Quebec police probe alleged sex assault in Cuba after reports naming discharged man

Police in Quebec say they’re investigating the alleged sexual assault of a Quebec lady that befell in Cuba.

However they don’t seem to be saying if the suspect is a person named Monday in media studies as Simon Houle, who was not too long ago granted a controversial conditional discharge for sexual assault after pleading responsible in a separate 2019 case.

On Monday, each Radio-Canada and Le Journal de Montreal printed studies citing a lady named Vickie Vachon, who alleged to the retailers that she had been assaulted by Houle days after he was granted the discharge.

International Information has not independently verified these studies and Houle’s lawyer didn’t reply to a request for remark despatched on Monday morning. In that request for remark, International Information requested if Houle had been in Cuba and whether or not he has been notified of the investigation underway.

In response to a query from International Information, Quebec police confirmed an investigation into an alleged sexual assault of a Quebec lady whereas in Cuba.

“I can not affirm the identification of the suspect as a result of we’re at first of the investigation,” a spokesperson for La Régie de police du Lac des Deux-Montagnes mentioned in French in an e-mail.

“We’ve got to fulfill with the sufferer to get her model after which proceed with the identification following procedures that may be upheld in court docket.”

Within the studies, Radio-Canada and Le Journal de Montreal cited Vachon as saying that she had been at a resort in Cayo Coco, Cuba, when she alleged Houle groped her.

Vachon mentioned in these studies she met Houle on the journey however it wasn’t till she returned to Quebec {that a} pal delivered to her consideration information articles about Houle, who pleaded responsible final yr to a separate case of sexual assault and obtained a conditional discharge — permitting him to journey — final month.

In his determination to grant the conditional discharge, Quebec decide Matthieu Poliquin mentioned a felony file would influence Houle’s profession as an engineer, and restrict his potential to journey.

“A sentence aside from a discharge would have a major influence on his profession as an engineer,” Poliquin wrote. “It’s within the basic curiosity that the accused, an asset for society, can proceed his skilled profession.”

Houle additionally admitted throughout remedy to having assaulted one other individual in 2015, and Poliquin described that admission in his determination as regarding however mentioned it additionally confirmed a “need for transparency.”

Poliquin acknowledged in his sentencing determination that the sufferer in that case “was awoken by the sunshine of a digicam” to search out Houle assaulting her along with his fingers after she had fallen asleep at a pal’s house after an evening of consuming at a bar with a gaggle of mates, in keeping with The Canadian Press.

Her shirt had been lifted and her bra unfastened, the court docket determination mentioned, including the girl “panicked” and went to the kitchen, the place Houle adopted her and introduced her again to mattress.

A search of his telephone would later reveal that he had taken 9 photographs.

Quebec girls’s teams and sexual assault victims’ advocates condemned the choice to grant Houle the conditional discharge, with a whole lot protesting over current days and accusing Poliquin of getting “defended” Houle along with his determination.

The Quebec prosecution workplace is interesting the choice.

Underneath the Criminal Code, sexual assault in Canada is just not restricted to rape and consists of all types of sexual touching with out consent.

— with information from International Montreal’s Annabelle Olivier.