2023-09-18 19:30:00
A retired teacher from Saint-Hyacinthe would have, among other things, taken advantage of physical education classes to touch primary-age girls, he who was denounced after the movement #moiaussi by nine of his former students.
“Unfortunately, I reacted in a silent and inert way, I don’t remember having any defensive or retreating movements. I felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t feeling well,” said one of Gilles Robineau’s alleged victims about the touching.
The now retired professor is on trial at the Saint-Hyacinthe courthouse for sexual assault, sexual contact and indecent assault. In the 1970s and 1980s, he allegedly killed at least nine victims, all of whom were his students at the time.
Photo courtesy Sûreté du Québec
Former physical education teacher Gilles Robineau during his arrest by the Sûreté du Québec in November 2018.
Caresses under clothes
The first alleged victim who testified was less than 10 years old when Robineau was his physical education teacher in an elementary school in Saint-Hyacinthe.
On several occasions, he allegedly caressed her breasts over and under her leotard, while she helped him put away materials for class in a small storage room adjacent to the gymnasium. “My chest was at stage zero, I had no shape,” she said.
During exercises on the vaulting horse, he would have touched her pubis, sometimes even under her clothes, the woman reported to judge Christian Jarry. “He was putting his hand in through his groin,” she said, adding that he always acted “in a furtive way.”
“I didn’t understand exactly what was happening and we didn’t talk about it at the time. I remained stuck with my feelings,” she lamented.
Thanks to #moiaussi
The woman, now in her fifties, filed a complaint after the movement #moiaussiwhich occurred in the fall of 2017: “It revived my memories and the feeling of wanting to do something with it,” she explained during the cross-examination led by the defense lawyer, Me Brigitte Martin.
His denunciation led to Robineau’s arrest in November 2018 by the Sûreté du Québec. Testimonies from the eight other alleged victims will be heard during the week at the 72-year-old man’s trial.
More details to come…
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