By turning to literature, Léa Clermont-Dion finds in Laying a Complaint the means to reclaim her story, scrutinized from all angles during a highly publicized trial. It also materializes, in its own way, a prophecy one day decreed by Lise Payette. Explanations.
“When you’re a little older, you’ll write a book about it,” Lise Payette said one day to Léa Clermont-Dion, trying to convince her that she was right to sign, at his invitation, a document denying that she was, at the age of 17, the victim of sexual assault at the hands of her former mentor and boss, Michel Venne.
Léa Clermont-Dion is now a little older – 32 – and has finally written her book about it, although without ever naming, either between the pages or during our interview, the man in question. “This story is mine, not hers,” she immediately announces in File Complaint, the story of the legal process in which she engaged on October 26, 2017 and which ended with a conviction on June 23, 2021, almost four years and two children later.
“The work of writing has become a form of empowerment. “I especially didn’t want it to be a sensationalist book,” explains the woman who, moreover, published this story at Le Cheval d’August, a purely literary publishing house under whose banner the work of Fanny Britt is published. , Sophie Bienvenu and Mikella Nicol.
Filing a complaint thus responds first and foremost to real work on language, to the construction of a story which chronicles not only the public part of a trial, but also its intimate and luminous side. daily life of what the complainant does – feeding her children, calling her mother – in order not to be swallowed up by her anxieties.
Its author also weighs, implicitly, the heritage of the movement
The writing process will necessarily have been saving for the researcher and director (You just have to file a complaint, I salute you slut), after years of having to measure each of her words in order to ensure that none of them they don’t turn against her.
“While, as literature is one of the last places of freedom in our society,” continues the reader of Annie Ernaux and Maggie Nelson, “I was able to write what I wanted to write, in the way I wanted. »
Filing a complaint is also the story of a loss of faith in our society and in those who hold the power to bring about a new world. Galvanized by the speeches of René Lévesque presented to her by her mother when she was still a teenager, Léa Clermont-Dion very early became a fervent sovereignist and feminist.
She was 14 years old when in 2006 she collaborated in the organization of a conference at UQAM called L’égalité, acquis?, a title whose naive optimism amuses her a lot today. His participation in the event even earned him an invitation to the show Le Point. “It aroused a certain curiosity, that a 14-year-old girl called herself a feminist, because it was not at all a golden age for feminism,” she remembers. Let’s measure how far we’ve come.
Her aggression will then extinguish in her any desire to invest in public life, a dream for one who was more the type to devote her weekends to parliamentary simulations than to hanging out at the shopping center.
“But I like to say that it’s a sad story that ends well,” she hastens to add, evoking the verdict, but more broadly the straitjacket from which this trial will have allowed her to free herself, thanks to to those who supported her. Endearingly righteous characters, including investigator Daniel Raymond, who cuddled Léa’s baby in the corridors of the courthouse.
“Daniel gave me back my faith in humanity,” she confides about the man who died last July of cancer. He was 49 years old.
Léa Clermont-Dion is not, however, blindly optimistic and her stomach sinks every time when visiting a secondary school, where she regularly gives lectures, a young man talks to her about his admiration for Andrew Tate and others. proud detractors of feminism.
And although progress, including the advent of the specialized court for sexual violence and domestic violence, rejoices her, the author is still saddened that each of the gestures of a victim is scrutinized, from all angles, like this happened again last month in the Court of Appeal, where Michel Venne is trying to overturn the verdict. “The defense lawyer emphasized in her closing argument that I had given the boss a kiss. But why is this relevant? »
The myth of the perfect victim clearly dies hard, but Léa Clermont-Dion no longer considers herself a victim. “It bears repeating: you can call yourself a victim at a given moment and then no longer recognize yourself in that word. I was a victim, I am no longer a victim and it was very much the writing of the book that allowed me to move past it. »
Leah thought out loud. “I believe in forgiveness. But in my case, I’m talking less about forgiving a person than about forgiving a situation. Is it possible to forgive a situation? »
In bookstore Tuesday.
