Category: News and Views
Blind Star Académie contestant sentenced for attempted murder
Last Updated: Friday, February 9, 2007 | 11:13 AM ET
CBC News
A blind aspiring singer who pleaded guilty to attempted murder after trying
to slit the throat of her visually impaired ex-boyfriend was sentenced
Thursday
to two years less a day.
Audrey Trépanier, 22, will serve her conditional sentence in the community.
She's best known as the blind contestant who tried out for Quebec's version
of Canadian Idol, called Star Académie.
Trépanier pleaded guilty to attempted murder after she lured her
ex-boyfriend Rémy Chartier into a hotel room in January 2006 under the
pretext she was
pregnant and wanted to stage a special ceremony for the baby. Chartier had
recently broken up with her and moved to British Columbia.
She fed him a cocktail of muscle relaxants, bound his hands, played him a
tape of herself talking about how resentful she was about him, and held a
knife
to his neck.
Chartier fought her off and escaped the hotel room.
Trépanier's lawyer, Robert Lahaye, said his client now recognizes she was
acting out after years of mounting frustration because of her parent's
protectiveness.
She is in therapy, which will continue throughout her sentence. The court
also imposed a curfew on her.
um can you say straight jacket
why do I have a feeling we might not be seeing a zone user for 2 years minus a day?
lol really?
Does anyone know a zoner named Chartier. He was almost an ex zoner.
Bob
poor zoner.
oh no, does she run an email list?
a person with the exact same name used to run a list i was on.
anyway, how wrong
think it was called blind_youth
How sad, I guess some people don't know how to properly move on from a broken relationship. I've been through messy break ups with men in the past but my god my jaw dropped after reading this topic. Who in their right mind would do something like this? Revenge?
Well, she was logged in only 5 minutes ago, so I guess that was wishful thinking.
there always is house arrest. like what martha stewart had.
what a crazy bitch lol
Two years less a day? Either they took pity coz she's blind, or the law in Canada's utter bollucks! What do they think, poor little blind girl, she must be mad too? Give blind people a bad name why don't you..
Really pisses me off actually. If somebody commits a crime, they deserve the sentence. End of story. That sentence, is bloody pittiful. I bet she's not even ashamed of herself.
I also thought the lawyers comments were garbage as well. though I wasn't surprised the "parents" excuse was used.
yeh, clasic excuse... Never mind, this girl's clearly a fuckign psycho, ah, it's all because of her childhood. what utter bullshit.....
I rarely get upset at things...
I agree with Sugar completely; you do the crime you pay the time in the big house and for those who don't understand that, it means jail. Thats a bunch of fucking bullshit that she got for her sentence. My mean my god, my exboyfriend is facing prison time for stuff I can't go into. He's looking at paroll at the age of 46 and he's a year older then me (26). It upsets me, the man I cared for is in jail where this freak a bitch gets what? Possibly house arrest, short sentence and counsling?
I'm sorry but Canada really needs to restructure their justice system and be a little more stronger then that and make her pay for trying to kill another person, that person also being disabled.
actually. I can respect the decision for not putting her in jail. not sure what yall know about females prisons, but they're worse than the male ones by far. I have a feeling it wouldn't be a good time for her. Not that I feel bad, but you don't want her getting killed.
Blaming the past for her problems is just so much bull. This girl should not be let off with a lighter sentence on the basis of her blindness. Too bad about the brutality in womens' prisons, but maybe she should have thought about the possible consequences of her actions before she made that attempt.
she should've gotten way way more then that, female prizzon or not. They could've put her in the psych ward then if prizzon would be so bad for her
Agreed with Nicole. Bulshit, if you do the crime, you deserve the sentence of prison. If it's gunna be hard coz you're blind, you should have thought about that in the first place.
I'm canadian myself, and the laws here are bullshit! I say, she should get the house, also known as jail, for at least 15 years, or something like that. And counciling? NOt needed, she's just some psycopathic bitch who just wanted to kill someone just because! I meen it, who would do that, and why such a pittiful sentence?
I definitely don't think she should get a shorter, easier sentence. But, I don't think she should get a harsher sentence either and it sounds like prison would be much harder on her than normal prisoners.
Sure it's easier to say "she shouldn't have done it" but that's backseat driving. And that's a cop out.
How about some creativity in sentenceing, instead of one size fits all.
Bob
No way Bob. She committed her crime, it's her problem. The law is bullshit.
dang you go chicky. lol, tell em Danielle. smiles.
Well a lot of people have made judgements about the defendant in this trial. Obviously her crime was a bad thing and she deserves to be punished for it. However, if her parents caused her to be this way, shouldn't they be held to account too? The psychological impact of overprotectiveness by parents on children, especially if there are ideological reasons behind that overprotection, can lead to that person becoming violent. Obviously in the article in post 1, there was no information about the guy in question, about his character, and about the character of either of the two people during their relationship. Therefore, it is difficult from reading it, for any member of the audience to accurately judge Audrey's actions. For example, if during the relationship, the man had been abusive or an intimidating character, and psychologically damaged her, her actions become a little easier to understand. However, if it is the case that what she said about her parents was totally untrue and her parents and X were all the kindest of people towards her, then what she did was disgusting and she deserves a tougher punishment. Both of those possibilities may not actually reflect the persons who were the subject of this trial, but they indicate that not enough information about all the people in this incident is known for accurate judgements to be formed about them.
so your saying just because she may or may not have had a hard life, were supposed to feel sorry for her. come on dude, she tried to kill the man. if she had a hard childhood, what the hell did this have to do with this kid? And we have all had break ups. Even if he did her wrong. you still don't try to kill. geesh. all's i got to say is psycho! she never once said he did something to her. so she was intending to kill and there's no excuse for that, no matter how hard you try. she got off way to easy, using her disability as an excuse! So what is to say she's not going to go back and try to finish what she started? it's the dude i feel sorry for! Freaking psycho chick!
*agrees with Shea* What's this world coming to.
I agree that she deserved severe punnishment, and that sentence is certainly way too short. However, I think that putting blind people in a prison setting is almost tant amount to murder itself. Prisons are not nice places for anyone, and it really is about survival of the fittest. Prison is a very dangerous place for anyone to be, but for a blind person, the danger would be a thousand times worse. I'm not saying that blind people should get away with crimes if found guilty, but prison is not a sensible idea. The only way to avoid horrific victimisation would be to place the blind prisoner in sollitary confinement for the entire length of their stay, and this has practical implications.
As blind people don't really constitute a serious escape risk because they can never be sure if they're being observed either by a human law enforcement presence, or on CCTV, placing them under house arrest with a security ancle bracelet and/or a subcutanious GPS tracking device would be far more sensible and safer.
Of course she should have considered the consequences of her actions, but I want to remind you all that prison is about being locked up and your liberty restricted. Prison is not about being gang raped, beaten, robbed, abused, victimised and persecuted in a hundred other ways to boot. The sad thing is, that kind of behaviour does happen in prisons, especially to weaker people, or criminals who commit certain kinds of crime, and putting a blind person inside a high security prison would really be just the same as standing them against a wall and pulling the trigger. I'd put money on her not coming out alive if she was incarsourated in the regular way.
Some of you would say, good! Serves her right! But that is not the point of prison! You don't go to prison to be killed, no matter what your crime was unless the death sentence is passed of course, you go to prison to be locked up. Nothing more.
The only acceptable alternative to house arrest as far as I'm concerned, would be an open prison. A very low security facility without walls. Usually, the criminals confined to such an establishment are not dangerous or violent. Usually white collar crime like fraud.
Matt
i still don't think house arrest is enough for attempted murder. if that dued didn't escaped she probably would have killed him. shit, even if she hadn't she was attempting to. house arrest is not a very severe punishment. shit she is still coming on this site. lol, when i was younger i got more severe punishment than that from my parents just for getting a c in grade school. heheheh i was grounded to my room without the t.v. and sure as hell no computer. hehehehe. Drug dealers or even users get more time than that! that's crap if you ask me. What are we saying? sell a joint and do time, attempt to kill someone, play the blind card and get a slap on the wrist. um, nooooo! As i said in my last post. Think of the shit she put this dude through! And who's to say she's not going to get off her house arrest and do it again. she sure as hell didn't get enough punishment to scare her away from it. grrrrrr. Shea
I agree that the sentence isn't long enough, but I still think house arrest is the best option, the safest option. Maybe she should have been forced to do something with her time, like Braille out material for use by blind school children or something like that, she shouldn't just be allowed to sit around and come on the zone etc, but I still think house arrest was the most sensible option.
actually I think the being sheltered excuse is a vary sad but valid excuse.
I have come across some sheltered blind people that say that they often feel like they want to do something like drugs or whatever for the shock value of it.
Something to the affect of I'm going to do something that is not expected of me.
Do something for myself to see how other people will react and fight against the chains that have bound me.
And it sounds to me like that's what this person was trying to do.
I should get one of them on here to explain better but the point I'm trying to make is that there are some serious psychological affects to being sheltered.
Perhaps she got off to easy, but then again I've often thought that more criminals should get examined psychologically instead of thrown into a system where it's survival of the fittest.
so has your friend gone and tried to kill someone? i totally doubt that. Tehre are lots of people out there with mental issues, if we start making excuses for them, dam we'll have a crazy ass world. Wait a crazier ass world. heheheheh noooo, freaking excuses, you do the crime you pay the time! you know there are mental wards she could have been admitted into. But no, she wasn't! so obviously the police and whoever evaluated her didn't think she was as nuts as your telling us she could be. Make sence? hhehehhehehehe. smiles, Shea
um, fuzzy, come on. Going out and rebelling doing drugs or whatever, is totaly different than going to the extreme and trying to kill someone. so you can get your friend on here to talk there little heart out. It's still not the same! And as i said before if we used my parents shelterred me, we would have lots of psycho people out there. not just blind, sighted kids parents shelter them too! so yeah, no freaking excuse! Major psycho chick! Put yourself in this dude's shoes. How the hell do you think he feels, knowing he could be dead had he not faught this girl off? and she's sitting in her house doing whatever the hell she likes! Knowing she won't be there long, and she may be coming back to finish what she started? Don't you think you would feel a bit different about the punishment she got? Interested in your comments! smiles, Shea
Ok, this topic is really starting to irritate me. She atempted to kill, if she's considered to have had mental instibility issues causing her to behave like this, put her in a mental institution for a period of time where she can be treated propperly, and at the same time punished, by being taken away from all the things in her life. Being under house arrest is pathetic, if it's the only way, take away her computer, her tv and so on, letting her have limited entertainment the way she would in a real prison environment. sure I don't want her killed in prison, but I also think this sends out a message to blind people that it doesn't matter what you do, you won't really get punished for it. She's no less criminal than a sighted person, she didn't fail to kill him because she couldn't see, so stop wrapping her up in cotton wool, make her bloody suffer. What happens if after all this she does it all again? do we say oh dear she's just a poor sheltered blind girl we'll give her the same punishment again? get real.
yaaaaay, go kev. that deserves a happy dance. heheheheh! smiles! Shea
Totally agree with Kev and Shana,
Have to agree with a lot of people here. However i'm Canadian as well, and feel that she should've received something other than house arrest. Something more severe. I have a friend who's in policing, and I'm sure she'd agree that this person in question should've received something more severe. Never saw this story originally until now... What is the username of the person in question on here?
I certainly feel sorry for the guy who was on the receiving end of things.
cruel and tender elhemina
dam chicky, we'll probably be the next hunted down. hehehehe. she says in her profile, she's not ashamed of what she did! that proves right there she isn't getting a severe enough punishment! I'm sure she'll be back to finish what she tried to start! poor poor guy! No matter how bad there relationship was, he's still the victim in his crazy ass girls world!
shea
bollucks, like i care, rofl
The interesting part of this is that I am acquainted with both of the people involved.
I have never met Audrey, but I have spoken to her by MSN. After all of this happened, she blocked me from MSN and from this site for no reason whatsoever and told me that I "knew why"...
Now, people in relationships do dumb things, period. that's life. Perhaps the relationship was ill-fated from the start, or perhaps the long-distance was too much, or perhaps the two people weren't compatible. The point of the matter is that, yeah, a different sentence is definitely demanded... and don't get me started on my "parents of blind people" speech. but it is important to understand more of the situation before passing judgment.
Kate
Like I said Kevin, if house arrest is the safest option, she should not be allowed to just sit around on her fat lazy blind ass and do what the fuck she likes! She should be forced to do something useful to society with her time, and should have only limited access to a computer, TV, etc. And, the sentence should be far longer! At least 6 years or longer! I didn't say that house arrest should be a soft option, just a safer one. Maybe even in a half way house or something, or a managed accomedation of some kind, but somewhere that she wouldn't be victimised worse than any other prisoner because of her sight problems. You said that her lack of sight didn't prevent her from intending and try to commit the crime in the first place. Well, why should her lack of sight make her 100 times more a target during her punnishment then.
Matt
oh, I completely agree that house arrest was too soft an option. I don't care how rough prisons are, she should've gotten prison time. It's no more than she deserves. She chooses to try to commit murder, then she should be treated as such, regardless of whether or not she has sight. Screw all this coddling bullshit.
lol, go ather! heheheh! i also don't agree with the don't make judgement until you know the entire story. The story doesn't matter. I don't really care how there relationship ended, or even started for that matter. She intended to kill the dude! The only time the story matters if she was trying to defend herself. No where has she ever claimed this! So no the entire story don't matter. she tried to kill this dude, and in her text profile says she isn't ashamed of it. That there tells you she is freaking psycho and was serious about what she attempted to do!
Shea
I agree with Shea that the full story doesn't matter. Who cares if she was sheltered as a child? Who cares if her parents were the worst, most bullshit excuses for parents that ever existed, for that matter? Who cares what went wrong in her romantic relationship? None of that should in any way excuse what she did, and it also shouldn't have any bearing on the consequences. She should be given therapy or put in a mental institution if that's what's needed, sure, but her punishment should be the same as anyone else's would be. She tried to kill someone, and regardless of the reasons, that deserves serious punishment.
I do think that house arrest is too soft an option for her, even if her television and computer access is taken away and she is only given so much entertainment. It's just not an adequate punishment, blindness or no. So the prison system is a bitch, and would be even worse for her as a blind individual. Perhaps she should've thought about that before she tried to slit the guy's damn throat. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with Ather that she should be put in prison regardless of her blindness because it's as much as she deserves, but if they're not going to make that an option, they should come up with something better than fucking house arrest. Honestly.
To be honest I can't believe that they didn't. Come on, it's attempted murder! She should've gotten what everybody else gets for that.
I don't get this whole thing about people in prisson having access to entertainment anyways! It's meant to be a place where you're punnished, not treated like frickin' roalty......
lol. well, sugar I had a friend who spent some time in jail. tell me one time. that the low security prisons don't have much intertainment but the high security ones do. basicly as he put it to keep everyone from having sex with each other.
well, we can't do anything about her sentencing, but we can do something about what access she has etc. see my petition
http://www.zonebbs.com/boards.php?t=12590
and feel free to sign if you strongly disagree with the sentence.
this is a different clip i found on the net.
After arriving in Montreal on a flight from Vancouver, a 23-year-old blind man checked into a Sherbrooke St. E. hotel Saturday night with his ex-girlfriend,
Audrey Trepanier.
Trepanier, a 21-year-old blind singer, who appeared this season on the popular Quebec TV talent show Star Academie, had invited her former boyfriend, Remy
Chartier, to town to discuss their relationship.
The meeting did not go well.
Shortly before midnight, Chartier struggled down four flights of stairs, wearing only his trousers.
He told an employee at the front desk that he thought the woman in his room was trying to kill him. He then called 911.
"He had scratches on his upper body," said Catalin Gongoroiu, the front desk employee who had checked Chartier into the hotel about two hours earlier.
"He told me they were doing some Indian ritual because the girl said she was pregnant. He said they were both blindfolded and that she put a knife on his
throat. He was convinced that he barely escaped with his life. He was very panicked."
Chartier didn't give any other details about the ritual, Gongoroiu said.
While he was in his hotel room, Chartier had been given a cocktail of pills and then had a knife put to his throat, Montreal police Constable Anie Lemieux
confirmed yesterday.
Police arrested Trepanier at the Hotel la Residence du Voyageur yesterday morning. She is expected to be charged today with attempted murder.
The couple split up in October and Trepanier wasn't happy about it.
"She did not accept it and this could be an explanation of what has happened," Lemieux said.
Lemieux wouldn't say whether the man had been lured from his home in Nanaimo, B.C., to be killed.
"Our investigators are still trying to determine everything that happened," Lemieux said. "This is an unusual case."
Police said they didn't know what type of pills were used in the cocktail given to Chartier.
In the summer of 2001, both Trepanier and Chartier attended a computer camp in Toronto run by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
On the camp's website, Trepanier talked about her love of music and singing.
"I love music, it's my favourite drug and it's totally legal," she wrote. "I love to sing at different concerts in my province and in my language."
Trepanier, who is from the Quebec City suburb of Ancienne Lorette, was being questioned yesterday by homicide investigators.
She may also be charged with possessing a weapon with the intent to commit a crime.
Chartier was taken to a Montreal hospital yesterday for observation and then released. He returned to the hotel yesterday afternoon, accompanied by two
police officers, to collect his belongings.
"I felt really bad for him because of what happened," said a hotel employee who was working yesterday afternoon.
"He had booked in for three nights, but we refunded his money for two of the nights."
kwilton@thegazette.canwest.com
I cannot believe how much outrage this case appears to be generating. Let's put it into perspective. We have zoners here from around the world. That includes the UK, where a man got a couple of years for beating up a pentioner for telling him to stop pissing against a wall. The pentioner's mind was deteriorating, and he died days later in hospital. A driver killed a few people by driving dangerously, and got a very short sentence here too either last year or the year before. Yet people are criticising the sentence of a person who didn't succeed in murdering their partner? I'd be shocked, but a lot of you wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in this case at all if the person found guilty didn't have a visual impairment.
I promised myself that I would not post to this topic and get involved in this discussion, but Senior's post has drawn me in. I don't think the interest in this issue is just because she's a blind person. I think it stems more from the fact that she's a current and active Zoner. Besides, even if the interest is generated based on her blindness, other groups do the same thing all the time. If this were a deaf person, the deaf community would take interest. If the criminal were of an ethnic minority, than the others of that ethnic descent would most likely be interested. So, I don't see what your complaint is, Senior.