Annie refuses to give up
La Longue Nuit d’Annie traces the triumph of her recovery following a robbery where she was beaten and her throat slit
MONTREAL— Don’t call Annie Pellerin a victim. Call her a survivor.
Blood was everywhere in the Harvey’s restaurant that October morning in 1996. The bodies of two men were lying at impossible angles, their heads bashed in and their throats slit.
In the basement, near an unopened safe, police officers found a third body so bloodied and battered they couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. They figured there was no way the person could live. But they had never met anyone like Annie Pellerin. Her throat had been slit. She’d been stabbed several times in the chest and had been beaten so hard on the back of her head with the flat side of a machete that doctors could see her brain through the cracks in her skull.
Still, Pellerin lived to testify more than two years later against Tran Sy Tuan, the oldest of the men who tried to kill her during a robbery gone wrong. Tran, the only one charged as an adult in the case, was sentenced to life. Two 15- year- olds were each sentenced to two years in a detention centre. Nine years after the attack, 29year- old Pellerin has come out with a book about her experience. La Longue Nuit d’Annie Annie’s
( Long Night) tells of her long and arduous journey from a moment that changed her life — a journey in which she had to learn to walk, talk, read and discover who she was all over again. The book has been a sensation in Quebec, where Pellerin’s survival is considered a miracle, and where she is very much admired for having the courage to write her story, with the help of Radio-Canada journalist Isabelle Richer.
Tiny, with elfin features, she has been the toast of French radio and television. Guy A. Lepage, the often verbose host of Radio-Canada’s TV talk show Tout Le Monde En Parle Everybody’s
( Talking About It), was practically speechless from emotion as he toasted her during last Sunday’s program. She takes it all in stride but admits it wasn’t easy to relive the horror of waiting on the floor of a fast- food restaurant for help. It was also frustrating, she said, when she finally began to look for work again, only to be put off by potential employers uncomfortable with the idea of hiring someone who had been through such a nightmare. But in so doing, Pellerin has managed, in her own words, to “ de- dramatize” the facts of her story and reinvent herself as a fierce spokeswoman for victims everywhere.
“ The thing that really gets me is that people tend to group all victims into the same category. It’s like, ‘ Oh, you poor things.’ We aren’t poor things. Hello? I’m not a poor thing. I didn’t fall apart.
“ Each of our experiences as a victim is different. It has never been in my nature to give up. When I was younger, it was always me who bossed the boys on my street. I was a leader, not a quitter.” With the publication of La Longue Nuit d’Annie, Pellerin is now ready to turn the page. After sending out about 40 résumés to no avail, she was hired last year to work at a computer company in the west end of Montreal.
There are also plans to go back to school to become qualified to work with juvenile delinquents in provincial “reception centres,” she says.
“ Maybe if I get involved, that’ll mean a few less crimes committed out on the street. I think I can understand them. And I think I can help.” Her positive attitude is evident
in the way she has calmly dealt with questions
during call- in programs
over the past week.
Does she think the justice system is weighted
toward the accused?
Can she forgive her attackers? Is she upset that her two juvenile attackers are now walking free? What did she think when Tran committed suicide a year ago in a maximum security prison in Quebec? And how does she get on with her life when it was literally slashed to bits?
“ Listen,” she says, “ life doesn’t end. I was shocked when Tran died, but that’s all. And the justice system, well, it may seem unfair but I know it’s there to ensure the fairest outcome, so that the law will triumph. Of course, I wasn’t happy ( when her attackers were freed), but those are the breaks.”