Three months after her claim of having been sexually assaulted was regarded by the Ottawa police as a “misunderstanding,” former University of Ottawa (U of O) student Mélodie Morin said charges have now been laid against her alleged attacker.
Late last month, Morin said she received a call from the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) saying charges had been laid against her alleged attacker.
According to Morin, the alleged attacker had returned to his home in Lebanon before charges could be laid. As a result, he was charged in absentia and will be arrested if he returns to Canada. The man was also studying at U of O.
Morin said she found news of the charges to be “a bit” of a surprise.
“I felt that my detective was trying really hard to do everything in his power to do what was right, so I did expect something to happen, I just didn’t know what exactly,” she said.
“I’m happy that I feel safer, that I won’t have to see him on the street,” she added. “But I still feel justice has not been done. They [the police] should have done something to make sure he couldn’t leave the country.”
Morin filed a report with the Ottawa police last September after attending a party where she said she was raped and physically assaulted by a male student.
A month later, Morin received a phone call from police saying her case was being closed and no charges would be laid because the man who allegedly sexually assaulted her thought it was consensual.
Morin went public about her story in November, and said the treatment she experienced from police “was completely inappropriate.” Ottawa police decided to re-investigate the case.
“It’s important to make people understand that you have to fight for your rights,” Morin said. “If you spoke up and you feel that you weren’t heard, well, you have to start yelling.”
Once the investigation resumed, Morin was also assigned a new detective.
“Everything went so much better after that,” she said. “He was always there to answer my questions and give me updates on the file.”
Morin said she was satisfied with how U of O has handled her situation.
“I’ve been in close contact with the university and they were very supportive,” she said. “I’ve been to a lot of meetings where they said, ‘Hey, if you want to work with us, we can try and get him out of university and make sure that he doesn’t come back.’ I think that, to that point, the university was more supportive than the police.”
Last January, U of O accepted 11 recommendations from a task force set up in an effort to help end sexual violence at the school. The task force was formed after two high-profile cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault took place at the university in 2014.
Recommendations included mandatory training on causes and solutions to sexual violence for all senior administration members, as well as the creation of a school-wide bystander intervention program.
Morin isn’t back at U of O, but said she “hasn’t ruled out the possibility of returning in the future.”
