
“I didn’t feel it was a safe environment,” she said. “People don’t condone it, but they also don’t condemn it. That’s something important to touch on, which is saying something and standing up for your fellow employees and talking to bosses, even if you risk losing your job for it.”