A woman who was Gilbert Rozon’s sister-in-law and an employee of his Just for Laughs museum alleged on Wednesday that she was raped by him during the 1990s.
Recommended Videos
Martine Roy was the ninth of the nine plaintiffs, who are suing Rozon, the founder of the Just for Laughs festival, to testify in the civil court trial being heard at the Montreal courthouse. The nine women are seeking a total of $14 million.
Roy is the sister of Danielle Roy, a woman who was in a relationship with Rozon for about three decades until 2016. Before working for the museum, Roy worked as a driver for Just for Laughs beginning in 1993.
While testifying before Quebec Superior Court Justice Chantal Tremblay, she said that while she was working at the museum one day, during the 1990s, Rozon asked to meet with her and led her to a room in the building.
She alleged that Rozon locked the door to the room, quickly pulled down her underwear and penetrated her before leaving the room. She also said she recalled heading for a bathroom afterward to clean herself because she believed Rozon had herpes.
Weeks after the alleged rape, Roy said, she was fired from her job at the museum.
Some of the other women who are suing Rozon were working for Just for Laughs when they allege they were sexually abused.
As was the case for most, if not all, of the other eight women who are suing Rozon, Roy filed a criminal complaint with the Montreal police back in 2017. Only one of the complaints produced a criminal charge against Rozon. He was acquitted in the trial on Dec. 15, 2020, after Rozon testified in his defence and said he had sex with Annick Charette on a consensual basis. Charette is one of the nine women involved in the lawsuits being heard now.
Rozon’s lawyer, Mélanie Morin, asked Roy what motivated her to file the criminal complaint in 2017, three decades after the alleged rape.
“It was in the news,” Roy said in reference to articles she read where Rozon denied he sexually abused other women. “It was flagrant. He had an answer for everything.”
Roy said that being interviewed by police while she made her complaint, on Dec. 11, 2017, was difficult.
“I had tried to erase what happened,” she said. “It was especially hard to talk about it with two people (police detectives) I didn’t know.”
Roy also said she found it strange that Rozon showed up at the funerals for her father and her mother after he had split up with her sister in 2016.
“We didn’t understand why he was there (at her mother’s funeral),” Roy said, adding she believed Rozon knew at that point that she had filed her complaint with police. “We had even asked (Danielle Roy) that he not be there. It was like he was putting on a show, that he was a good person for a family.”