Publication date: Sep 19, 2022 • 9 h ago • 5 min read The Ottawa Courthouse at Elgin Street. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

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Emelyn Lacour trusted her stepfather, Pascal Plourde, the man who helped raise her since she was four years old, bringing her to every softball tournament and taking care of her and her sister as if they were his own children.

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But Plourde, a former Ottawa nurse, betrayed that trust when he sexually abused and repeatedly assaulted Emelyn. Sign up to receive daily news headlines from the Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. By clicking the subscribe button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails. Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300

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“He seemed to care about me and wanted the best for me and wanted to be there for me,” Emelyn, 18, said in an interview from Florida, where she now lives with her mother and siblings. “I trusted him a lot, he was my stepfather. He completely broke that trust and basically betrayed us.” Now, Emelyn and her mother, Claire Delacour, are speaking out about their experience in hopes of spreading awareness about the kind of exploitation Plourde did. “No one should have to go through the trauma that my daughter went through, and I don’t as a mom,” said Claire Delacour, Emelyn’s mother.

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But the details of their case would have remained under wraps and Plourde’s actions would have been obscured had it not been for Emmeline’s decision to lift the publication ban. The ban was intended to protect her identity as a victim who was sexually assaulted by a family member. “Really the only person she was protecting at the time was him, which I don’t think is fair,” Emmeline said. “It was hard at first (lifting the post ban), but honestly everyone I know, everyone I really care about, already knows.” In 2008, Claire, a nurse at Montfort Hospital, ran into Plourde while working as a paramedic. They started dating and eventually moved in together. He became a father figure to Claire’s two children, who were 4 and 1 when they met.

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“I trusted him completely with my two daughters,” she said. “He considered the girls his own. My girls called him ‘Papask’ because he was half their papa (papas) and half Pascal.” They had two children of their own together, forming a family of six. “We had built a life with Pascal,” Claire recalls. “We were talking about the future. Our relationship wasn’t perfect… but we were building our lives.” Emmeline had dealt with an eating disorder when she was 12 years old. In the summer of 2020, it returned. “Everyone thought it was because of the COVID and the lockdowns and it came back again,” Claire said. But there was a deeper, deeper cause. Emmeline said she believes she has blocked some of the assaults from her memory, but remembers feeling a sense of unease about what her stepfather did to her — sexual acts that included full contact. Plourde pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault and two counts of sexual exploitation that occurred between March and December 2020.

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The attacks took place while Claire was working as a nurse at Montfort Hospital and while Emelyn said she was in a fog of anxiety and sleep medication. She said she did not consent to the acts, which she recalled began when she was 14 or 15. “The first few times I can remember, it didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t process in my mind how a dad could do that,” she said. “I also thought maybe it’s normal for stepdads to do that, so I didn’t think anything of it, but then seeing other families and noticing it wasn’t the same made me understand.” Pascal Plourde was sentenced to four years in prison for sexually assaulting his stepdaughter Emelyn Lacour and will be a registered sex offender when he is released. jpg On January 1, 2021, after the family enjoyed a skiing and New Year’s Eve vacation with friends, Emmeline’s condition worsened. She wasn’t eating and looked distressed, so Claire brought her to the hospital. There, for the first time, Emmeline told her that she had been sexually assaulted.

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“I remember immediately standing up in shock and screaming,” Claire wrote in her victim impact statement. “I felt my body getting more and more numb and I started naming every teenager in our community. And that’s when he looked up at me and gave me a look I’ll never forget, a look of fear, despair and guilt all at once. At that moment I knew.” Through a haze of shock and disbelief, she alerted the hospital staff and then the authorities. “My whole life was torn apart. Everything I had loved and lived for was now gone,” he wrote. Plourde was arrested a few days later. He pleaded guilty in November 2021 and was later sentenced to four years in prison and will be a registered sex offender when he is released.

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Meanwhile, Claire and Emelyn continued to struggle with the aftershocks of the sexual assaults. Eventually, it became too difficult for them to remain in Ottawa, haunted by memories of the family they once had. They moved to the United States, where Emmeline was hospitalized for her eating disorder and related anxiety which, she now acknowledges, had its roots in the attacks. She missed her senior year of high school and her high school prom. “It was kind of reassuring for him at first to admit his guilt,” Emmeline said, “but knowing everything afterwards that I’ll probably be fighting for years. In terms of relationships, intimacy, it’s difficult for me and he’ll probably get out of prison and live a normal life.”

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“He’s got four years, he’ll probably only do a third of them,” Claire said. “I feel there is no punishment for him, while my daughter spent a year and a half in hospital and will deal with this for the rest of her life. I don’t feel there is any sense of justice.” In June, Emmeline was discharged from inpatient care. She is still learning to deal with what happened and, after spending so much time surrounded by supportive health workers, she aspires to be one day. “I definitely want to work in the medical field with kids,” she said, “just giving back helping people not only going through what I went through but just giving back. I spent a year and a half in the hospital and the staff were great with me. They helped me. I probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them.”

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