Barre woman haunted by memory of Michael Jacques
Toolbox
By Peter Hirschfeld Vermont Press Bureau - Published: October 17, 2008
BARRE – When Lisa Frigon saw Michael Jacques' picture on the front of her local paper earlier this summer, the Barre woman began sobbing.
"I totally lost it," Frigon says. The picture, published in late June, appeared the day after Jacques was arrested in connection with the disappearance of Brooke Bennett of Braintree.
"I was really frantic," she says. "It was like being literally sick, like someone had slapped me or hit me in the face with something."
Frigon, now 35, was among the first of Jacques' numerous female victims. In 1985, when she was 13, Frigon attended a party hosted by Jacques at his Barre apartment. Jacques, then 19, took her to an upstairs room and raped her, according to Frigon. He later pleaded guilty to lewd and lascivious conduct for the offense, though the conviction was later expunged from his record as per the terms of plea agreement negotiated by Jacques' lawyers.
Today, Frigon testifies before a Senate committee that is considering changes to the state's criminal justice policies. Her own story, she says, exposes shortcomings in a system that prevented the state from adequately supervising a man now charged with the rape and murder of Bennett, a 12-year-old girl.
"It's not fair to allow offenders the right to harm people over and over and over again," she says. "And I'm hoping that I can play some small part in changing that."
Since Jacques was arrested, Frigon says she has relived the torment she suffered at his hands. She was at Jacques' apartment in 1985 because she had been dating his younger brother.
"When I say date, I mean holding hands, passing notes, all very innocent," she says. "I was a virgin when Mr. Jacques did that to me. I had no experience in that arena whatsoever."
Jacques, she says, was well-known among local teenagers for hosting parties at his apartment. Endless supplies of booze and late-night parties, she says, were enough to lure young teens into his residence.
"There was always a gaggle of children over there – 13, 14, 15 years old," she says. "He was a popular guy. It was the seduction of it all – the music, the car, the alcohol, the marijuana."
Frigon, a single mom to two boys, expects to be called as a witness in Jacques' federal trial, for which he could face the death penalty. She does not want to discuss specifics of her own rape in advance of offering courtroom testimony.
She says she does not believe she was not Jacques' only victim though. According to Frigon, at least one of her friends indicated she had been sexually assaulted by Jacques, and she suspects several others were as well.
Jacques has a long history of substantiated sex offenses. Authorities believe Jacques' first victim was an 8-year-old female relative. The girl was abused for years and subjected to at least 100 incidents of sexual assault, until at age 15 she was impregnated by Jacques following an incident in 1984.
That pregnancy was terminated and Jacques was charged with one count of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor for an August 1983 incident with the victim, an affidavit states.
Jacques next was convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct for his crimes against Frigon. Though his record was expunged, state officials have since confirmed the conviction. In 1992, Jacques pleaded guilty to a felony charge of aggravated sexual assault against an 18-year-old girl. He served less than four years in jail and was released from probation in 2003.
Frigon says that had her case not been scrubbed from the records, the courts likely would have imposed more severe sanctions – sanctions that may have prevented him committing the alleged rape and murder of Brooke Bennett.
"I would like to think things would have been different if the judges and lawyers in that case knew what he had done to me," she says.
Frigon says she wants to convince lawmakers to institute a number of reforms already under consideration. One would prevent courts from offering deferred sentences and expunged records to people convicted of sex offenses. The other would allow prosecutors to use a defendant's prior misdeeds as evidence in new cases, as is the case in federal courts and most other state courts.
"When his record was wiped clean, and not one bit of what he did to me was allowed into court, it made me so upset," she says. "It was like I was a zero, like I did not matter to anybody and had no worth. It was like his life was more important than mine."
Frigon says she hopes to offer lawmakers a window into the trauma suffered by victims of sexual assault. Years of therapy, Frigon says, have helped her cope with the mood swings and depression she attributes to her rape. She suffered a resurgence of old symptoms, though, after hearing about Jacques' alleged involvement in the Bennett murder.
"It was like I switched roles and became that poor girl," she says. "I started thinking about what this poor girl must have gone through, how frightened she must have been, and then putting myself in her shoes."
Frigon says she lost weight and stopped sleeping.
"My heart broke, it just broke," she says. "I cried a lot, couldn't sleep."
Now, she says, she's able to find some comfort in her new role as an advocate for victims, many of whom are too afraid to speak out.
"There's a lot of women I know that I've been close to and we've talked about our pasts, and so many have said they've had someone touch them inappropriately," she says. "And to see that it happens that often and nothing is ever done perpetuates the whole message that these offenders can do what they want."
She hopes legislators will enact harsher penalties for sex offenders, and also offer more help to victims left in their wake.
"I feel like I have validity now, and like I have things to say that people need to hear," she says. "I'm here, I'm strong, and I'm not going to suffer anymore."
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