Captain Fountaine Journal de Quebec

Unfounded rape charge
The plaintiff and the City in court

Roch Guimont, a young man from Saint-Foy who had to give up his career in the police force after having been the subject of an "unfounded" sexual assault charge, claims $670,000 dollars in damage from the plaintiff, an young woman from Outaouais, as well as from the City of Quebec.

He reports to have met her the evening of November 16th, 2001 at the bar La Grimace, where he had ended up with two friends and where the young woman worked as waitress. At the time, he was a student at the Nicolet Police Institute.
She let him see, on several occasions, that she would like "to spend time only with him." The bouncer of the bar informed him; "that she is easy and that a couple of the staff have slept with her."

At closing, he offers to drive her back to her house. She accepts. But, en route, he proposes to her to go to his place, which she also accepts "spontaneously."
They have a sexual encounter, and this, without any objection on behalf of the young girl. On the contrary, he affirms, "she actively participates," affirms the young man today aged 31.

After the encounter, he falls asleep. She benefits to leave the apartment in the middle of the night. She goes in a telephone booth, dials 9-1-1 and asks where she is, because she is from out of town. She also asks that a taxi be sent to her. Never does she complain to have been sexually assaulted.

She brought action 24 hours later, the night from November 17th to 18th. Roch Guimont, to whom the young woman would have transmitted an STD at the time of the sexual encounter, says to have been humiliated, on November 22nd, 2001, when investigators from the Quebec City Police came to arrest him at the Police Institute, in the presence of his classmates.

Acquitted

Two and half years later, that is to say on February 5th 2004, Roch Guimont is acquitted by a jury composed of four women and eight men, at the end of a lawsuit presided by Judge Richard Grenier, of the Superior court. His prosecutor, Mr. Guy Bertrand, had submitted to the members of the jury the argument claiming that the plaintiff lied and that she had invented the entire story with the purpose of getting back together with her lover.

It is equally what Roch Guimont intends to show, by means of the present request, in front of a Superior court judge sitting in civil court.

He blames the young woman to have made a bold and unjustified accusation, and the City Police Investigators to have shown negligence in the control of their investigation. He states that the investigator never checked the version which he gave with the witnesses who could corroborate it.

Even if he had been acquitted, Roch Guimont saw the door of the Police Institute being closed in front of him and, today still, he is held to furnish proof itself to those who had knowledge of the affair. He maintains to have been affected psychologically by these unjust charges and the fact of seeing his reputation completely destroyed, as well as the affair being given such strong media coverage.

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