Judge expected to deliver verdict in Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin sexual assault trial | 24CA News
A choose is predicted to ship a verdict in a sexual assault trial on Monday involving Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the previous head of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine marketing campaign.
Fortin, who has maintained his innocence, was charged with one rely of sexual assault by Quebec prosecutors final 12 months. Judge Richard Meredith is predicted to ship a choice Monday afternoon in Gatineau, Que. There was no jury within the trial, which started in September and wrapped up in October.
The complainant within the case, who was attending navy school with Fortin in 1988 in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., testified on the trial that she wakened one evening in her dorm room to discover a man masturbating himself utilizing one in every of her palms, whereas one other hand was on her breast.
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A publication ban protects her title and any particulars that would determine her.
She alleged throughout the trial Fortin was the perpetrator “without a doubt.” In the Crown prosecutor’s closing assertion, Diane Legault argued there was no motive to imagine the complainant would have forgotten, or develop into mistaken concerning the identification of her aggressor within the years because the alleged incident.
The complainant testified she was conscious of how such complaints had been dealt with by the Canadian Armed Forces on the time, and that information deterred her from wanting anybody to know what occurred. It was solely after she had retired and now not feared profession repercussions that she introduced the alleged incident ahead in 2021, the prosecutor mentioned.
Fortin’s defence lawyer, Isabel Schurman, had requested the choose for an acquittal. She mentioned that the complainant’s testimony lacked credibility, and that different witnesses had didn’t again up a number of the particulars of her story.
A key level for the defence was that whereas the complainant mentioned she instructed her ex-boyfriend concerning the incident proper afterward, he instructed the court docket he had no reminiscence of the dialog.
Fortin, who was faraway from his place answerable for the COVID-19 vaccine marketing campaign in May 2021 as a consequence of an investigation into the allegation, is individually difficult that dismissal within the Federal Court of Canada.
— with recordsdata from The Canadian Press
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